Get more out of any CRM

Most nonprofits use some kind of CRM — even it if it just a spreadsheet. Don’t be embarrassed if you’re using a spreadsheet. Until you reach a certain size, it can actually be the most efficient choice!

This document grew out of a presentation I gave called “New Year’s Resolutions for your CRM.” It walks you through 5 steps to getting more out of whatever CRM you’re using, including a spreadsheet.

The idea that there’s a magic wand out there to fix all your CRM woes is a very attractive one. I get it. I want a magic wand, too. Unfortunately, there isn’t one. No matter what the CRM salesperson tells you, having good data that works for you requires work. By you. There’s no way around this. If you’re not willing to put some time in to get more out of your CRM, don’t bother reading the rest of this, and definitely don’t spend any money trying to improve your CRM.

The five steps are designed to get you to think about the important issues with your data and your CRM. These issues are slightly different for each organization, and so nobody can tell you what you’ll discover.

But before we get to the five steps, let’s talk a little bit about expectations.

You and your CRM are probably from different planets

Think about what makes you good at your job. Maybe your job is to raise money, maybe it is to manage programs, maybe it is to lead the whole organization. Whatever it is, think about what makes you good at that job.

Are those things compatible with sitting at a computer all day and carefully entering or analyzing data? If they are, you don’t need this document. For the rest of you, if you loved to sit in front of a computer and carefully enter and analyze data…do you think you’d still be good at your job? Probably not. What that means is that you’ve got to understand that you and your CRM are from different planets. You can still get along with your CRM, but don’t expect it to be like you — it was designed for a different job.

If you’re using any kind of CRM and you’re not happy with it, it is really important to figure out why.

If your clothes don’t fit, spending a couple of thousand dollars at the Container Store to organize your closet isn’t going to fix your problem. If you don’t have any potential donors to call, spending a couple of thousand dollars on a CRM isn’t going to solve your problem.

A CRM is like great closet organization. If you put things away properly and have nice clothes to begin with, you’re set. If you leave everything in the laundry hamper and hate your clothes, all the closet organization in the world isn’t going to help.

So if you’re unhappy with your CRM, you need to understand what the problem is. One big distinction is simple: does your CRM contain useful data? If not, the problem might be that you’re not putting data in correctly or in a timely way. Maybe that’s your fault, maybe it is someone else’s fault, but it isn’t the CRM’s fault. If that’s the issue, you need to figure out how to solve that.

If your CRM does contain useful data, but you can’t get to easily or at all, then it is time to look at the CRM itself. You may need a new CRM, or you may just need to change something about your existing CRM.

Now that we’ve talked about expectations, the five steps below can help you figure out how to get more out of your CRM.

Do them. In order. Write down the results.

#1: Make a list of the categories of people you track.

Here’s a list that might apply to you:

• Individual donors you don’t interact with often
• High-touch individual donors
• Corporations
• Foundations
• Other non-profits

This seems like a pretty easy thing to do, but I’d encourage you to put post it notes up on your wall or something and give yourself a few weeks to think about it. Ask your colleagues to add to it. I’ve never seen anyone make a complete list of these on the first try. Most people make a list, swear to me it is complete, and then change every single item on the list within a few months. If you write a first draft and return to it regularly, you’ll think of more.

#2 Choose two examples for each category.

For each category you wrote down in step #1, choose two example records. The first example should be a record (person, corporation, etc) who is representative of the category. The second example should be a record that is an outlier, or weird in some way, like that donor who says you may only call her in February, or the donor who has given with his first wife, with his second wife, and by himself, or the couple who say they need separate copies of your magazine even though they live at the same address and give together. This is probably the easiest of the five steps! If you can’t think of an outlier, you don’t have one. The outliers are the people who occupy a lot of space in your head, because they’re hard to deal with.

#3 Make those examples perfect in your CRM.

You have identified a small group of records in your CRM — about half representative and half outliers. Now you need to go through every single one of these examples and make them perfect. This sounds hard, but we’re talking about a really small group here. Do it. Enter all the information you’d like the organization to have available about them if you run off to Tahiti tomorrow. Make sure everything is accurate and formatted correctly. This tends to be a very instructive exercise. As you do this, you may realize a couple of things, like:

• My CRM doesn’t have any place for me to put the information I want to store! If that’s the case, talk to whoever supports the CRM you’re using. If they truly don’t have a way for you to store information that is important to you for the representative records, you probably need a new CRM. If the problem is only with the outliers, put it in the description field and move on with your life. Building your CRM around the outliers is a mistake.
• Putting this information in takes forever! If this is the case, you may need some coaching on how to enter data more quickly. Lots of CRMs have shortcuts and not-so-obvious features that can make a big difference. If you’re entering data from somewhere other than your head, word documents, or paper, there may be a way to automate it, too. For example, if you’re entering credit card donations by hand into your CRM, you’re wasting your time. There are lots of CRMs that have integrated payment processors so that the data goes in automatically.
• I hate doing this! Remember what makes you good at your job? If you loved this, you’d probably be terrible at your job. There’s a reason this step only includes making a small number of records perfect. If you’re the person who depends on this data and uses it, you’re the best person to do this step. That doesn’t mean you have to do it for all the other records.

#4 Have the talk.

Invite everyone who should be using the CRM, as well as one smart, outspoken person willing to play devil’s advocate to a meeting. It is really useful to have an outsider there to be skeptical and encourage people to look at things another way. If you are the whole team, this person is particularly important.

At the meeting, you need to discuss those now-perfect records. Write all these things down. When you’re advocating for whatever changes you decide make sense, this information will be your best friend.

• First, tell the attendees what you had to change about these records
• Next, have everyone imagine that all the records in your CRM are perfect. This shouldn’t be nearly as hard since you’ve got some examples to look at! If all the records were perfect, how would your organization be different? Would you be able to raise more money and do more good? How, specifically? Try to avoid magical thinking here. Having perfect records doesn’t throw galas for you or even send out emails for you, but it does make those things easier.
• Now that you’ve got an idea of how things would be different if all your records were perfect, you need to talk about who could do the work to update all the records. Is this something that can be delegated, or does the information all live in someone’s head? (If you’re the person with all the information in her head, you’re probably wishing you hadn’t started this whole process.) How long would it take to make all the records perfect? Write all this stuff down, but recognize that you’re not obliged to do this work. Sometimes writing all this down just makes it clear that the effort wouldn’t be worth it!
• Finally, if you got all the records to be perfect, how would you keep them up to date? Again, no magical thinking.

Different organizations learn very different things in a meeting like this. You might learn that you actually have almost no good data. If that’s the case, focus on getting some, rather than precisely how you’ll store it. You might learn that you’ve got great data (you didn’t have to do much to make the records perfect) but you can’t seem to use it well. In that case, the CRM itself is the culprit, and you either need help to use it better, or you need a new CRM. You might learn that 90% of your records aren’t valuable. Stop spending time on them. You don’t have to delete them, but make it easy to filter them out and certainly don’t pay anyone to update them. You might learn that 10% of your records are extremely valuable, and it absolutely makes sense to spend the time and money to make those perfect and keep them that way. With the information you’ve gathered, you should be able to make a plan that takes into consideration what work is worth your time and money, and what work isn’t.

#5 Start making a list of reports you need from your CRM.

This sounds like a sharp turn from the previous steps, but it isn’t, really. Now that you’ve talked through what you could use good data for, you should have an idea of how you need to pull information out of your CRM to use it. Start putting those post it notes on the wall, one for each list or report you need to be able to use. If you can’t create these reports yourself, it is time to call support. If the CRM you’re using can’t create reports like that, then maybe you do need a new CRM.

If you complete all five of these steps, you’ll be years ahead of most organizations that are struggling with data. You’ll be prepared to take some action on your own. You’ll be able to have constructive conversations with your current CRM vendor (assuming they’re able to hold up their end of the conversation) and if you need to, you’ll be ready to go shopping for a new CRM. Good luck!