Working with campaigns

Before we delve into the details, let's first understand what a campaign is in CiviCRM. The terminology can be a little misleading, as the word "campaign" may have a specific connotation in different contexts. For example, you might hear the word and immediately think of a political campaign, seeking to elect a person for office; or you might think of a member outreach campaign, which is seeking to increase membership by a certain percentage over a fixed period of time. Both are good examples of how campaigns can be used in CiviCRM; but we want to be flexible enough to think beyond those more common uses of the term.

In essence, a campaign is a project—defined by goals and executed over a fixed period of time. The goals may be monetary in nature, such as a campaign to raise $20,000 in donations to fund a new program; it may be measured in numbers, such as a campaign to increase membership by 10 percent over the course of 2 months; or it may be measured by the success...