CiviCRM misconceptions: “It’s easy”

When you first try out a live CiviCRM demo, it's looks pretty nice.

Everything is set up for a hypothetical organization with hypothetical needs, and it all runs quite smoothly.

This leads to CiviCRM misconception #4: "It's easy."

Sure, CiviCRM makes a lot of things much easier than they might have been, and you can get a lot done with it.

But expecting it to be “easy” is probably a mistake.

As with anything, you'll need to do a good bit of work to shape it to your needs.

• Set up compatible hosting.

• Set up outbound email services and payment processes.

• Tweak the configuration to sit your needs for memberships, events, contributions, and more.

• Import existing data from other systems

• Development a training plan for you and your team

• Implement a permissions scheme that gives staff only the access they really need

• ... and more.

In short, you'll have to make CiviCRM work for your real-world needs, not just the hypothetical needs of a hypothetical demo organization.

And, as always, you'll have to make hard choices about which goals you'll pursue — and which ones you won't — and how your CRM can support this goals.

But of course, that's always true, whether you're using CiviCRM or not.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM misconceptions: "It's free!"

More CiviCRM misconceptions to deal with — Thanks again to all of you who are sending these in!

CiviCRM misconception #3: "It's free!"

This one is totally understandable. As a community-funded organization, every expenditure counts. So a CRM that demands no fees is naturally an attention-getter.

And it's really tempting to take that at face value. Because it just sounds so great.

But of course, there's a cost to everything.

• The time you and your staff spend learning managing anything is a limited resource, and it's precious.

• Any online system has to live somewhere, so it requires hosting and infrastructure, which will have some kind of cost.

• Hiring outside help is an investment of time and money, and there's a good chance you'll want to do that with CiviCRM, at some point.

It can help a lot to have some idea of what those costs will be before you dive in. But the irony is that, without experience, it can be hard to predict those costs.

Here's the thing:

CiviCRM is free, in all the meanings of that word:

• It's free as in "free beer." Since there are no licensing or subscription fees, you can install and use it without paying a dime, ever.

• It’s free as in "free speech." Because it's released under an open-source license, you can always do whatever you want with it, or modify it however you like. The sky's the limit.

• It's free as in "free kittens." It's fun to play with in the beginning, and then it's up to you to take care of it as it grows. Feeding, vet bills, scratched furniture, and the rest.

And as with anything, the important question is not, "How much does it cost?" but, "What is the value of it, and is that worth the investment?"

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM misconceptions: “Just another plugin”

Here's another CiviCRM misconception I'm hearing about:

CiviCRM misconception #2: “It's just another WordPress plugin / Drupal module / etc.”

The premise here is that since CiviCRM operates as a plugin in WordPress (or a module in Drupal), that installing and managing it will be like most other plugins/modules.

But if you've tried that, you'll know it's not that simple.

• Typical plugins install — and upgrade — easily with one click via WordPress's plugin management feature. CiviCRM installation is significantly more involved.

• Typical plugins offer a few features and no more. CiviCRM offers a whole raft of features (and thus, more complexity).

• Typical plugins will run properly on any server that supports WordPress. CiviCRM has a few additional system requirements.

Naturally, there are plenty of good reasons to clear those hurdles and put CiviCRM to work in your organization.

But knowing that the hurdles exist in the first place can make the whole "getting started" experience a lot smoother.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM misconceptions: “It’s perfect for us!”

Thanks to everyone who responded to yesterday's email on CiviCRM misconceptions.

Here's one that I really like:

CiviCRM misconception #1: "It's perfect for us."

If you thought this at the beginning, you've almost certainly found some ways that it's not completely perfect for you.

Sure, it might be the best available choice. And you might still love it for the value you get out of it.

But like any software (or any system), it's not without its flaws:

• Bugs do appear now and then.

• It makes assumptions that are sometimes different from yours.

• When its features are "just right," it's great; but when they're "just almost right," it can get a little frustrating.

Here's the thing:

Even with the most "perfect" system, there will be challenges.

But if you can pick your battles wisely, and take steps to master that system for everything it can offer, to be in a good spot to make it work well for you.

You’re not just looking for “perfect tools” — you’re looking to perfect your entire way of working, and that’s a never-ending process.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM misconceptions?

You've been using CiviCRM for a while now.

There are probably some things you learned along the way that you wish you'd known from the beginning.

I'd really love to hear what those are, for you, personally.

Please shoot me a quick reply. I'll summarize the responses in another email to the list (but of course won't share your name or private details, unless you want me to).

1. What do you wish you'd known about CiviCRM from the beginning?

2. How would knowing that have changed things for you?

Thanks,
A.

Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

— Attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of European Allied forces in WWII, later U.S. President

An old military adage asserts that "no plan survives the first contact with the enemy," yet military planning is still taught as an essential skill for leaders in all military organizations.

I'm not convinced that all plans are useless, or that they all fall apart when the action begins, but it's worth asking: If that were true, why would planning have any value at all?

Because the environment will shift. Staff turnover, new technologies, changes in regulations, competition for your audience's attention, all of that and more conspire to derail your plans.

But planning makes you think ahead.

It forces you to define your goals, and the metrics by which you will measure success, and the resources that you have available, and the challenges that you may face, and the methods you will use to achieve your desired outcomes.

If you're doing that, you'll be ready to shift with the changing environment.

Here's the thing:

You can't predict the future. But thinking ahead, in detail, makes you all the more ready to respond to everything that will happen on the way to your goals.

All the best,
A.

P.S. The Eisenhower quotation above is a very popular form of his statement, but the specific phrasing seems to be Richard Nixon’s.

Writing down your goals

When you set a goal for the coming week, or quarter, or year, are you writing them down?

Sure, there's nothing truly special about writing down a goal.

But it does allow you to double-check whether that goal is well articulated, and specific.

It also gives you a chance to reflect on whether it's reasonable, and to consider the objective metrics you'll need to achieve to get there.

It's nice to say that you have goals.

Writing them down is one way to help ensure you really know what they are.

All the best,
A.

Win or lose, you’re gathering information

When the time period for your goal is reached, you can see pretty clearly whether you’ve achieved that goal or not.

It’s tempting to think of those as winning or losing. After all, if you failed to reach your goal, it feels like a loss.

But remember: While the results of an achieved goal are valuable in themselves, there’s a valuable win for you in either scenario.

That’s because the process of setting goals and measuring against them is not just about getting the results as a one-time effort. It’s a way to learn some very important things about your processes:

• Were your goals realistic and well informed?

• How effective are your strategies and tactics?

• How well do you understand the tasks and objectives that lead to desirable outcomes?

• How good are your processes in carrying out those tasks and reaching those objectives?

• Where could you tweak your processes to improve any of the above?

Answers — honest, well-thought answers — to those questions are the real, valuable outcomes of your post-mortem inquiry.

Whether you achieved your stated goal or not, that post-mortem is your chance to regroup and improve your processes for your next goal.

Here’s the thing:

Because you’ll always be trying to improve your results, a goal is not merely an effort to achive a certain outcome.

Most importantly, it’s a test of your proceses. And if you’re not testing and improving your processes, you have no reason to expect improvement in the outcomes.

All the best,
A.

Handling a loss

If you're coming to the end of your annual holiday campaign, and you haven't reached your goals, you'll have to deal with that, one way or another.

Failing at a goal is not fun. But it's also not a complete loss.

Instead, it's a win for your information gathering.

After all, you did set a goal. And then you worked for it, and then you paid attention to the results in comparison to your goal.

Those are things that a lot of people just don't do.

But the real point here is that you are gathering information.

The goal outcome was of course something that you wanted to achieve, for its own value.

But more importantly, the goal served as a test of your methods. Because even if you had reached that goal, you wouldn't just stop there; you’d go on to set more goals.

Win or lose, your ability to reach your goal is an indication of the strength of your methods.

The real win here is that achieving the goal — or failing to achieve it — gives you the chance to improve your methods so that you can make better results in your next effort:

• More realistic goals.

• More effective tactics and strategies.

• More focused effort by the right team members on the right tasks.

Here's the thing:

Failing to achieve a goal is not a failure, unless you let it pass without learning and improving.

All the best,
A.

Handling a win

Napoleon famously said, "The most dangerous moment comes with victory."

Many of you are coming to the end of your annual or holiday campaigns in the next few days.

Hopefully you'll be able to celebrate a little as you find that you've reached your goals.

The question is, what's next?

I suspect the reason Napoleon said what he did is that it's easy to spend too much time celebrating and then forget to set the next goal.

There's always something more to do.

What are you planning next?

All the best,
A.

Training vs oversight

Getting results with CiviCRM requires that you master its functionality.

That comes through training, and practice. It's just a technical skill.

You can be self-taught, or you can get help, like my CiviCRM Success Coaching program.

But there's something else you need: oversight. Somebody has to be responsible that your CRM is well configured, well used, and well maintained.

That's pretty hard to outsource.

You need someone who knows your programs, policies, and goals. And that usually means someone who's inside your organization.

Here's the thing:

You can have someone from the outside help you master the technical skill.

But someone on the inside has to be sure those skills are used appropriately for your organization's goals.

If you don't know who that is, it's worth putting some thought into.

All the best,
A.

Nothing solves everything

My wife and I decided to homeschool our kids, as a solution to some problems we were seeing in the public school environment. It solves a lot of those problems, but maybe it brings up new problems of its own.

I decided to stop doing my own car repair even for small fixes, and hand that off to a professional, because of problems I was having doing it myself. It solves a lot of those problems, but maybe it brings up new problems of its own.

You've chosen CiviCRM as your primary constituent management system, because of problems you noticed with whatever other options you might have had.

And just like everything else, it solves a lot of those problems, but maybe it brings up new problems of its own.

Here's the thing:

No solution solves every problem.

Hopefully, you're able to compare objectively, and you’re content that your chosen solution is the one that solves the most problems, or at least the most valuable problems.

If it doesn't, why are you sticking with that solution?

All the best,
A.

Sometimes slower is better

CiviCRM charges no fees for its upgrade releases, which come out at least once a month.

So you can upgrade as frequently as you like, for free.

So why would anybody pay for the ability to upgrade less frequently?

Maybe you didn't even know that was an option. But the CiviCRM project offers an Extended Security Release plan, and many organizations pay between $20 and $100 a month for the privilege.

The reason is simple:

Upgrades that add new features can also introduce conflicts with your extensions, and other bugs. It’s just a reality of ongoing development in an active software project.

Having an easy way to get the latest security fixes without introducing those potential bugs is a genuine benefit.

Here's the thing:

Always sticking with the latest cutting edge version does have drawbacks, to the extent that some people are willing to pay to avoid such problems.

You definitely want to get the latest security fixes, but it's wise to consider the potential downside of always chasing the latest version.

Sometimes, slower is better.

All the best,
A.

Friction

When you catch yourself doing something you really don't want to do...

that's friction.

I don’t mean intentionally doing things you don't especially enjoy, like exercising for health, or deciding to eat less pie at the big holiday meal.

I mean the things you really feel you shouldn't have to do, but do anyway. The little tedious tasks you would outsource if you could. The annoying extra hoops you have to jump through to complete an important task.

That friction adds up.

In the extra time you spend. In mental stress. In distraction. Even in avoidance

What if you could remove it? Would you? At what cost of time and effort? What would that get you?

The truth is, you probably could remove a lot of it for an investment that's smaller than the benefit.

What's stopping you?

All the best,
A.

Daily practice = daily motivation

Are you creating systems of daily or weekly habits that help you reach your goals? Then you might have noticed that you get something pretty cool in the bargain:

Frequent, short-term achievement.

Here’s the thing:

Goals are awesome as long-term incentives. But that long-term aspect has its limitations.

Want to increase total contributions in your annual campaign by 15%?

Yes, that will be great when it happens, and that's worth celebrating.

But that can only happen once a year.

On the other hand, if you set up a system of daily and weekly habits that point you in that direction, and you actually stick to that system, you get small victories to celebrate every day, and every week.

If you stick to that system for a month, then you have a streak of small victories, and that streak by itself is worth celebrating.

Sure, it's not the big celebration you'll have when you reach your annual goal, but it's a series of real, if small, victories.

Try it for yourself. I think you'll see it's a genuine motivator in the short term for behaviors you know will help you get what you want in the long term.

All the best,
A.

Better results?

"We don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems."

- James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: Tiny changes, Remarkable Results

The systems you have in place now — for outreach, for fundraising, for team communications, for personal time management — are perfectly optimized for the results you are getting now.

If you want to improve those results, why would you not want to improve the systems that generate them?

All the best,
A.

How to run a marathon

Say you're taking up running, and you've set a goal to run a marathon in the coming year.

How can you make that happen?

The simplest answer is something like, "Pick a marathon, register, and go run it."

But that's obviously incomplete.

If you've never run a marathon before, your chance of just showing up and completing one, on willpower alone, is just about zero.

To achieve this goal, what you need is to become a person who can complete a marathon.

And that will require a system of training: A series of daily and weekly habits that you adopt to build your endurance and your understanding of the marathon experience.

That's not just a commitment to running a marathon. It's a commitment to daily improvement.

So here's the thing:

If you have goals for the coming year, that's great (and if you don't, I hope you'll take time to set some}.

But to reach those goals, you'll probably also want to think about what it will take to get there, and to build in daily and weekly habits that will make it more likely to happen.

Goals are important to aim for. Systems are important for getting you there.

All the best,
A.

Finding help that fits you

Are you a person who loves to learn new skills, to really understand how things work and why? Let's call that "curiosity-driven."

Or are you more interested in seeing the results, and don't care much how they get done? Let's call that "outcome-driven."

We all have a little of both.

And most of us are more curiosity-driven in some areas, more outcome-driven in others.

Here's a question:

When you're seeking outside help with your systems, do you take time to get help that matches your curiosity-driven or outcome-driven interest?

Service providers aren't always clear about which one of these is a good fit for them. Some love to deliver outcomes, and hate explaining things. Others love to satisfy your curiosity, and care less about doing the detailed work for you.

Outcome-driven vs curiosity-driven.

If you want help that you're happy with, take a moment to figure out which of these describes your own motivation, and then take time to find a provider who likes to fill that need.

All the best,
A.

The hidden cost of delegation

When there's too much work to do yourself, it may be time to delegate: You can assign the task to one of your team, hire outside help, or even make a new internal hire.

But there's a hidden cost of delegation you should be aware of.

Because the ideal of delegation contains an important contradiction:

• You'd like someone to do it for you. Just take the task from you, get it done, and come back with everything finished.

• But you also want them to do it the way you would have done it.

The more you care about how it's done, and the more you care about the specific details of the implementation, the more time you'll have to spend in training, or at least in communicating your wishes.

The alternative is to address that contradiction in one of two ways:

1. Work out an efficient system by which you can get the work done yourself.

2. Decide to care less about how it's done and more about the outcome you aim to achieve.

There's a third option, too: Once you recognize the cost of doing it yourself and/or delegating, you might decide that the task is not worth doing, at least right now.

And that's totally okay. Picking your battles wisely is a valuable skill.

All the best,
A.

3 options for CiviCRM support

Let's look at your three general options for keeping your CiviCRM installation (and the Drupal or WordPress site that contains it) in good working order.

We'll compare these across three criteria:

• Reliability / ease

• Customizability

• Affordability / Low cost

Remember, the central question here is:
Who is the specific individual responsible for making your site do everything it should?

1. CiviCRM as a service

This includes CiviCRM Spark and similar hosted offerings.

• Reliability / ease: Pretty good. These services will make sure your site is always running well, but you can still screw up the configuration if you're not careful.

• Customizability: None, really. To achieve that “pretty good” reliability at a reasonable expense, these services will lock down the features and even limit you to a predetermined list of available extensions. You won't be able to add your own custom extensions, either.

• Affordability: Pretty good. CiviCRM Spark is incredibly affordable, and the others are not too bad.

2. Full-service agency support:

This is an arrangement that you might make with a CiviCRM provider be your hands-on maintenance and configuration team. In its most full-service form, you'd be calling them for almost any configuration change that you want.

• Reliability / ease: Very high, assuming the provider is as responsive as you need. (This can vary by provider, and like anything, that can be hard to know until you've actually worked with them.) Part of their service will be to tell you when you’ve asked for something that’s unwise, and to ensure all configurations actually make sense in terms of what you want.

• Customizability: Very high. A provider who is offering this level of service will be able to create whatever custom features you need, and then make sure it works well with your configuration.

• Affordability / Low cost: Not so great. The provider is potentially performing a lot of work at your request. They're also taking on the responsibility to make sure everything works flawlessly. You can expect to pay handsomely for this level of service.

3. In-house expert (with or without outside help):

This is the model most of my clients are using — which is not surprising, because it's also the model that I most like to support.

In this model, you'll designate one of your own staff to be the in-house expert. This is your responsible person. Any questions about the system come to this person. Any change to the system is done by this person or their staff.

• Reliability / ease: Varies, depending on the attention this person gives to their responsibility.
  
  in the beginning, this in-house expert will often need help from an outside expert. That need generally decreases over time, as they become more familiar with the system.
  
  But any problems with your system (or improvements to it) will always be the responsibility of one of your own staff.

• Customizability: Very high. Your in-house expert can install whatever extensions they like, and if they want they can hire someone to develop custom extensions for them (or even learn to do that themselves, if that's their thing).
  
  In truth, this system belongs entirely to your organization, and you can make it do anything you want.

• Affordability / Low cost: Rather low, but this varies. Your cash outlay to outside providers will be fairly low. But you should also count the staff member's time. Even if they're a volunteer, time is a limited resource, and its use is an expense.

So to sum up, to might choose:

• CiviCRM as a service: If you don't need customization and are fine with the limited features, but like the reliability and price.

• Full-service agency support: If you have a business case for expensive white-glove support.

• In-house expert (with or without outside help): If you want maximum flexibility and are willing to put in the work of mastering CiviCRM.

And if none of those exactly work for you, talk with a CiviCRM partner. They may be able to work out some hybrid that meets your budget and your preferred balance of freedom and responsibility.

But all of these options share two caveats. Can you spot them?

I'll spell those out tomorrow.

All the best,
A.