If there’s one question that comes up repeatedly in various nonprofit Facebook groups and listservs, it’s the database question. Selecting your organization’s CRM is one of the most important decisions your organization will make. Yet far too many nonprofits give more thought to the color of their gala invitation than they do selecting the system that will provide their institutional memory. It’s definitely not a decision to crowdsource to a Facebook group or a listserv, or, god forbid, decide based solely on pricing. It’s not something to take lightly.
The following guest post by my friend, Andrea John-Smith of Scout Finch Consulting, evolved from a conversation about this very topic that recently happened in a Facebook group. If your organization is in the process of selecting your CRM, I urge you to read Andrea’s article, as well as Robert Weiner’s article, Finding the perfect fundraising database in an imperfect world (also found in my book, Simple Development Systems). And if you’re considering Salesforce because it’s *free*, please think again. I implore you to forfeit the pursuit of free. Take on your database selection with the seriousness and respect that it deserves. Your donors are counting on you.
Donor records are your organization’s relationship institutional memory. When it comes to data systems, I run across two kinds of situations a lot.
One is the established community institution that has invested in an expensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool — like Raiser’s Edge — but never bothered to maintain its donor records, let alone taken advantage of all the rich features they’re paying gobs of money for.
The other is the scrappy younger organization that picked the cheapest CRM they could get. Cost was really the only factor. Not much other due diligence went into the decision.
They bought that house without checking out the neighborhood. Once the furniture is moved in, the cable is hooked up, and the flowers are planted, it’s hard when you find out your next door neighbor rehearses his heavy metal band every Friday night until midnight in the garage outside your bedroom window. You make do with workarounds — earplugs! Sleeping at your mom’s. The prospect of moving is too daunting and costly. Nightmare!
Picking the wrong CRM is just like buying that wrong house. The cost of staff time, migration, a new system, and the inevitable learning curve will keep you locked into the wrong tool and hobble your ability to fund your mission. Sometimes for years and years.
Here are some key things to think about when shopping for a CRM:
- How many constituents do we engage and how many will we be engaging in the next five years?
- What are our fundraising and stewardship tactics? (membership, direct mail, major giving, events, peer to peer, the works?)
- What other systems does our CRM need to integrate with? (Quickbooks, Web Site)
- What kind of dashboarding, reporting, analytics do we need to be nimble at tracking activity, and reporting/analyzing results?
- What kind of training, and initial and ongoing tech support will we need?
- What kind of staff time will migration take, and how long is a typical migration process?
- Is the system available on line 24 hours/day?
“What CRM do you use?” People ask this question on nonprofit social media all the time. They hear back, “We use Salesforce. It’s free!” Many organizations have jumped on that Salesforce bandwagon. And why not! Right?
Salesforce was created during the dot.com boom as a project management and CRM tool for corporate sales. In the mid-2000s Oracle began offering it to nonprofits at no charge. Just one catch. It was never designed for nonprofit fundraising. As an open source, totally customizable data management tool, it provides a shell from which organizations are intended to construct or bolt on desired components or, in many cases, tailor components to suit their particular activities — like event registration.
Quite often, nonprofit organizations are surprised and overwhelmed by the demands of this customization process. Necessitated by this overwhelm, a Salesforce consultancy industry thrives. Using Salesforce means having to rely and budget on an ongoing basis for a Salesforce consultant who will help you customize Salesforce initially, and on an ongoing basis as your business needs shift. So free, as it turns out, isn’t actually “free.”
One Salesforce migration I was part of as an interim leader took a year to fully complete. Not long after the staff person leading the migration was hired away by the Salesforce consulting firm as a Salesforce consultant! We didn’t know what we had signed up for. The staff time, the manual work arounds during “construction,” the struggle to get the various systems talking with one another — super stressful — like living next door to a metal head.
So drive around the neighborhood! Even if a very smart Board Member from the tech industry insists he knows better than you, even if you read it on social media, take no one’s word as gospel. Your CRM is a strategic investment and a crucial management decision. Do your homework.
There are many outstanding CRM tools on the market designed specifically for nonprofit fundraising and stewardship, including tools that pair seamlessly with a range of online engagement applications. You can have it all, go a la carte, or skip all the bells and whistles and keep it pared down. Your needs drive the choice.
In spite of the ugly big data culture of commerce, Russian spying, manipulation and disrespect for people’s privacy, our sector is people centered. As such, we must view data collection in the context of absolute respect for our constituents. This means fostering this culture throughout the organization around data collection and use. Keep your data clean and up to date, store meaningful and accurate details that inform the way you steward your donor, and look at results in ways that allow you to tailor your approaches without having to spend tons of time combing through excel spreadsheets.
A word about analytics and wealth screening: Until your data is in good shape and deep enough, save your money. Junk in. Junk out. Prioritize getting your data in shape. Before you go crazy with complicated analytics, start with simple reports that you can pull yourself about recency, consistency, frequency, and level of giving. This simple analysis will point you to people you are probably neglecting who are jumping up and down screaming “I love your mission.” Don’t wait a year. Start now. Ask these people how they fell in love. This is what good data can make possible. Real, honest to goodness connections that matter and inspire.
When you do decide to move on to your next exciting fundraising position, you will have left behind a strong institutional memory that’s not locked in your head. Your organization will be in the enviable position of building on the foundation you laid. Your mission will be in good hands.
What’s your vision, what’s your plan? Andrea’s mission is to evoke the moral imagination of nonprofit leaders (and occasionally the person sitting next to her on light rail) to create the world we all want. A strategic planning geek, she guides organizations through customized planning processes, resource development interventions, mergers, and leadership transitions.
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Copyright November 2017
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