Operating on a shoestring

At one time or another most organizations, or departments, will find themselves operating on a very tight "shoestring" budget.

For whatever reason, you might find yourself operating under very tight budgetary constraints, and you just have to find a way to make it through.

Or maybe or maybe that's just a way of life in your organization.

If that’s your situation, or if it becomes your situation, you still have options. Here are some ideas to help get you through:

• Find the online documentation for your systems, and make it your best friend. For CiviCRM that's here: https://docs.civicrm.org/.

• Find the online community for your systems, and start asking questions. For CiviCRM that's https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/, and https://chat.civicrm.org/.

• Make sure you’re documenting what you learn in a place that's accessible to you and your team members. Google Docs is a good option, but it's not the only one.

• See what you can get in the way of coaching or training. When money is tight, time becomes precious, and a little bit of quality training can go a long way towards getting more value out of your own time. CiviTeacher, for example, offers a pretty economical subscription for a large library of video tutorials on CiviCRM.

• Change your human processes to fit the software. Yes, software customization can provide a huge value in time saving, but when you've got more time than money, the winning solution is to let yourself spend a little more time doing it the software's way.

None of these are necessarily fun or sexy.

But they can help you make it through a tight squeeze, until you've got the resources to build something that's actually more efficient and pleasant to use.

And that's a whole lot better than feeling permanently hamstrung by your financial reality.

All the best,
A.