Case Study: Greater Washington Urban League achieves streamlined fundraising and event management with CiviCRM

Leveraging CiviCRM to change lives through social power

The Greater Washington Urban League (GWUL), a long‑standing nonprofit social services and civil rights organization, needed to replace a proprietary fundraising system and an aging CMS while retaining full donor, events and reporting functionality. GWUL chose CiviCRM (integrated with a new Drupal site) to address requirements to accept online and offline donations, consolidate multiple payment channels, manage memberships, volunteers and event registrations, and migrate legacy data — though exporting full contribution histories proved difficult, so the team focused on importing contact records.

CiviCRM was installed and customized into GWUL’s Drupal site, migrating nearly 25,000 sponsors, members and contacts and centralizing management of contacts, pledges, donations, memberships, volunteer coordination and event registration. As a result, GWUL can now accept online donations, record offline contributions, generate receipts and thank‑you letters, consolidate payment reporting, and avoid ongoing proprietary licensing fees — delivering improved reporting, easier maintenance and reduced vendor lock‑in with CiviCRM.

Greater Washington Urban League