What is CRM?
Fundraising is all about relationships, about the emotional engagement between the donor and the mission. It’s a right brain, holistic profession. Fundraising is all about the detail, about tracking the tasks and following up on donors’ pledges. It’s a left brain, analytical job.
Of course, it’s both, but when people talk about what they do and how they do it, they often talk more about one side than the other. Software is the same way. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is often presented from an analytical perspective, focusing on the prospect pipeline, the follow up activities and the calendar. But it is just as good at tracking the relationships between people, their stories and their history with the organization.
That’s why so many new fundraising packages are based on the CRM approach.
Even just looking at the diagram, you can see what a powerful approach this is. There’s just one problem: the effort involved in maintaining the database.
Motivation
“This feels like busy work, but I know it’s going to be valuable.” My client was entering her activities into CRM and she had just put her finger on a big problem. I routinely reformat the old lists and spreadsheets so they can be imported into the new CRM, but a lot of the critical information such as the relationships between constituents and the history of volunteers is in people’s heads. They have to take the time to sit down and enter it into the system. In the early days it can feel like a tough slog.
It’s one thing to acknowledge that the work needs to be done, quite another to do it. Without a sense of urgency, very little happens. The work doesn’t get done. Excuses come out in status meetings. Sometimes even the people leading the initiative get infected with the I-got-busy-with-other-things bug. Words and good intentions aren’t enough. The team needs to feel it. For them to feel it, YOU have to feel it. You need to radiate drive and enthusiasm.
Management books are full of stories of leaders who asked the impossible and got it. Here are a few strategies as they relate to computer systems.
Connect the work to the mission
People will work harder if they know their work is important, that they are making a substantive contribution to a higher cause. If they view the project as more administration or, worse yet, paper pushing bureaucracy, don’t expect them to embrace the additional work willingly.
Bite size pieces
Other deadlines make good excuses. There is always a looming quarter end, year end, budget or funding report due. These are real deadlines, but they don’t have to take up the whole calendar. Focus the team on the next week. If they are busy, ask for an hour a day. It’s surprising how much can be accomplished in a focused hour of work!
Really? I mean really?
Take a hard look at the project from the team’s point of view. Justify the work you are asking them to do. Can any of it be automated or done another way? Is all of the data entry really necessary? Could any of the work be delayed or spread over a longer period of time?
Follow up weekly
Knowing that there’s a meeting first thing Monday morning where you will be asked about the progress you made last week is a powerful motivator to accomplish something. The meetings don’t have to point the finger of blame, but a useful question to ask everyone is, “What’s getting in your way?”
Immediate success
There’s nothing like success to breed success. Look for ways for the CRM project to be useful now, rather than at some future date when it is fully implement. Is there a campaign you can focus on without the whole system, or can people manage their activities starting right away?
The commitment to implementing CRM software for fundraising is a big one, but well worth the effort. If you have experiences with or questions about CRM, please add them to the comments below.
Bill Kennedy, CPA, CA of Energized Accounting is a professional accountant working primarily with charities, providing accounting services and financial / fundraising software.
