Measurements you’ll actually use

Every day, your CRM is collecting tons of measurable data that you're probably ignoring.

That's expected, of course. You're probably not interested in all of it.

But what measurements would you actually like to have?

When you say, "If I knew X, then I could Y," what's that X?

If it's related to your people — donors, event participants, members, staff — there's a good chance your CRM is tracking it, or could be made to track it, or a meaningful approximation of it, while requiring little effort on your part

You just have to know what it is you want to measure, and why.

Once you have that, actually tracking it might be a lot easier than you think.

All the best,
A.

The best time to get an answer is...

The best time to get an answer is...

... when you have a question.

Something magical happens when we're curious.

There's a gap in our knowledge. We see it. And we feel the need to fill it.

In that moment, there's a little space open in the reference library of our mind — a little spot already mapped out in the structure of our learning, so we’ll be able to find it easily later on.

And it's just waiting to be filled with good information.

That's the beauty of curiosity: it's like a little signal flare that pops off at the times when your brain is most receptive to new info.

When my coaching clients reach out to me with specific real-world questions, in the moments when they need the answers, that makes for some of the most effective instructional time we could have together.

Hopefully, when that little light goes on for you, you've got someone you can reach out to and get your questions answered.

All the best,
A.

What’s shaping your strategy?

Here's a quick list of three different reasons my clients sometimes give for selecting a particular plan of action:

1. “Because this is how we did it last year.”

2. “Because our CRM is built this way.”

3. “Because doing it this way allows us to achieve this specific goal that we've targeted.”

Which one of those do you think is the most valuable?

I'd say none of them are downright useless. Each has its value in the right situation.

But one of them is so much more useful than the others.

“This is how we did it last year”

This really makes me wonder if the directors have put any time at all into assessing whether last year's plan is actually worth repeating.

Was last year's project successful? Then why not go for something better?

Do you know whether the last year's program was smash hit or a complete flop? Do you know what made it so?

Just repeating last year's plan leaves you open to repeating its failures missing out on significantly better results.

“Our CRM is built this way.”

Okay, that's a pragmatic approach. Kudos for working with your tools instead of against them. But I wonder what you're leaving on the table by just going with the flow.

Working with your software instead of against it is one thing. Letting its features define your strategy is quite something else.

“Doing it doing it this way will help us reach our goals”

This sounds like the winner to me.

It starts with the goal and uses it to motivate and inform the strategy.

It looks to the future and starts now preparing for it.

It remembers that there is a purpose for every action, and that action without purpose is wasted.

Whatever campaign you have coming up on the horizon, I hope you can take time to think about the goals you want to achieve.

And then shape a strategy around those goals with an eye on the future.

All the best,
A.

Progress

Do you feel more confident about your CRM strategy, skill-sets, and systems than you did 6 months ago? A year ago? Two years ago?

Are you actually getting more value out of your CRM than you did then?

If you are, congratulations. That means you're making real progress in your ability to put your CRM to work for your mission.

If you're not, it might be worth asking why.

As with so many things — career development, nutrition and health, hobbies and lifestyle — these changes don't happen overnight.

They’re the result of consistent incremental effort over time.

If you'd like to look back in 6 months or a year and know that you’ve increased your ability to leverage your CRM in accomplishing your goals, a good time to start making those incremental improvements might be … right now.

All the best,
A.

3 criteria for good measurements

You can't improve what you don't measure.

(Or at least, if you don't measure it, you can't know if you've improved it.)

But how do you decide what to measure?

Outcomes, outputs, leading indicators, trailing indicators, expenditures — you could measure any of that, and more.

Except, of course, you can't measure everything.

Because even measuring requires an expenditure of time, effort, even money.

Here's a set of three criteria you can use in picking the measurements that will be most valuable to your work.

I recommend taking each of these in order. Start with the first criteria before moving on to the second and third.

1. Is it meaningful?

There's no point measuring something that doesn't matter to you. So to use this criteria, you have to think about what really matters to you.

Of course mission outcomes matter. They're the reason you're doing your work in the first place. So they would pass this criteria.

But other things are meaningful too. Leading indicators of success. Expenditures that might reveal an opportunity for, or the achievement of, increased efficiency.

When you hear yourself saying, "If I knew _________, then I could ...", that blank is something meaningful. Maybe it's worth measuring.

2. Is it measurable?

There are lots of things we'd like to know that are just hard to measure. For example, the actual impact you make in the world can be very hard to measure.

But often there are proxies that can be measured.

If you have access to solid research indicating that students who complete high school are less likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system, then the number of kids you've helped to complete high school is a proxy measurement for how many you've helped avoid jail time.

And for the things that you really can't find a way to measure, either directly or by proxy, the only honest answer is that you can't measure them right now.

And if something's not actually measurable, even by some approximation, isn’t it a little silly to say that you intend to measure it?

3. Is it manageable?

Finally, keep in mind that these measurements will require some level of diligence, attention to detail, and consistency.

And that level is a variable you can control.

Not every valid measurement has to be a randomized double-blind peer-reviewed study fit for publication in a national journal.

But for whatever level of detail you decide to measure, your effort has to be manageable, so that you can do it consistently over time, and so that your measurement will be more than a mere guess.

That means there's no need to get in over your head. You can pick a simple measurement scheme — which will provide a lot more value than no measurement at all — without it becoming a massive burden in your work.

Here's the thing:

Good measurements will provide valuable insights into your work and its effectiveness — and into ways that you can improve that work within your means.

Even the simplest measurement scheme, if it's meaningful to your work, measurable in some quantifiable way, and manageably consistent, really will get you some of those valuable insights.

All the best,
A.

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.