The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) Case Study

Organisation

The Chartered Institute of Linguists serves the interests of professional linguists throughout the world and acts as a respected language assessment and recognised awarding organisation delivering Ofqual (Office of Qualification and Examination Regulation) accredited qualifications. The Institute is also actively involved in language issues at both a national and an international level.

Founded in 1910, the Institute now has over 6,000 Fellows, Members and Associate Members. It aims to:
• promote the learning and use of modern languages
• improve the status of all professional linguists
• establish and maintain high standards of work
• serve the interests of all linguists
• ensure professional standards amongst language practitioners through its Code of Conduct

It acts as a forum for linguists in all areas of professional and academic life and its authoritative journal, The Linguist, contains articles of both academic and practical interest.
The project has successfully met CIoL’s needs primarily for effective web enabled member/contact management, renewals (including direct debits), regular marketing/newsletters and events. Other areas where the solution will meet CIoL’s requirements include forums, directories and e-commerce for shop items.

Features Deployed

Contact and Membership
e-Communications
Events

What was the initial promise of this project?

To provide a system capable of handling membership, renewals (including paperless direct debits) and sending out regular newsletters.

What was the biggest challenge facing this project?

There was a key requirement to move away from an access database and various spreadsheets towards having one system capable of handling all of CIoL’s CRM requirements. There were very challenging timescales to implement the solution quickly to cleanse and transfer the data, send out renewal reminders and set up direct debit functionality.

Why was civiCRM chosen as the solution? Were other CRMs evaluated?

The idea of Open Source as a possible solution was a totally new concept for CIoL. Once all the advantages were known then CIoL were keen on CiviCRM for a number of reasons – mainly due to it’s focus on the needs of NfP Organisations and this was re-inforced by NfP Services’s experience with implementing for similar organisations (also involved in providing similar services in the Education and Language sectors). Other systems including Microsoft CRM were also evaluated.

Who made up the project team?

NfP Services Team included Lead Developer (web team), Account Manager and Data Migration Consultant

What site functionality was key to the project?

Fully web enabled - Membership (join on line), Events - on line booking/payments, bulk emailing/self profiling - some of the main elements

What modifications and modules were deployed?

Invoicing and Direct debit modules

What were the server & hosting requirements?

Hosted on servers – managed through NfP Services

What did the CiviCRM community gain from this project? What features were incorporated back into CiviCRM:

Contribution to the direct debit functionality

For more on the success of this organization, visit:
http://www.iol.org.uk