CRM, and your mission
How important is your CRM in pursuing your mission?
What if you had no formal CRM at all?
Two examples:
Last week I attended a conference of choral directors, which hosted 1,000 singers plus a couple thousand more in staff, chaperones, and other guests.
From all appearances, they have no centralized CRM system for this event. Virtually all the data was managed with Google forms, Google sheets, and PayPal payments.
This morning I met with the director of a local organization let's preparing for their annual fundraising gala, at which they regularly raise funds for a large portion hope their annual budget.
Their entire list of past contributors is managed in a single Excel spreadsheet.
Both of these organizations seem quite content with their methods.
Could they achieve even more progress in their mission with a more centralized CRM system?
Probably.
But the time, effort, and expense of switching their system would not be trivial. I'm certainly not going to walk in and recommend it out of hand.
Here's the thing:
Building a great CRM is not your mission. Improving your CRM is not your mission.
Any change you make to your systems requires a nontrivial investment of effort and expense.
Before you dive in on such an investment, make sure you can point to the specific mission-related outcomes that you hope it will get you.
The more specific you can get in naming those outcomes, the less likely you are to be building something that you don't really need after all.
All the best,
A.