Learn · Chapter 1
Set up a brand-new installation, in the order the app itself recommends.
A new installation of Mich is empty on purpose. These five tutorials take it from there to a point where you can record a real gift and have it counted correctly.
The order matters. Designations, campaigns and appeals come before donors and gifts because a gift recorded without them cannot be cleanly re-attributed later. The setup checklist on the home page follows the same order, and ticks itself off as you go.
Starting from scratch — no donor list yet, or only a handful of supporters. Work through the five tutorials below in order, then add your first donor and record your first gift by hand. Everything you need is here and nothing else is required.
Bringing data with you — your donors and gift history already exist in a spreadsheet, an export from another donor system, or an old database. Do the same setup first, then import rather than re-typing any of it:
Set up before you import, not after. An import matches the funds, campaigns and appeals in your file against the ones you already have. Import into an empty installation and there is nothing to match, so every one of them is created using whatever name the old system used — and an undo will not remove them again. Ten minutes of setup first saves an afternoon of tidying up.
Anything Mich cannot bring in is worth knowing before you start: pledges and pledge schedules are not yet importable, so those are entered by hand.
The first time Mich opens, it asks you to create a master password. That password encrypts your database.
It is never stored anywhere: not in the file, not in a setting, not on any server. If it is lost, the database and every backup of it are unreadable, by anyone. Keep it somewhere safe before you go further.