Do you own your CRM data?

A well known political fundraising platform has been in the news recently, as they seem to be suddenly on the edge of closing their doors permanently.

This raises the question: What happens to the organizations who are using that platform?

Will they be able to export their data reliably, in order to use it elsewhere?

It’s a good question to ask:

If you needed to move away from your current CRM provider, or switch to a different CRM system entirely — for any reason at all — would you be able to take your data with you?

If you're using CiviCRM for your fundraising and outreach efforts, the answer is almost certainly: Yes.

I've heard from several CiviCRM service providers on this topic in the past couple of days.

Without exception, all of them make a point of ensuring that their clients can get a full and complete copy of their CRM data at any time, for any reason.

(And if you're hosting your system yourself, you don't even have to ask for the data.)

To be fair, there would be some work involved:

• You might need a specialist to help you, if you want to move that data into a different CRM system.

• Even if you stayed with CiviCRM, you’d still probably need some technical help to get that set up with a new provider.

But it would be possible.

And because CiviCRM is a widely used open-source system, you would have a good selection of experience specialists who could help you where needed.

As with anything, ownership comes with some overhead. After all, it's up to the owner to make sure everything works as well as it should.

But it should give you some comfort to know that you have options.

And that you're not trusting the future of your CRM data to a company that could simply close its doors — on you.

All the best,
A.