May 15, 2010 Saturday afternoon at Degui Academy ﹘ Co-hosted by Frontier Foundation, NeTivism.com.tw, and Dharma Drum University - School of Philanthropy, the “Constituent Relationship Management for NGOs” forum invited Mr. Jimmy Huang , manager of Netivism.com.tw to introduce to the audience the features and applications of the open source software CiviCRM. There were about forty participants. 

Huang highlighted that CiviCRM is a free and open source software solution for constituent relationship management. CiviCRM is web-based, has different language versions, and is designed specifically for NPO/NGOs to effectively manage their contacts, events, membership, donations, and mails. Huang also used the examples of Creative Commons, Wikipedia, a Jewish congregation, and a community healthcare agency to illustrate how CiviCRM can significantly strengthen the interaction between NPOs and their constituents.

Robin Winkler, Executive Director of Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, pointed out that the Asia Pacific Greens Network (APGN) 2010 used CiviCRM and recommended CiviCRM to its partners. The question is whether an NPO can adopt CiviCRM without hiring a full-time information technology employee and how to get CiviCRM technology support and training? Huang Fu-Yuan, senior volunteer with the Taiwan Association for Nature Education, shared his experiences in helping the Association to adopt CiviCRM. The Association has only one full-timer and uses CiviCRM to send event invitations and newsletters to its members. CiviCRM can collect important information such as who has opened the newsletter or event invitation email and who has responded and signed up for an event. Many members of the audience had questions about the connection between cash payment systems and CiviCRM, regardless of this concern the participants were eager to try out CiviCRM and were hoping that it would become a big helping hand for NPOs. （Leemen Lee/Taipei）

For details about CiviCRM please visit: http://net2.netivism.tw/projects/civicrm-workshop.