Crescent Star Suite Print E-mail

Congratulations on discovering the next generation of software, called "Crescent Star Suite." Crescent Star Suite is designed to make life easier for anyone and everyone connected to your masjid ... staff, members, volunteers, the board of directors ... EVERYONE!

Crescent Star Suite is designed to help everyone communicate, collaborate, connect and share information.  At the same time it eliminates manual work and paper shuffling. Crescent Star Suite also eliminates the costs related to printing, mailing information, buying software licenses, and maintaining computer equipment.

What does next generation software mean?

  • There is no licensing cost for the software. No initial license fees or maintenance fees for software.
  • All software is either "free open source" or free for nonprofit organizations.
  • Built for the Internet age. Online capabilities are not an afterthought or expensive add on, but rather the core of the entire system.
  • Seamless integration with other web-based services such an FaceBook, MySpace, GMail, Google Maps, AOL, USPS Address Standardization, etc.
  • It is browser based, so each user only needs a computer or netbook connected to the Internet. There is no need to install any custom software on the workstation.
  • Is built on a common software platform called LAMP (  Linux + Apache web server + MySQL database + PHP ), so your organization
    avoids being “locked in” to our competitor's proprietary software.
  • There is absolutely no server hardware needed. You'll NEVER about equipment failures, backups, aging computers, and other headaches associated with owning computer servers.
  • Location independence: Users can access use the system with ease from the office, from home, or an Internet cafe abroad. It is truly browser based. ( Unlike other solutions of leaving a computer running at the office, and requires the use of a third-party tool like LogMeIn.com or PCAnywhere. )
  • You decide how to run it:  Crescent Star Suite can be run on a standard Internet hosting account or run on equipment in the office - your choice.    Plus you select the hosting account. You are not locked in to hosting with one and only one company.  No need to host your regular website in one place, the membership website in another, and the full membership software in a third place. Why pay for 3 environments?  Are 2 Internet hosting accounts plus a server in the office really necessary?
  • You pick the payment processor. Seven are currently supported.
  • The only cost is the time spent setting up and customizing the suite to fit your specific requirements, plus an Internet hosting account (which you may already have). Financial transactions typically incur a 3% fee from a payment processor.
  • Proven, robust, scalable technology. We utilize and build upon CiviCRM, a leading software product for nonprofit organizations. There are already over 4,000 organizations using CiviCRM. It was ranked #1 in user satisfaction by The Nonprofit Technology Network survey.
  • We utilize and build upon the leading Content Management Systems available, Joomla and Drupal.  They are ranked #1 and #2 by Packt Publishing

If you do not require everything, choose just the features you need.

Features available:

  • A professional looking website which can be updated by any authorized person with a web browser. No special software or expertise needed. If someone can send an email, they can update the shul's website and add new pages. 
    • Can include Arabic and English text. Many other languages can be used such as Farsi, Malay, Turkish, etc.
    • Includes a built-in search engine.
    • Restrict some parts of the website to registered/authorized people.
    • bulletin/discussion boards
    • photo albums
    • polls
  • Online event/school registration and participant tracking. This includes unlimited paid and free events.
  • Online donations/campaigns and donor management. This includes donations, in honor of/memory of donations, pledges/recurring payments. There is no need to have the staff manually process payments. Unlimited donation pages for various campaigns.
  • Personal Campaign Pages: members can create personalized donation pages that they can promote to their friends and family. Such as a personal donation page in honor of their wedding anniversary that routes all donations to an existing masjid campaign. Great for viral fundraising where people can promote "their" donation page on FaceBook or Twitter.
  • Online membership sign up and payment of membership dues.  Unlimited membership types.
  • Constituent Relationship Management(CRM) system. Track information about all the people connected to the masjid: households, household members, students, membership details, volunteers, employees and the relationships between everyone. 
    • Store Arabic ( or other languages) as well as English names, wedding anniversaries and any other custom information about people. Information can be in Arabic or transliteration.
    • Record activities such as condolence visits, hospital visits, or any other activity related to people.
    • Track cemetery information, such as plot location.
    • Assign honors to bestow during religious services.
    • Track who is sponsoring holiday meals. Allow people to sponser the meals from the website.
    • Run queries and reports based on any combination of criteria.
    • Run "proximity" searches, such as who is nearby to someone else.
    • The CRM is fully integrated with event and donation information. This makes it easy to see the big picture. For example: Does someone who attends many events also donate more and volunteer more for the masjid.
    • The CRM includes import and export tools. Import information from an existing system or spreadsheets. Or export information into an accounting package such as Intuit QuickBooks ©.
    • Members can update their own address, phone, email, and other details themselves. There is no need to burden the staff with this chore.
    • Members can sign on using their user name and password from Gmail, AOL, MySpace or many other websites. No need to have members remember yet another user name and password.
    • Interactive Google Maps are built in. Map any contact or event.
    • Online searchable membership directory.
    • Emails can be sent to any subset of people in the system.
    • Mailing labels can be generated for any subset of people in the system
    • Addresses validated by USPS Address Standardization system ( U.S. only)
  • See our {For Schools ' products} for managing the religious school and offering web-based courses.
  • Shared calendars. Let all staff members see the calendars for other people ( as authorized), rooms in the building, vacation schedules, etc.  This can be used to easily invite people to a meeting, automatically taking into account their busy times.
  • Schedule tutoring times between the kids and the imam.
  • Reserve equipment needed for a meeting.
  • Personal calendars. People can keep track of personal appointments, meetings and other events. It can display Islamic and government holidays; create reminders for events and appointments.
  • Shared documents. Work on on spreadsheets and word processing documents with other people within or outside the office.  No more headaches with people emailing large attachments around asking for input.  Then someone accidentally updates an out-of-date version of the document! Or someone else has to manually merge various versions back together for the "final" version.
  • Personal documents. Work on on spreadsheets and word processing documents that only you can change. Update the documents from any computer with Internet access. No more worries about a document that was saved at the office, but not at home or vice versa.  No more headaches about having different versions of Microsoft Office on different computers.
  • Email accounts/mailboxes and address books that can be accessed from any computer with Internet access. All email addresses would end in the matching  address to the website. For example: the masjid website is www.mymasjid.org, the email addresses would look like This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
    • Can import messages and address books from other email systems.
    • Powerful search tool for locating specific messages.
    • Spam protection is built in.
    • Attachments are automatically checked for viruses.

See us listed at:


CiviCRM.org


Highland Park Chamber of Commerce