Outcomes vs outputs

Your donors, funders, and other supporters want to believe that you are impacting the world in ways that matter to them.

So you're regularly in a position to tell them the story of what you're accomplishing.

How are you telling that story?

Are you telling them about real-world outcomes that matter to real people? Or are you just telling them about your outputs?

Outputs are the things that you do:

Events held. Patrons served. Volunteer hours generated. Trainings conducted.

All the things that are the “how” of your organization's work are outputs.

Yes they matter, and yes they're probably worth measuring.

But outcomes are where the real value lies.

Outcomes are the transformations you accomplish in people's lives:

Training recipients placed in sustainable jobs. Students matched to scholarships and accepted to college. Homebound seniors comforted by hours of volunteer care.

All the things that are the “why” of your organization's work are outcomes.

These matter most of all.

You can tell because if you got all of the outcomes and none of the outputs, nobody would miss your outputs at all. But if you only did the outputs and got none of the outcomes, everyone would ask, “Why are you even doing this?”

So among all the things you could be measuring and reporting on, remember to measure and report on your outcomes.

They are, after all, why you do what you do.

All the best,
A.

Making data imports easier

CiviCRM's import tools are pretty good.

But have you ever been in a situation like one of these?

• You have a load of data to import as contributions or activities (etc.) to import but because this came from an external source it doesn't have CiviCRM Contact IDs in it.

• You have data to import to contacts but it's a bit of a mess and may result in duplicates, even despite your expertise in using CiviCRM's dedupe rules.

• You have data to import but the name field is just one field instead of first and last names.

There's a newly approved CiviCRM extension that does a pretty good job solving those problems.

It's called CSV Import Helper, and it has some pretty cool features to solve those problems:

You feed it a CSV file, and it helps you identify the contacts for each row, or specify that a new contact should be created.

It starts by suggesting matches for each row, based on name and email — and even makes suggestions based on names that are similar if not identical.

It also only shows distinct sets of names and emails, so if your data has multiple rows for Wilma Flintstone, you'll only have to locate Wilma once.

Once we the contacts are matched up, you can download the CSV file again, in a file that’s the same as your original CSV, but with an extra "Internal ID" column showing the actual CiviCRM Contact ID for each row.

Then you can use that in CiviCRM's native import feature for contacts, activities, contributions.

Now that this extension has passed community review, it's available for easy installation from your city CRM manage extensions page.

You can install it and give it a try, or read more about it here.

All the best,
A.

Working “in” vs “on” your organization

Ever think about the difference between working in your organization versus working on your organization?

Are you delegating tasks to people who have been well trained in standard procedures and workflows?

Or do you spend much of your time doing those tasks yourself?

What if you could make time to build up and clarify the systems that will make your organization run smoothly, and to train your staff or volunteers to use those systems efficiently?

Would that make your life, and your staff's lives, less hectic and more productive?

If you wish you could do more to work on you organization, what prevents you?

And if you did have a little time to do more work on your organization, how would you use that time?

All the best,
A.

Learning to ride a bike

You can't learn to ride a bike by reading a book. Or learn to dance, or play piano, or even bake a soufflé.

For those, you need real-life practice.

Sure, you can learn a lot of facts and ideas from reading.

But even topics that are mostly fact-based require a lot of practice to master.

Like biological chemistry.

Or a foreign language.

Or your CRM system.

Yes, you'll get a lot out of reading. The CiviCRM online documentation is a great resource, for example.

But to really master your systems, you'll need to practice.

And spend time.

And make mistakes.

And ask questions.

That's how you learn to move efficiently, and apply all those facts and ideas to your real-life situation.

I can't rush it. You just have to start where you are, have clear goals in mind, and keep improving.

That’s something you can do, and must, if you want to see the results.

All the best,
A.

Likely CiviCRM event in Montreal, Feb 28 - March 1, 2024

According to this thread in the CiviCRM MatterMost chat, planning is now in the works for a CiviCRM event in Montreal next February/March:

... it's been a long time since we've had a face-to-face event in North-America! @cividesk and Symbiotic are considering organizing a 3-days event in Montreal with tentative dates of Wed, Feb 28th to Fri, March 1st. The first day would be aimed at end-users and feature presentations and workshops. The next 2 days would be aimed at developers and system administrators with a Sprint and workshops/discussions. ...

The event has not been officially announced yet, but responses in the thread have been very enthusiastic.

If you're anywhere close to Montreal, I recommend you save the date.

I'm planning to be there.

I hope you are too.

All the best,
A.

Security: Every user account is a doorway

I've been studying medieval European history with my kids.

The historical development of castle design is a fascinating thing.

Most castles had only two entrances: the wide drawbridge-and-portcullis affair at the front for whatever public access might be granted, and a tiny "postern gate" at the rear for low-key access by trusted staff.

Maintaining such a fortification wasn't very convenient, but it was the best way to defend against potential attackers.

Now imagine if they had decided that one postern door wasn't enough.

The kitchen staff want one near the kitchen. Groundskeepers want one near the garden. We'll just add a whole bunch of little doors all around the castle wall.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, not a good idea.

Here's the thing:

If you're giving members a login to manage their own profile and access members-only benefits on your site, that has real business value.

That's your big public entrance, and it's well fortified. Folks who come through that door are very limited in what they can do anyway.

And your staff? They come in through the back door and have much more access to your valuable inner workings. That has real business value, too.

But what about password accounts for staff who no longer work for you?

Those have no business value.

But they're still a means of access — waiting to be abused by miscreants who aim to misuse your data and your resources.

Every one of them is like an unattended door in your castle wall.

For goodness' sake, brick those things up.

All the best,
A.

CRM projects I’ll say no to

I just got off the phone with a prospective client who was looking for help making CiviCRM do something really neat.

Like, “a CRM really should be able to do this stuff” kind of neat.

I talked him out of it.

He seemed pretty happy about that. I was too.

Why?

There are certain types of projects I just don't want to take.

At the top of that list are the ones in which the client does not have a sound business case for the work.

And that was the situation on today’s phone call.

We discussed the total value of what he was hoping to achieve — time and money savings for his organization, stress savings for himself and his volunteer staff, convenience for his constituents.

And we discussed alternative solutions that could get him a large chunk of that value for a fraction of the cost of his original proposal to me.

We happily agreed that those alternatives were likely to bring him far more value than creating an expensive project with me.

He was happy. I was happy. And there it ended.

Here's the thing:

For any project, large or small, the client is going to incur expenses:

• My fees.

• Their own time and effort working with me.

• The time and effort to train their staff, users, or others who will be affected by the change.

• The ongoing burden of maintaining whatever customizations are created through our work together.

Whatever units you might use, all of that adds up to some measurable investment.

I don't want to take anybody down that road if that investment is going to be larger than:

• the value they can expect to get from it, or

• the cost of some reasonable alternative.

That's why I’m always going on about — and asking about — business goals, strategy, and alternative solutions.

I hope you're asking yourself those questions as well, anytime you get a great new idea.

Great new ideas are always fun, but the real question is:

Is it worth it?

All the best,
A.

Your CRM strategy

How would you describe your CRM strategy?

Have you written it down?

Could you summarize it in a sentence or two?

If you can't articulate it, are you sure it exists?

Here are some things that a strong CRM strategy will identify:

• The audience you want to reach.

• The specific reasons you want to reach them.

• The progression through which you plan to take them, from first contact to the highest level of engagement.

• Your organization’s short-term and long-term goals, and how reaching your audience will help you achieve those goals.

• How your outreach plan will play to your organization's strengths and bolster your weaknesses.

Here’s the thing:

You'll notice I didn't say anything about software, events, mass mailings, or websites.

Those are just tools.

And CRM is not about tools.

It's about relationships.

All the best,
A.

The “No Overwrite” extension

Yesterday I told you how the No Overwrite extension solved a client’s mysterious “name change” issue, and that the extension deserves a write-up of its own.

Here it is.

This extension aims to solve one problem and one problem only:

The accidental renaming of one contact to another.

People very rarely change their name, but they often take action on behalf of others.

If they called you on the phone and said they wanted to register an employee — or a child, or a spouse — for an upcoming event, you’d make sure to create a new contact for that other person.

But when they take that action in an online form, they'll sometimes just change the first and last name from their own to someone else's.

Anytime CiviCRM is pre-populating the form with the user's own information, it assumes that the user knows what they're doing.

But when the users actually rename themselves to a completely different person, you've now got a very confusing situation.

The No Overwrite extension solves this in a very elegant way:

Where CiviCRM pre-populates the user’s first and last name, this extension ensures those fields are read only.

So they can't change their own name. At all.

Sure, people do sometimes change their names.

But it's very rare — much more rare than goofing up your data accidentally when they take action on behalf of another person.

If you're not using this extension, I recommend you give it a try. You can find it in CiviCRM’s Manage Extensions page.

There's nothing to configure. Just install it, and it just works.

And try it, and you don't like it, you can just disable it again.

But I don't think you will.

All the best,
A.

Oops, I renamed myself

A client had a problem last week:

They found a few contacts whose history and data seemed to be mysteriously incorrect.

One example: a familiar contact, "Marcus Williams" was missing from the system, and in his place was a new contact named "Cindy Barker", one of Marcus' employees.

Oddly, except for the name and a few contact details, the record for Cindy matched what my client remembered about Marcus — donation history, event participations, and more.

And it wasn’t just Marcus/Cindy. Similar patterns appeared with other contacts.

The headache:

Obviously this kind of data inconsistency is disconcerting. This client was starting to doubt the accuracy of all of their CRM data.

Once the cause was found, the client and I spent several hours identifying and correcting affected records (most of that time was the client, making manual data corrections).

The cause:

With a little effort we were able to reproduce the problem and identify the cause. It goes like this:

1. Marcus logged into his member account.

2. He opened the online registration form for the upcoming conference event.

3. CiviCRM dutifully pre-populated that form with Marcus’ name and contact info.

4. Here’s the kicker: Marcus was not trying to register himself for the event. He wanted to register Cindy, his employee.

5. So he edited the first and last name fields to say Cindy Brown.

He thought he was just registering Cindy.

What he actually did was rename himself in the CRM.

The long term fix:

We installed "No Overwrite" extension. Problem solved.

This extension deserves a write-up of its own, which I won't do here. But here's a link.

The lessons:

1. Mysterious inconsistencies don't mean your entire CRM is broken.

2. But they do deserve quick attention.

3. Reproducing the bad behavior is critical to identifying the cause and ensuring a fix.

4. The No Overwrite extension is awesome.

All the best,
A.

Who needs a rodmap?

When you're driving from your house to your office, do you whip out your cell phone and follow the navigation?

Probably not.

You've done it dozens or hundreds of times, and you know your way around.

If you were planning a cross-country drive with friends or family to a town you've never seen before, would you be more inclined to look at a map?

Probably so.

That is, unless you and your friends enjoy the adventure of getting lost and finding your way again. I admit, that can make for fun times if you're with the right people.

But when schedules are tight, or you just don't want to deal with getting lost, you might spend some time planning first.

You’d pull out the maps and made a clear plan that included starting times, alternate routes, allowances for meal and bathroom breaks, and maybe even a sightseeing detour or two.

Here's the thing:

When you're trying something new for your CRM, or your staff workflows, or your programs, there’s some effort involved in researching and thinking and making a very clear plan.

If you've done this kind of thing before, and the stakes are low, and you're not too concerned about when you'll get there or how much it will cost, just jumping in is a fine thing to do.

You'll probably learn a lot along the way, and have a good time while you're at it.

But if you've never done this kind of thing before, and if margins are tight and timely success is critical, it's probably worth investing in a little planning and roadmapping.

The road map itself does not get you the results that you're after.

But it goes a long way towards reducing risk and helping you to actually achieve your goals.

All the best,
A.

Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.

There are times when it's important to move quickly, no matter what.

House on fire? Get out now. Hope you make it.

But it's rarely that urgent, and moving quickly — without proper attention to detail — leads to expensive mistakes.

Say this out loud to yourself a couple of times:

"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."

I can't remember where I heard this first, but it's come up in several areas where I've worked to improve my skills. Competitive shooting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, weight training, business development, large purchases, financial investing.

If you care about achieving valuable outcomes in your work, it's important to remember that rushing into things without practice and forethought is a recipe for needless risk:

• Putting in a lot of effort, time, and expense on tasks that will have to be thrown out and done over.

• Jumping into a large project without a reasonable expectation of completion timelines and overall expense.

• Using up your resources on things you don't really need or will never actually use (or that won't get you a benefit that exceeds your investment).

Slow is smooth.

Taking the time to hone your skills, and to make reasonable plans, will get you a much better chance of achieving your goals.

Smooth is fast.

Once your skills are more firmly developed, or your plan is more carefully thought out, you'll be free to take action quickly, and you'll have a better chance of actually achieving what you set out to do.

Here's the thing:

When you've done something a thousand times, there's less risk in moving quickly.

And sometimes you have no choice but to move quickly, so you do what you have to do and hope that it works.

But hope is not a plan.

Next time you consider a significant investment of time, money, or effort in your membership development, CRM functionality, or fundraising and outreach, it's worth slowing down, taking a step back, and making sure you have a good chance of doing it right.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM security update is here

CiviCRM version 5.65.0 contains some security fixes rated “highly critical,” per the release notes.

Have you upgraded yet?

All the best,
A.

Hard problems

We all run into hard problems now and then.

• Trying to get my board to approve this new project, but it doesn't look promising.

• Trying to get my CRM to do things in this particular way, but I can't figure it out.

• Trying to arrange my budget to allocate resources for this new program, but I can't cut from anywhere else.

It's no fun, right? We've all been there, and we’ll probably all be there again at some point.

So what can you do about it?

Here are two options:

1. Give up on it and move on. This is nobody's first option, but when it's your only option you have to take it. There are other things worth fighting for.

2. Mentally zoom out, remember why you wanted that thing in the first place, and find another way to get it.

• Can't get board approval for your project? What was the project for? How else can you work toward that goal?

• Can't get your CRM to do exactly what you want? What valuable outcome were you trying to achieve? How else could you achieve that outcome?

• Can't reorganize your budget to fund a new program? Who needs that program and why? How else can you help these people get what they need?

Here's the thing:

Our day-to-day life is full of actions. Actions are how we get things done.

But the action itself is almost never the point. It's always in pursuit of some valuable outcome.

When one plan of action starts to seem impossible, it doesn't mean the outcome is impossible. Don’t get attached to the actions. Stay attached to the outcome.

The actions don't matter. The outcome does.

All the best,
A.

I’m going to CiviCRM Manchester

I've said it more than once on this list:

In-person events are the absolute best bang-for-buck investment you can make in your journey to mastering CiviCRM.

That’s why I’m going to CiviCRM Manchester, which happens this year from November 29th to December 8th, in Manchester, England.

Over a period of 10 days, the event will include several components:

• Admin training: two days of training for CiviCRM administrators, on November 29th & 30th

• CiviCamp: a one-day conference for all users of CiviCRM, on December 1st

• Developer training: two days of training for CiviCRM developers on December 2nd and 3rd

• Sprint: a week-long residential event to improve and develop CiviCRM, December 2nd - 8th

Manchester is pretty far from North Texas, but until we start having more North American events, I believe it's worth my time and effort to make the trip.

Depending on your location, your schedule, your taste for adventure, and your desire to learn more and connect with the community, it just might be worth your time and effort too.

All the best,
A.

Web hosting for CiviCRM

I got a couple of questions last week about hosting, which I'll summarize like so:

We're looking to get started with CiviCRM but are wondering about the hosting requirements. Can we use our current hosting provider or do we need something special?

The short answer is this:

If you're already running WordPress or Drupal, you can probably just install CiviCRM on that site and things should be fine.

That's especially true when you're just starting out.

Later on you may find that you have special needs as your constituent base and use of the CRM grows. But there's no point in doing anything fancy until you need it.

If you're really looking for something that will be sure to support CiviCRM, you might try one of these options:

• CiviHosting: These guys have a good reputation in the community, and they work hard to ensure their hosting is well configured for WordPress, Drupal, and CiviCRM. They've also got really low prices.

• Your CiviCRM specialist can surely recommend a hosting package for you. Many CiviCRM specialists offer their own hosting packages. Here at Joinery, for example, my team provides hosting for many of my clients.

• The CiviCRM Partners directory includes listings for partners who specifically focus on providing good hosting for CiviCRM sites.

Here's the thing:

Web hosting, even for CiviCRM, is usually not a big decision.

Switching from one host to another is typically a simple affair. You'll probably need a little technical help, but it's a well-worn path that any skilled CiviCRM specialist could handle for you.

Since you can pretty easily change later on, you probably shouldn't let yourself be delayed by this question.

It's more important to get started with almost anything, rather than spend too much time looking for the "perfect" hosting package.

If you have questions about it, shoot me a reply and I'll be glad to elaborate further.

All the best,
A.

Backups: Inspecting the safety net

I've never been tightrope walker in the circus, but if I were, you can bet I'd be one that uses a safety net.

And, you can bet that before every practice or performance I'd be inspecting that net.

Because what you don't want to bet on — what I wouldn't bet on — is that an un-inspected net is actually going to do its job when it's needed.

Quick questions:

Do you take regular backups of your website and CRM? If you don't it's a lot like walking that tightrope without a net.

And if you do, do you inspect on a regular basis to be sure that your backups are actually happening correctly, and that you can easily restore your mission-critical data from a backup?

If you don't, it's a lot like forgetting to inspect that safety net.

Sure, you could bet that it's “just going to work” when you need it, but that's probably not a bet you could afford to lose.

Don't make bets you can’t afford to lose. Inspect your backups.

All the best,
A.

What’s a spare tire worth?

What do you think is the value of a new spare tire?

It seems obvious that a spare tire is a good thing to have. You don't need it often, but it's sure comes in handy when you do.

Imagine your car’s spare tire needs replacing. What is that worth?

A few minutes online will tell you what it would take to get a new spare tire for your car.

$50? $100? $200?

But:

That dollar amount is not the value. It's just the cost.

The value is what it's really worth to you.

The cost is just the effect of broad market forces, supply and demand.

The value on the other hand, depends on a variety of factors in your specific situation:

• Are you about to go on a long drive across the desert?

• Or do you only drive your car occasionally, in town, and would rather have it towed than change a tire yourself?

• Are you generally adventurous and cavalier?

• Or are you anxious about risk and looking to plan for every contingency?

Even if you're generally adventurous, there's a good chance that the value of that spare tire will be far more than the cost — especially if you're about to drive across the desert.

Here's the thing:

For a small purchase like this, we may not think much about putting a number on the value. It's easy enough to check the prices and make a quick decision.

But for larger investments, like the time and money you could put into major improvements to your CRM, it's worth thinking about the actual value, a question quite separate from cost:

Value in funding, in mission goals, in staff efficiency, and in the many intangibles that make up your organization's image and culture.

Without calculating the value, how could you even know if it's worth the investment to start?

And what’s more: how could you know if it was a good investment once it's done?

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM release notes

Here's a neat little resource that the city CRM project started publishing recently:

A convenient list of all releases, with release notes for each, at https://download.civicrm.org/release/

This is no earth-shaking development. Release notes have always been publicly available. This just makes them a little easier to find.

And when you're deciding whether to upgrade — and to which version to upgrade — the release notes are a great resource.

I hope you'll use them to stay informed in deciding your upgrade strategy.

All the best,
A.

The second-best time to plant a tree

You've probably heard this one before:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The second-best time to plant a tree is today.

Here's the thing:

It would probably help you a lot to have one year, or two years, or even five years of historical data on trends showing the connections between observable constituent behavior, your own actions, and the actions that you want your constituents to take.

• How many events does a person attend before they decide to become a paying member?

• For a donor who's been giving at a certain level, what's the right ask amount to help them move up to a higher level?

• When a member is coming up for renewal, how many reminder emails will get them to renew, and how many will just annoy them?

Whatever your specific goals are, what are the trends that, if your knew them, would help you get there?

If you have that information, it's incredibly useful. Presumably you would have started collecting it sometime ago.

That would have been the best time to start.

Would you like to guess when is the second-best time to start?

All the best,
A.