Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
JMA Consulting
Autism Ontario needed a new website that could integrate a substantial amount of existing content and present it in a simplified, easy to navigate, user-friendly design. Site users were frustrated because they can’t donate easily, sign up for events and the site crashed often.
The new site has CiviCRM supported within the Drupal 8 platform. This makes for a one-stop hub that provides a powerful and cost-effective solution to power Autism Ontario memberships, fund development, event registrations, newsletters, and donations. This site’s design and navigation were crafted with simplicity in mind, to allow visitors to find key information and resources through efficient, intuitive user experience.
About the project
Autism Ontario administration made use of several different software programs to manage donor and volunteer data, all supported by and within an unreliable website that lacked performance and efficiency. If the organization was to engage donors and new members, and serve its members, a new online experience would need to be created with improvements to key functionality and allow for quick, intuitive pathways to information and education resources.
This new site would need to integrate a substantial amount of existing content and present it in a simplified, easy to navigate, user-friendly design.
Outcome
Northern delivered a modern digital experience by using the Drupal 8 CMS on Acquia Cloud, with an additional custom CiviCRM installation. Northern partnered with JMA Consulting to implement CiviCRM- a one-stop hub that provides a powerful and cost-effective solution to power memberships, fund development, event registrations, newsletters, and donations.
The use of CiviCRM allows for a seamless migration of databases and content from the legacy site to the new build and aided in the reorganization of data into more accessible formats and structures to serve their audience. The platform features multi-level authoring and permissions, in order to allow individual Chapters the ability to maintain their own content within a cohesive organizational framework. A key element, particularly for non-profit organizations, is that the CiviCRM integration allows for the import of recent years of donors, donations, and membership data, and for batch exporting to QuickBooks.
The new Drupal website solution also integrated the functionality of the Abacus, Spirale, and Calypso tools with the main site to provide intuitive navigation for site visitors.
The use of entirely open-source technologies enables the client to work with additional technology vendors or partners, if required, without licensing fees. By building on existing research and planning done by Autism Ontario, the timeline of the site build was accelerated and completed in several weeks, rather than months.
Notes/Challenges
It was important for the new content editor experience to:
- Reduce staff efforts on managing events, while ensuring registrants end up in CiviCRM
- Support several internal and external bulk email subscription lists
Challenges
- 6,000 duplicate records existed in Raiser's Edge; and had to be cleaned up before undergoing a merge; they were required to be accessible during the new site build
- Migrating data and functionality from MailChimp
Why Drupal was chosen
A new public website built on the Drupal 8 CMS and integrated with a custom CiviCRM installation was the best choice for Autism Ontario.
By utilizing open-source technologies both for its website and CRM, this organization has a solution that:
- Is effective and flexible in communicating with all its varied stakeholders
- Has no licensing fees
- Additional technology vendors or partners can be used, if required
The Drupal 8 platform is powerful, easy to use, and integrates well with the kinds of tools that it Autism Ontario chapters might want to leverage (such as YouTube or EventBrite) as well as CRMs and systems that it decides to adopt as an organization.
More importantly, Drupal makes it easy to set up multi-level authoring and permissions which can power chapters, giving them the freedom in maintaining their own content while still maintaining a cohesive and organized site.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
This site has a lot of images, using Blazy helps to decrease load times.
CiviCRM and related modules. As discussed in this case study, Autism Ontario uses CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a one-stop hub that provides a powerful and cost-effective solution to power memberships, fund development, event registrations, newsletters, and donations.
