European Cyclists’ Federation manages 25,000+ contacts with CiviCRM.

The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) is an organization founded in 1983 to promote cycling as a sustainable and healthy means of transportation and recreation. Their roots are in Europe, but the challenges they face are global. In October 2014, ECF was looking for help to implement CiviCRM for its staff in Brussels. They needed to import the existing database to improve the management of their different contacts with CiviCRM.

To accomplish this, iXiam proposed a solution based on Civi-Go, a CiviCRM service in the modality of SaaS (software as a service). Civi-Go solves the challenge of being web-based, accessible by the entire ECF staff; provides contact import and management functions in a user-friendly, intuitive environment; and works as tool to manage interactions with these contacts. Other functionalities required were mass mailing, online forms, online payment capabilities and a hosting solution.

The main challenge was the integration and management of their extensive and inter-related contacts (people, partners, organizations). ECF manages contacts from all bicycle users’ organizations worldwide under its umbrella: the 80+ member NGO’s and network of academics, cities, national bicycle officers and industry supporters. They needed to unify its databases to improve the management of contacts, members, mailings and campaigns. At that time, ECF has four different databases with 25,000+ contacts that including using: SQL, Mailchimp, Excel sheets, and lists in Outlook.

Up to this time, they used Mailchimp to manage ECF’s newsletters. After consulting, they decided to move to CiviMail with customized newsletter templates. CiviMail is a tool that allows ECF to handle mass email campaigns obtaining reports on the results and effectiveness of those emails. Additionally, the combination with other features like CiviMail, CiviCampaign and CiviEvent has provided ECF a complete solution.