When should you call your coach?

If you've got someone helping you navigate the mastery of your CRM system, then hopefully you've got a great relationship with them and communication is easy.

But like everything, your time with your coach or mentor is a limited resource.

Here are a few tips to use that resource most effectively:

1. Do your homework

With my coaching clients, I don't mind answering any questions they may have — really. I make sure in the beginning that my coaching clients are people I love talking to.

But when I'm the one getting the coaching (like everyone, I have areas of my life where I benefit from experienced help), I don't want to use up my coaching time with questions I could have answered myself.

Before you reach out to your coach, ask yourself:

• Have I read the documentation?

• Have I tried it myself a few different ways, and did I note the different results I'm getting with each variation?

2. Clarify your questions

It's inevitable that you'll use part of your time with your coach just to explain your situation and your questions.

You can make the most of that time by preparing your questions carefully.

• Where exactly are you getting stuck?

• Is it early in the conceptual phase of deciding how to tackle a challenge?

• Is it in the implementation, where you're pretty confident of what to do but having trouble getting it work?

Take notes on those questions so you're ready to dig in on the right areas when you're with your coach.

As a bonus, it happens a lot that just clarifying the question will go a long way toward finding the answer yourself. This is great! After all, making progress on your own is one of the goals of good coaching.

3. Focus on measurable goals

Sometimes it's useful to ask a general question just to increase your well-rounded knowledge of your CRM.

In that case "increasing your well-rounded knowledge" is the goal, and there is some way to measure it.

But more often, the ultimate value is in addressing some specific business goal: increasing membership retention, reducing staff workload, increasing donor engagement and giving, etc.

When you're knee-deep in a problem, it can be easy to forget what you're really trying to accomplish.

• As you prepare to reach out to your coach, take a step back and put some focus on your actual business goals.

• This helps ensure you're getting measurable value out of your work with them, not just slogging through a bunch of technical detail.

Here's the thing:

Good coaching and mentoring is an incredible resource to help you become the master of your own data, and to nail your membership and fundraising goals.

But like all resources, it's limited.

A little preparation will help you make the most of it.

All the best,
A.

4 ways to deal with duplicates in CiviCRM

If you want to get a handle on duplicate contacts in your data, here are a few ways you can get a jump on the situation:

CiviCRM core features

CiviCRM provides good features right out of the box for finding and merging duplicate contacts.

Take a look at the documentation to get familiar.

Extensions

Once you're familiar with the core “Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts” features, you may find them to be quite sufficient for your needs.

But if you start to find that they're not quite enough, you can get a real boost in productivity from one of the extensions provided by the CiviCRM community.

Head over to the CiviCRM Extensions Directory for a look at what's available. For example:

• Deduper
  Adds a new screen & tools for faster deduping.

• X-Dedupe (Extended Deduplication)
  Offers a modular and flexible alternative to CiviCRM's built-in deduplication system. It's designed to be fast, scalable, and highly configurable, providing almost 60 modules for your configuration, and the capacity to automate the merging process once you get your configuration nailed down.

Human effort

Don't forget that a CRM system is only as good as the people who are using it. Good data quality demands that everyone give careful attention to deduping along the way.

You'll want to be sure that:

• Someone is assigned the task of periodically finding and merging duplicates.

• Staff members who create new contacts are trained to look for existing contacts first, and to pay attention to CiviCRM's in-app alerts when a possible duplicate is being created.

Custom development

This is last on the list because all of the above will usually be enough —and because custom development is an expense that can't be undertaken lightly.

But for a few clients, I've found that the business case really does justify a little customization.

Our more successful efforts have been around automating the process of scanning for duplicate contacts. Site admins are alerted when potential duplicates are found, and they can, at their convenience, review those duplicate candidates and either mark them as "not duplicates" or merge them appropriately.

Here's the thing:

Whatever your situation, once you get above a few hundred contacts, you're probably going to start seeing duplicates in your data. Don't let this go un-checked.

Stay on top of it from the beginning, and if you're already behind, find a way to address it sooner rather than later.

It won't just "go away" by itself.

All the best,
A.

Not the droids you're looking for: trouble with duplicates

Duplicates in your CRM are usually a minor annoyance, but sometimes they can be downright debilitating.

A client of mine finally reached out last week about significant headaches from duplicates:

• The dupes added hours per week to her workload — frustrating!

• Reports on important topics were never accurate — disappointing!

• She had resorted to tracking accurate data in a spreadsheet — what the heck?!

• Even worse: With all this extra work she felt so pressed for time that actually finding and merging the duplicates seemed like an impossible task — so it just kept growing!

So, what's going on here?

Her site provides memberships to organizations, which are inherited by the organization's employees. Those employees then get access to members-only content under WordPress.

Problem is, there were hundreds of duplicate organizations — and while one of them (let's say "ACME Droids 1") might have a valid membership, the duplicate ("ACME Droids 2") had none.

As a result:

• Logged-in users who are actually employees of ACME Droids (but only had a relationship to the non-member "ACME Droids 2") were being blocked from members-only content.

• Member organizations were getting requests for payment on unpaid dues when they were already paid up — embarassing!

• Because the organization names both say “ACME Droids”, staff often didn’t realize they were looking at the wrong one, and had no idea where these problems were coming from.

After she reached out for help, we were able to analyze the situation and come up with a good solution for her.

CiviCRM is now cleaning up most of the duplicates automatically, and proactively alerting her of new potential duplicates that need her attention to merge.

No more membership headaches, embarassing miscalculations, extra work, or incorrect user access rejections.

Here's the thing:

No matter what CRM you're running, you're going to have duplicate records. As your data policies increase in complexity and nuance, those duplicates can start to cause surprising problems.

Cleaning up duplicate records is like flossing your data. It's probably not fun, but neglecting it can lead to growing pain over time.

Stay on top of it if you can. And if you get into a bind, get some help.

It's not an impossible problem, and you can create healthy and painless routines to deal with it.

All the best,
A.

Impact reporting strategy: KPIs

A little more on impact reporting. We've already talked benefits and strategy.

I want to drill down on this part of the strategy:

Identify your key performance indicators (KPIs): How will you know if you're getting closer to achieving your stated goals and objectives?

Once you've identified the goals and objectives that you'll pursue in support of your mission — and that you want folks to help you achieve — it helps next to think about how you'll know if you're on track to achieve those goals.

Let’s say you're aiming to increase your membership rolls by 15% in the coming year. Obviously, you'll be tracking total membership numbers as you go along.

But what are some early indicators that you can measure in support of that goal? The answer depends entirely on your membership strategy, but here are some examples:

• Are current members engaging more with your content and programs, and thus more likely to feel value in renewing?

• Are members and advocates referring more new people to your organization, and thus increasing the number of people who may be considering membership?

• Is your content and programming getting increased readership and participation, so more potential members are learning about the benefits of membership?

These are all activities that are upstream from actually joining or renewing a membership.

If you believe that increases in these measurements will lead to increases in total membership, it's smart to monitor them along the way.

Here's the thing:

Whatever goals and objectives you're targeting in support of your mission, it's very unlikely that they will just materialize at the end of your timeline without some earlier indicators that you're on the right track.

There are surely some precursor activities leading up to the achievement of those goals.

By measuring along the way, you'll have an opportunity to adjust your strategy, and to report those early-indicator successes to your stakeholders.

And it's them that you need to inspire, not just about the end goal, but about the progress you're making along the way.

All the best,
A.

“Sh*t nonprofits say”

I just found this hillarious, thought you might, too. Snarky, but hillarious:

How can we put evaluation tools in place for projects we've already completed? What are our metrics?

(It’s a tweet from Sh*t Nonprofits Say, which is worth a follow, or at least a quick look, if you like a little laugh-while-you-cry commiseration now and then.)

In case you’ve missed the joke, I’ll spell it out: The desired outcome metrics are part of the goal. Cherry-picking them post hoc kind of … doesn’t count.

Sure, it’s not just nonprofits that feel pressure to spin every poorly planned effort into a celebration of success. (Politicians do it all the time.)

But in a world where words like “accountability” and “metrics” so easily lose their meaning in the shuffle of tight budgets and rotating leadership, this “ready, fire, aim” kind of thinking seems to creep in a lot.

Remember this:

Goals with measurable targets are something you aim for, so you can consistently improve your outcomes.

Coming up with metrics after the fact is, well, cheating.

Don’t cheat yourself.

All the best,
A.

Hidden “features”

Sometimes things don't work right, for reasons that are anything but obvious.

For example, today I finally realized that my phone was putting itself into "do not disturb" mode when I place if face-down on my desk (or on my car seat).

For a long time, I wondered why my podcasts would pause when I put the phone face-down. And why I would have missed calls — for no apparent reason — when I was certain my phone had not rung.

Turns out, my phone was "helping me" by deciding to go silent without my knowledge. It’s a “feature”.

Once I knew that, it was easy enough to find the setting and disable that silly thing.

It was burried deep in an obscure settings page, but it was there.

Here's the thing:

If I'd had someone to ask, I could have solved this long ago.

It was a pebble in my shoe, but I lived with it and learned to work around it.

But now that I've found and fixed it, life is just better.

What little mysteries are bugging you?

CiviCRM seems like it has a mind of its own sometimes?

It probably doesn't. You might just need a little help figuring it out.

All the best,
A.

Impact reporting strategy: Mission and goals

Let's talk a little more about impact reporting strategy. (See previous emails about benefits and implementation steps, if you like.)

As with everything, it helpst to start with the end in mind: your mission, goals, and objectives.

Donors, advocates, members, volunteers, even your board — they're already concerned about the impact you're trying to make in the world.

But they need a reason to believe that you're on the right track to accomplishing it.

So tell them. State your goals.

What are you and your stakeholders aiming to achieve together? What are the actual goals you're trying to accomplish as an organization?

Useful goals tend to stick to the SMART framework: specific, measurable, assignable, relevant, and time-bound.

• Specific: They target a specific area for improvement.

• Measurable: They quantify the intended progress (they target a number or percentage of measurable units).

• Assignable: They specify who — an individual or a team — will make it happen.

• Realistic: They state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.

• Time-bound: They specify when those results should be achieved.

Here's the thing:

Inspiring your stakeholders is just like everything else: start with your goals.

Start by formulating a few simple goal statements, and state them in a way that's relevant to both your stakeholders' vision and to the people you serve.

If you can do that, you're on the right track to demonstrating your ability to get tangible results in your mission.

And that's something people want to buy into.

All the best,
A.

Impact reporting: strategy

Measuring and reporting on the impact you make in the world is a critical step in building trust and engaging all of your stakeholders.

I wrote yesterday about some of the benefits that good impact reporting can bring.

But how do you do it? How do you build an effective strategy for good impact reporting?

Here are five important steps:

1. Start with your organization’s mission, goals, and objectives: What are you and your stakeholders aiming to achieve together?

2. Identify your key performance indicators: How will you know if you're getting closer to achieving your stated goals and objectives?

3. Create a plan for data collection and analysis: Is it enough to just analyze the data that you've been tracking? Do you need to add surveys, interviews, or focus groups? Who’s responsible for aggregating and analyzing this data, and reporting on the outcomes?

4. Create a reporting framework: How frequently will you make these reports? To what audience? And in what format?

5. Implement and evaluate your strategy: As with everything, you’ll be well served to schedule a periodic review of your impact reporting strategy. How much effort is it taking? What benefits is it bringing? What improvements could make it more effective?

I'm sure we could unpack each one of those points, because there's a lot there.

I'll pick some of these apart a little more deeply in future emails.

All the best,
A.

Impact reporting

Donors, volunteers, and advocates want to believe that their contribution is going to bring substantial results to your mission.

Members want to believe that their membership will benefit them as well.

Do you have strategy in place to show them your measurable successes?

Here are four ways your organization can benefit from such a strategy:

1. Accountability: Stakeholders want to know that they're investment will be used well. Well structured impact reporting will show them exactly what you’re accomplishing in your mission.

2. Learning and Improvement: Careful measurement and reporting gives you the insights that you need to improve your programs and strategies over time.

3. Engagement: Transparent reporting and a track record of self-analysis will build trust and inspire participation from the people who power your work.

4. Funding: Measurable outcomes are some of the most critical information you can share with potential donors and grant funders, who need to see that their investment will support the outcomes they care about.

Fortunately, you’re running a CRM with the capacity to track and report on the things that matter.

It's up to you to put that to use in ways that will inspire participation from others.

All the best,
A.

Drupal or WordPress for CiviCRM

I got this very practical and common question from a client last week:

We know we want CivCRM. Should we use Drupal or WordPress, or maybe even something else?

Of course every situation is different. The more I know about what you want to achieve, the more I'll be able to recommend solutions specifically for you.

But let me answer this in very general terms:

CiviCRM itself works just fine under Drupal, WordPress and a couple of others. (You probably haven't heard of the others, and if you haven't, there's no real need to consider them.)

If you already know that one or another is going to be right for you for specific reasons, there's no reason not to go ahead.

But if you're just completely unsure, I'm almost certainly going to recommend WordPress.

For three reasons:

1. It's simpler to use.

CiviCRM is complex enough. Yes, Drupal can be a lot more flexible in the right hands, and if your team is already in love with Drupal there's no reason —none at all—not to go with it.

But if you're in the position to make this decision yourself, and you're asking this question, you will almost certainly be better off with the simpler approach of WordPress.

2. it's easier to maintain.

Drupal site maintenance includes working with composer on the command line over ssh.

If you know what that means and are comfortable with it, you may be comfortable keeping a Drupal site up to date with security releases and new versions.

Or, if you're outsourcing the entire maintenance of the site to someone who's familiar with Drupal, they'll do just fine.

But if you don't already have a preference, you will almost certainly be frustrated by the technical skills required for Drupal maintenance.

3. CiviCRM is the same under both systems.

There's virtually nothing you can do with CiviCRM under Drupal that you can't do under WordPress.

Almost all of my clients are using either WordPress or Drupal. A scant few use one of the others.

And I can't think of one case where I’ve wished a client was using Drupal instead of WordPress.

But I can think of a few who are using Drupal whose lives would just be easier under WordPress.

Believe me, when I discuss this with other tech-minded people in the CiviCRM community, the conversation is a lot more complex.

At the technology level, there are pros and cons either way.

But here's the thing:

When you have clear goals and measurable business outcomes that you're trying to achieve (and you do, right?), debates over technology are not the most important thing.

You need something that will get the job done, and fit your ability to use it well. There are no bad systems.

Focus on the outcomes, and pick the solution that's most likely to help you keep that focus, without needless distractions on technical minutiae.

All the best,
Allen

Quick vs durable

Everything is a trade-off.

One trade-off worth considering is the one between initial cost and long-term durability.

If you need something quickly, or cheaply, it’s fine just to build anything that works, and move forward.

My family got baby chicks a few weeks ago. I need to keep them safe and warm in their own space for about 2 months.

So I put a brooder in the tool shed, built of cardboard boxes and scrap wood.

It's perfectly good enough. When I'm done with it, I'll throw it away and then build another one when we get chicks again in two years.

On the other hand, when you need something that will be easy to maintain, have a long life, and be used frequently, it’s worth putting more care into its creation.

My adult chickens will live several years. I need to keep them safe from predators and weather, in a setup that's easy to clean and easy to harvest eggs. (Yay, French toast!)

You can bet they've got something a lot better to live in than some old cardboard boxes.

The investment of time and money that I put into building that coop is paying me back year after year. It's been 4 years now, and I expect at least another 10.

Here's the thing:

Everything is a trade off.

When you need your CRM to do something quickly or once, the smart choice may be just to get it working as easily as possible.

For a durable need, the big win is probably in planning carefully.

And here's a bonus: If you're only ever doing quick one-offs, you're probably missing some significant opportunities. It's worth pausing now and then to think about where you'll be a year from now.

All the best,
A.

Training vs coaching: Do it yourself?

I wrote recently about the difference between coaching and training in terms of outcomes.

Another important difference is this: How much of it can you do for yourself?

In short: You can train yourself, but it's pretty hard to coach yourself.

Of course there are times when you want to get some outside help with training.

But you can do a lot of it yourself, if you have the time and interest.

Usual resources for training yourself are online video courses, documentation, and practice.

All of these are pretty easily attainable for CiviCRM.

CiviTeacher.com offers a pretty good library of video training materials.

The online documentation at docs.civicrm.org is fairly comprehensive.

And, if you’re pressed for time, or don’t know where to start, you may prefer to have an experienced expert lead you through a customized training process to get you up to speed.

On the other hand, when you need coaching — personalized help to level up your game and target specific outcomes in your mission, career, or bottom line — it's almost impossible to coach yourself.

Coaching, with its focus on achieving measurable outcomes and addressing gaps that you don't even see yourself, is by its nature the kind of help that only comes from outside of your own viewpoint.

Both can be valuable additions to your game plan.

And recognizing which you need, at different stages of your growth, can make the difference between reaching your goals and spinning your wheels.

All the best,
A.

Hair pulling

It’s frustrating. You’re trying to make a simple configuration change in your CRM. But something’s not working.

Before you know it, you’ve lost an hour out of your day, and it’s still not working right.

It makes me want to pull my hair out! (Well, if I had any.)

A friend at my co-working space was here this morning when I showed up. He had come in early, bright-eyed and ambitious, ready to knock out some tasks and start the day on the right foot.

But he's been here for 2 hours fighting with his software, and he's hardly begun on the tasks he came to do.

Frustrations like this take the fun out of work, and make it very difficult to plan your day — or even to plan a project.

Here's the thing:

Nobody wants to feel like this when they're working with their CRM.

We all want to get in, get it done, and move on to other things.

If you find this coming up a lot, it's probably a good idea to sit back and ask yourself:

Am I going about this the wrong way?

• Are you trying to use CiviCRM in a way that it wasn't intended?

• Are you running into limitations in your own knowledge of the system?

• Are you moving forward on features before you have a clear understanding of the measurable business outcomes you hope to achieve?

Hard work is a great thing.

But isn't smart work a lot more fun?

All the best,
A.

Training vs coaching: outcomes

Training and coaching are great options when you're ready to increase your success with CiviCRM.

The differences between the two can appear subtle at first, but there are a few important differences.

The most important, in my view, is their focus on outcomes. Here’s an example:

If I want to learn how to box I need training.

• Training will expose me to the facts and fundamentals that I need to participate.

• Training will give me an opportunity to focus on developing my own skills.

In addition to training, if I want to be a great boxer, I need coaching.

• Coaching will take into account my goals, such as winning more matches, or staying motivated and focused on the right priorities for an upcoming match.

• Coaching will help me to keep the right mindset through a match, or through my career.

• Coaching will help me break through when I'm feeling stuck, by identifying and addressing specific gaps in my understanding that I may not even realize.

in short: Training doesn't care about my outcomes and goals. Coaching does.

This is true for any field. In sports, in technical skills, in business, even in interpersonal relationships.

Here's the thing:

We all need training to get a grip on new skills.

And when we really want to level up our game, and stay on track to achieve specific goals and outcomes, good coaching is a way to make that happen.

There are other important differences. I'll unpack some of those in a future email.

All the best,
A.

What’s on the line for them?

Your organization thrives on the support of people who really could be doing anything else with their money and time.

Members, staff, board members, donors, volunteers, advocates, all of them.

If you want them to buy into your vision, you're going to have to help them see how it makes a difference in things they care about.

Ask yourself:

What’s on the line for them?

When they're thinking about anything related to your mission, what worries them?

What's taking up their head space when they're driving to work? What distracts them from conversation, or keeps them up at night?

It's easy to imagine members in this context; they are paying dues, and they expect to get something out of it.

But it's the same for everyone else who might decide to help you, or instead decide to do something else.

Here's the thing:

Everyone has their own concerns and priorities.

If you can tap into that, if you can help them see how partnering with you can fit those priorities, they'll help you.

Because they value whatever they expect to come from that partnership, much more than they value their contribution.

What do you know about them? And how can you help them to see that value?

All the best,
A.

Keeping up with upgrades

If you’ve already got an expert professional (in-house or outsourced) handling upgrades for you, you can probably skip this email. But if you’re curious about the kinds of challenges that can come up, or you’re doing the upgrades yourself (totally do-able, by the way), this might interest you.

How actively should you be applying updates to your open-source CRM and CMS?

CiviCRM drops a new release at least once a month, and usually more often.

Drupal and WordPress may release a little less frequently, but not by much.

On top of that, new versions are continually being released for CiviCRM extensions, WordPress plugins, and Drupal modules.

How you respond to these updates is entirely up to you, but here are my general guidelines for most sites:

• Security updates: Take the update.
  
  If you find that a new release includes security fixes, take the update. It's very rare that you'll have a good reason to wait. Just do it.
  
  Rationale: Security issues are serious, and once the update is released, you can be sure that nefarious players are looking for un-patched sites they can attack. (Sure, if you're a developer with opinions about whether some security patches are not-so-serious, and are willing to own the risk, I won't try to persuade you. But for everyone else: take the update.)
  

• Non-security updates for the core CiviCRM, Drupal, and WordPress projects: Wait on it, if you can.
  
  If there's as bug-fix or feature improvement you believe would be fixed by updating, then take the update. Otherwise, it's generally not worth the effort to chase these updates just because they're available.
  
  Rationale: Updates require measurable effort (backups, installation, testing) and present measurable risk (potential new bugs). And updates to core systems increase the risk because they're more likely to affect the entire system. Unless you have a specific reason to update, it's not worth it.
  

• Updates for CiviCRM extensions, Drupal modules, and WordPress plugins: Take the update.
  
  Go ahead and take these updates as they're available. Make a practice of checking every week or so for available updates, and take them as they come.
  
  Rationale: These updates are relatively easy to apply, and carry a lower risk than core updates -- they may still introduce new bugs, but the scope of that bug is usually limited to the scope of the plugin. Applying frequent updates on these plugins gets you incremental improvement in bug-fixes and functionality, and helps limit the risk of version incompatibility when you do update your core systems.

Here's the thing:

Your open source tools are continually being supported by a vibrant and active community of contributors who are constantly handing out free fixes for your benefit.

Isn't it nice that you, your organization, and your members can benefit from it?

All the best,
A.

Knowing what you want

Sometimes I'm surprised by the number of people I see who seem not to know what they want.

Career decisions, relationship decisions, education decision, and business decisions.

Or I hear from people who say they want something, but they can't really tell me what it's going to get them or why they want it.

Here's the thing:

If you can't explain why you want something, then you're probably not really sure that you want it.

And if you don't really know what you're trying to achieve, why even bother starting?

CRM projects are expensive and risky: you're investing a lot of time, emotional energy, good will, and money. And all of those resources are always limited.

It's important to spend a little time figuring out what you want, and setting a goal or two to shoot for.

And if you can’t quite put your finger on it, then you’ve found your starting point: Identify the need, and identify even one thing that would help you move toward meeting that need.

Then set a measurable goal, and start working toward that goal.

Otherwise, how will you even know if you've succeeded?

All the best,
A.

There are no bad systems.

There is no right or wrong way to arrange your CRM systems.

There are only ways that fit your needs and resources, and ways that don't.

You've got 17 different Excel spreadsheets? That is not inherently bad.

As long as it fits your needs, and is well supported by your available resources, then surely there's no real business case for changing that arrangement.

Here's an example:

Several weeks ago I had a coaching call with a client who was trying hard to get CiviCRM going, so he could track and report publicly on certain kinds of data. Publishing that data is a major pillar in his org’s mission.

But he was a one-person operation, with a lot of irons in the fire, and not a lot of funding to get started with.

He had come to me for help with CiviCRM. It seemed like the "right" thing to do was to help make that happen for him.

But hold on — why does that have to be the "right" thing? What is inherently wrong with something simple like putting that data into a spreadsheet and publishing a couple of easy-to-read PDFs along with the raw data?

After looking closely at his situation together, we both agreed that was the way to go.

It fit his needs, his budget, and his working style. It was right for him.

This past week, he called me again to let me know that it was working great!

Here's the thing:

It is so easy to get caught up in the notion that you need a "real" CRM in order to operate like a “real” organization.

You do not.

What you need are clear goals, a clear assessment of what's possible, and a commitment to getting the results that you want.

If that means using CiviCRM or some other tool, or making substantial improvements to your current setup, that's fine. But it's not a requirement in itself.

Don't buy the hype. Stay focused on the outcomes. That's where success happens.

All the best,
A.

Who cares if you’re measuring outcomes?

Plenty of organizations muddle along "just fine", without setting challenging goals that target measurable results.

They make plans and programs, and they help their people, and they're okay with that.

So why focus so hard on setting clear goals and measuring outcomes? Who cares?

Here are some people who probably do care:

• Your board. When they're deciding whether to approve your next initiative, can you remind them that your last one increased membership renewals by X percent?

• Grant sources. If your work is funded by grants, you can bet the grant funders want to see measurable outcomes, not just generalities like "we did well".

• Your members. Members want reasons to believe that you’re helping them. Can you point to successful projects that, for example, helped place X hundred recent college graduates into jobs in the industry?

• Your supporters. Individual donors, volunteers, and advocates get excited — and more willing to participate — if you can tell them that your new campaign is on track to help X percent more people than you did last year.

• Future employers. We don’t usually like to talk about this, but it's a real thing. When you're seeking that exciting higher-level position at a new organization, will they be more impressed to hear that you “managed operations” in your previous position, or that you implemented an efficient donor outreach system that increased donor retention by 15% — without increasing HR costs?

• Maybe just yourself. Maybe you want to know that you're making the world a better place in real, measurable terms. Maybe it doesn't matter if anybody else in the world appreciates that, as long as you can take pride in it yourself.

Who really cares if you're setting and reaching clear and measurable goals in your organization's work?

Lots of people.

All the best,
A.

Is this a good deal?

Not every "good deal" is as good as it looks.

Yesterday at the grocery store I spotted milk for $1.29 a gallon. In my neck of the woods, that's about 1/3 of the normal price.

Who wouldn't want that?

Then I noticed that it was stamped to expire the same day. Not a good purchase for me.

But other people were buying it.

Maybe they didn't notice the expiration date.

Maybe they have a large family of teenagers and they know they'll go through a gallon of milk in a day.

Either way, I have to let them make their decision, while I make mine.

Here's the thing:

Something can look like a really good deal. The price is right. It's the kind of thing you need. Other people are snapping it up.

But it's not a good deal until you decide it's really right for you.

A new CRM, improvements to your existing CRM, whatever.

The way to know if it's right for you is to check whether it will meet your desired measurable outcomes (you do have those, right?) and fit your limited resources (I know you have those).

If it does, move ahead.

If it doesn't, look for something that does.

All the best,
A.