How to use civicrm to achieve campaign requirements

Question

I'm looking at using CiviCRM as part of a solution for a campaign. what we need is a solution that aids volunteers to go into the field, speak to and collect data from voters ( we do not have adequate voter records here, so we have to build ours). We'll be collecting names, phone numbers, gender and asking a couple of questions. Volunteers are split into areas to collect the data.

Our phone bank solution will use the data collected to reach and talk to potential voters. Is there a way to also manage call centre volunteers using civicrm?

Can civicrm be used to manage the data collected? Can we manage volunteers (those collecting data and manning the phones) with it and track volunteer efficiency as we are paying them? What are the best ways to achieve this? We'll be using the wordpress framework

Answer 1

CiviCRM is very well capable of doing what you want to achieve. You can store contacts in CiviCRM, adds a custom fields for information specific to your situation. Also you can store an activity of who added the person to the database.

CiviCRM is also capable of importing data from Excel (CSV files) and exporting it to excel.

Have you thought of how your volunteers are collecting this data? Are they using an tablet? Do you get CSV files and import them later on?

Answer 2

Another option we have been working towards is being able to upload a csv to Drupal Webform - and from that import add the data to civi - the advantage of using webform is it lets you import more complex data arrangements (eg relationships, Activities, etc) in a single import