When a CRM is not the best tool

It can be tempting to try and make CiviCRM do things it wasn't really built for, or more importantly, to do things that don't fit the way you'll use your CRM.

For example:

• Anymous surveys: You're planning to send a link for this survey to a certain segment of your contacts, but you have good reasons to make it anonymous (maybe you believe that makes it easier to answer sensitive personal questions).

The responses are anonymous, so where would you even store them in a CRM?

The better tool for this is probably a plugin in your CMS (Drupal, WordPress), or an online form service like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.

• Events that don't require fees or registration: You're running a series of "come and go" events in your community — maybe a monthly block party, or frequent bingo games, kareoke night, trivia bowl, etc.

Since these events don't require registration or fees, and you aren't planning to track attendance beyond total numbers, there’s not much for a CRM to do here. The better tool would be a simple static page on your website, or even a more full-featured "event calendar" plugin in your CMS.

Of course if you want, you can use your CRM to create a form where event attendees can voluntarily check-in on their phones, or where survey respondents can sign up to get the survey results.

Those would be smart uses of your CRM, to increase engagement with these folks.

And that — increasing engagement — is where you should be using your CRM.

It's just not for everything.

All the best,
A.

“Not my job”?

Who's responsible for making sure your systems are running well and supporting your mission?

Simple: Anybody who has a say in the matter, and who cares about your mission.

But you can’t assume that everyone on your team will understand that.

The question is, how does it help them?

This is a perennial problem in commercial CRM implementations, and associations and nonprofit teams are no less immune.

Harvard Business review has a nice little article that touches on getting buy-in from all departments to avoid the outright failure of a CRM project. Sure, that's in a commercial context, but the lessons are the same for your organization:

• Data quality suffers when staff members routinely fail to enter good data.

• Getting everyone on board with data quality is a lot easier when they believe it will help their own work.

• If the CRM is hard to use or confusing, staff members will be subtly but powerfully incentivized to just work around it.

Here’s the thing:

No matter how great you think your system is, if your department directors and staff — and even your board — can't see how it fits their priorities, it won't be long before you’re back in the fragmented world of spreadsheets, Google docs, and address books.

Building a successful system requires helping everyone to see the value of that system for their own work.

What steps can you take to help them see that value, and to make it easy for them?

All the best,
A.

Learnable skill sets

Managing your CRM, whether it's CiviCRM or anything else, requires a substantial set of skills.

It's unavoidable. It's the same as operating a sailboat, a bulldozer, or a race car. If you want to experience the satisfaction of using it well, then you and your team will always be learning how to do it better.

You can decide how to divvy up the work. You don't personally have to be great at everything. But you do have to make sure you've got the skills on your team.

And here's the thing:

It is a learnable set of skills.

Get a little help if you need to. Teach yourself over time, hire someone to show you the ropes, or find a coach who can guide you through the difficult parts.

It can be intimidating to ensure that your team is mastering the tools you’ve selected — but it’s always worth the effort.

All the best,
A.

You do not need features

When you're on foot in midtown Manhattan, and you need to get uptown quickly, what you need is not a taxi.

Sure, a taxi might help. But the taxi is not what you need.

What you need is to get uptown quickly. There are any number of ways to do that.

And let's be honest, is getting uptown even the thing you really need?

Are you severely injured and need to get to the hospital? An ambulance might be better than a taxi.

Do you just need to deliver an important package? A bicycle messenger could get it there without you.

Here's the thing:

When you're working everyday with a powerful CRM system — especially one as open-ended and customizable as CiviCRM — it can be very easy to get caught up in ideas about what it can or cannot do, or could be made to do.

But that, in itself, is not the thing you need.

Focusing on features without carefully identifying the measurable business outcomes is a dangerous distraction.

Identify the need first. Identify a goal — hopefully one with a number and a unit. Then, and only then, are you in a position to decide how best to reach that goal.

All the best,
A.

Selling your vision

Ever feel like you're all alone in pushing for better systems and data for your organization?

Your board, your ED, your staff, they've all got a dozen other things on their mind. And there's a good chance they don't understand the value of the improvements that you'd like to see.

Sure, we're all in this together. We're all here to serve the mission of the organization.

But one of the unavoidable facts of operating in a team is the ongoing tension between doing well in one's own area and supporting the work of other team members.

When you have a vision to improve your organization's efficiency and effectiveness through better use of your constituent data, you're probably going to have some convincing to do.

Here’s the thing:

To be a winner in your position, it's not enough to get buy-in from your donors and members. You have to get it from your own team too.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could point to a track record of measurable business wins? Or to important early indicators of bigger accomplishments to come? Or even to a clear plan that offers a well-founded expectation of specific and measurable results?

Just like your donors and members, internal stakeholders have their own ambitions and anxieties.

What steps can you take to promote your vision in a way that appeals to their concerns?

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM is free, but so what?

Hopefully you didn't choose CiviCRM just because of its zero-dollar license fees.

I'll admit that's a vote in its favor, but by itself it's almost certainly not enough to make it the right choice.

Where CiviCRM really shines is in two aspects:

First, it's designed from the ground up for associations and community-driven organizations. The more well-known business CRMs, designed as they are for sales pipelining, do not really fit the business needs associated with memberships, contributions, events, and advocacy.

Second, as an open source project it is infinitely customizable. With skillful configuration and the addition of any of a vast number of community-provided extensions — which also usually come with no license fees — you can make it do what you really need it to do. Assuming you make a practice of goal-driven and value-based planning, this customization can be a huge win for your organization.

But the fact that it's “free software” can be a bit of a distraction.

Here’s the thing:

Yes, resources are always limited, and what you get out of the box with CiviCRM, for free, is a huge leg up. But as an organization, you're not in business to save money. You have a mission in the world, and your business is to further that mission.

If you just need something free, or cheap, there are plenty of other options out there that are easier, quicker to spin up, and cheaper to own.

If, on the other hand, you're interested in choosing the CRM that works best for you, and you’re ready to budget appropriately to achieve specific business goals, this open-source solution can be a real winning long-term play.

Don't get caught up on the free price. Instead, ask yourself how you're going to use this to win in your mission.

All the best,
A.

What keeps them up at night?

Do you know what your members’ biggest concerns are? Your donors? Your allies and your volunteer advocates?

If they're giving something to your organization, what are they hoping to achieve by that? When they’re reminded of issues related to your mission, what are the worries and frustrations that really trouble them?

Hopefully you've asked them, but if you haven't, what's stopping you?

And if you do know, how are you using that to inform your outreach, your programming, your membership offerings?

Here’s the thing:

Knowing your supporters, and your potential supporters, is a critical element of your capacity for growth.

Don't forget to keep asking, keep listening, and keep responding.

All the best,
A.

KPIs for success

So if you’re really after “success” and not just “systems that work well,” how do you define success?

And how do you identify steps that will take you in that direction?

And even better — how can you celebrate your successes in ways that support your mission?

ASAE dropped a great article on Tuesday covering the value of tracking and reporting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for volunteer programs.

Some key takeaways:

“I framed the discussion around our goals, the metrics we’ll use to measure impact, and the outputs and outcomes,” she said.

Identifying goals? Measuring outputs and outcomes? Winning!

Before ASID green lights any special initiative, the volunteer group must answer the “what” and the “what for”—in other words, what the project is and its purpose. … “The volunteer group would need to map it back to our core values.”

Planning and prioritizing based on mission impact? More winning!

“This framework removed a lot of ambiguity,” she said. “It was easy for us to say, ‘Here’s the initiative, here’s how it aligns with our core values, this is how the group will be able to accomplish these goals by doing x, y, and z.’”

Fostering engagement and buy-in by sharing the expected measurable outcomes? Most winning.

Take a look at the article here, and consider the possibilities for your own mission.

All the best,
A.

“Happy with it” vs. winning

I assume you're using CiviCRM. Are you happy with it?

That's good. But it's not enough.

The real question is: Are you winning with it?

Are you nailing your membership goals? Are you expanding your capacity to fulfill your mission as an organization? Can you point to measurable wins?

If you are, hit reply and let me hear about it.

If you're not, what's stopping you? Let's get that out of the way and move you into more than just “being happy” with an “okay” system.

- A.

What’s next?

You know that win you just got?

What was it — you rolled out a new feature? Hit a membership goal? On-boarded some new team members?

Fantastic. Congratulations.

Now, what's next?

I'll tell you what's next. Turn it up. Foot on the gas. Keep building.

You’ve got a mission to fulfill, and you're not there yet.

I want you to take half a second to note your victory, note what you did right, and then get in there and put it on blast for your next goal.

Write me back. Let me hear what your win was, and let me hear what you're getting after next.

Stay on it,
A.

Division of labor

This morning my wife's car wouldn't start. So she called me. And I fixed it.

In my house anything under the hood pretty much falls to me.

Is that the way it should be? Should all women assume that car maintenance and repair is an area for some man in their life?

Of course not.

There is no should here. In my family we've simply discovered over the years that some of us are more or less interested in taking on certain types of tasks.

Now that we have a common understanding for how we’ll handle most types of work, we're all pretty comfortable with how we've divided it up.

So what about managing your business software systems? Who should be responsible for what types of tasks?

The short answer is: There is no should here.

You get to decide what tasks you'd like to take on yourself, or allot to your team, or assign to an outside specialist. You'll decide this based on your assessment of people’s interests, stress levels, skill sets and aptitudes, and your own cost/benefit calculations.

Here's the thing:

There is no right or wrong in dividing this work.

There are common patterns that you might draw from — such as the notion that the CEO should not be caught up in answering every user support request, or that high-value early-stage planning and architecture is a good candidate for pulling in an outside expert.

But you don't have to follow those patterns. You can take on any tasks yourself if you wish, or assign them to whomever you decide.

Don't let anybody convince you that you have to do it one way or another.

Just be sure you're making a reasonable assessment of concerns such as cost-to-benefit, efficiency, and most importantly: measurable business outcomes.

All the best,
A.

Your CRM is for growth

CiviCRM will let you collect donations. But that's not really what it's for.

It will help you manage memberships. And register event participants. And manage your mailing lists. And generate reports. And more.

But those things are not the reason you have a CRM.

Your CRM is there to help you grow.

To grow your income. And your membership. And your advocacy base.

So that you can grow your mission and your impact in the world.

What growth opportunities are there for you? What are your goals for growth? How can you leverage your CRM to make that happen?

All the best,
A.

Vitamin N

Sometimes the best response to a new idea is simply to say “no.”

Or at the very least, "slow down a minute."

There's no shortage of great ideas in the world. You'll hear them from your board, from your members, from staff at other organizations.

But a good idea is not enough. It needs a plan. It needs a goal. It needs a realistic assessment of benefits and costs.

Of course it can be hard to identify the ideas that are worth pursuing. Here are three questions you can ask yourself to make it a little easier:

1. What are the measurable business outcomes w'e’ll get if we implement this idea?

2. What's it going to take to make this happen?

3. Is there another way we could get the same benefit — easier, faster, or cheaper?

Only you can answer the first one. If you're not sure how to answer the other two, it's okay to pull in a more experienced player for expert advice.

Here's the thing:

If you care about your nutrition, you probably want to be sure you're getting the right vitamins. This one is what my mother used to call “Vitamin N.” Take it often.

And when a careful assessment leads you to a “yes,” you can move forward with purpose.

You don't have to say no to everything, but you should really make sure that when you're saying yes, it’s for something you really need.

All the best,
A.

Boeing 737

In yesterday’s email I offered you a Boeing 737 for $500,000. (No not really. Do I look like I have a Boeing 737? But I could offer you 17 free kittens!)

So why wouldn’t you buy that airplane? Those planes typically sell for something between $89 million and $135 million. At half-a-million dollars, that’s a steal!

But of course there are plenty of reasons not to take that deal:

• You don’t need an airliner, and couldn’t use it — couldn’t even afford to use it — if you had one.

• Oh, you could resell it for a profit? How many buyers do you know off-hand?

• Meanwhile, that’s $500K out of your pocket that you could be putting to very good use.

Here’s the thing:

Just because something is a good deal in theory, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you, right now.

Whether that’s a 737, or a full-blown Salesforce implementation at “non-profit rates,” or an out-of-the-box open-source CRM with zero license fees — you still have to be able to use it, for identified business needs, with identifiable value.

All the best,
A.

Perfect and affordable? Wrong questions.

Ever bought a house or a car? Most people quietly ask themselves two questions about such a purchase: Is it perfect for me? And, can I afford it?

But in business it's different. In business those are not the questions. The main question in business is this: Will the business value of this purchase significantly exceed its costs? (And there are several costs to consider.)

If the expected value isn't right, no price can be low enough — even if it's free.

I mean, can I give you 17 free kittens? I can drop them off at your house tomorrow.

Can I give you a burned-out car with no doors and no engine? You've got plenty of space in your front yard.

How about a dull razor for a dollar?

Boeing 737 for $500,000? Come on, that's a heck of a deal.

Here’s the thing:

CiviCRM, like WordPress, Drupal, and other open-source tools, is extremely affordable if you just count the license fees — there are none! Even when you add on the implementation costs, you can still come out way ahead.

And if you’ve identified the business goals that this helps you achieve, and you know the value of those achievements, you can pretty easily tell whether it’s worth the investment. (Hint: With careful planning, it usually is.)

All the best,
A.

Buyer’s remorse

Have you ever bought a pair of shoes or a shirt (or a CRM solution) that you didn't really love?

Most people have. I have.

Buyer's remorse, buyers regret, whatever you call it, it's a real thing.

When it happens, we don't usually blame the seller. The seller was just selling what they're selling, and we decided to make the purchase.

Usually we don't even blame the manufacturer. This thing we bought is probably good for what it is. There are probably people who would love it.

It’s only later that we realize it wasn't really what we wanted.

So what's the difference between a purchase we love and one that we regret?

Usually it comes down to one simple question:

After you've owned it for a while, can you point to specific, valuable benefits that you're getting from it? Does this shirt make me look great? Do these shoes feel comfortable all day, and do they fit wonderfully with the rest of my wardrobe? Am I actually using this CRM to grow my membership faster than ever?

Here's the thing:

If you want to avoid that feeling of buyer’s remorse, it helps a lot to know, before you decide on the purchase, what those specific, valuable benefits are that you're trying to get.

Name them. Put a value on them. And then think about whether you have reason to believe that this purchase is going to help you achieve them.

And in a business setting, if you can't put a value on the specific benefits you're trying to achieve, should you be making any purchase at all?

All the best,
A.

How big could you get?

In the entire world, right now, there are a finite number of people who could be members of your organization.

If your mission is to serve professionals in a certain industry in your state, then that number is the total number of professionals in that industry in your state.

If you wanted to diversify, you could probably include retired professionals who want to support the industry, and students who are studying to break into that industry.

Either way, it's a finite number.

Do you know what that number is? If you don't, you can probably find out, or make a fairly reasonable working estimate.

Now ask yourself: How many of those people are members of your organization right now? 1 percent? 30 percent?

Now ask: What is your goal to increase that number in the coming year? What could your organization achieve by adding 10% or more to your membership rolls year-over-year?

And what would it take to get there?

Here's the thing:

Your members are out there. It's a known quantity.

You may have good reasons for not wanting to grow bigger. But "not having a goal" should not be one of those reasons.

What's your goal for membership growth?

All the best,
A.

“We're not interested in ROI”

As if on cue, right after I sent yesterday’s email to this list, I met with an association director who literally told me, "We're not a business, so we're not really thinking about ROI here."

If you ever catch that thought flowing through your head, please stop a moment and ask yourself two simple questions:

1. Do we have unlimited resources?

2. Do we not care what impact we make in the world?

Of course you're interested in ROI.

The sooner you make peace with that notion, the sooner you can get on to the business of making an impact in the world with your finite resources.

All the best,
A.

Profit

I love a good joke; here's one of my favorites:

The struggling non-profit organization: really good at the non-profit; not so hot at the organization.

Hilarious, amiright?

In a for-profit business, everyone knows they're there to turn a profit. They won't be around long if they don't.

Unfortunately, too many mission-driven organizations don't have the benefit of that clarity. After all, they weren't founded to make a profit but to serve a mission.

But sooner or later (and hopefully sooner), every organization has to ask itself: How are we going to fund this mission?

Resources will always be finite. Even if money grew on trees, somebody would have to pick it.

Here's the thing:

Membership dues, event fees, contributions, grants: all critical income sources that have to be maximized, continually.

Staff salaries, operations, infrastructure, materials and event production, marketing: all expenses that need to be aggressively managed.

Just like in a “real” business, if you're investing your limited resources in a way that's not generating more income than expense, you're going to have a real hard time carrying out your mission.

You're applying that same rationale in managing your CRM, right?

All the best,
A.

Legos

Starting out with CiviCRM is a lot like opening a box of Legos.

You may have seen what's possible by looking at what other people have done, and you can definitely get a sense of how things fit together by playing around with it here and there.

But you're not going to build anything is cool as this Taj Mahal or even this simple bank building without a lot of careful planning, or a very clear set of instructions

If you're starting out with CiviCRM, or have significant improvements in mind, be sure you take the time to make a clear plan, based on clear business goals.

You don't want to wind up with a pile of bricks.

All the best,
A.