The cost of deferred maintenance

Just because something isn’t urgent doesn't mean it's not important.

Sure, most nonprofits have their resources stretched very thin, in both money and time.

So it's tempting to delay what can be delayed, focusing only on the things that demand our immediate attention.

But the result is deferred maintenance, a deceptively costly approach.

If you don't think it's costly, consider this real-world example:

Kansas State University recently decided to demolish 20 campus buildings, including the indoor swimming facility and the gymnasium, rather than face the expense of catching up on decades of delayed repairs and maintenance.

You’re (probably) not in the business of managing university campus facilities. But your operations do rely on maintaining accurate CRM data and effective tools to leverage that data.

So you’ll need to consider tasks like these:

• Detecting and merging duplicate contact records.
• Documenting and implementing a solid permission scheme for your users.
• Performing security updates.
• Ensuring you have a sound backup system for all data and files.
• Conducting regular trainings to keep your staff up to date with the latest system functionality.

Obviously those are all important and valuable.

But they’re nothing your board will demand that you solve right away. A major donor isn’t going to call you at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday, irate that you haven't addressed these things.

In other words, it's a can that you could kick down the road.

But unless you enjoy demolishing things that have not been properly maintained, I encourage you to make time for the ongoing maintenance.

All the best,
A.

Improving the providers’ registry

Yesterday I shared some highlights of my demo talk showing off the New Mexico Respite Provider Registry, and as promised, here are some additional thoughts on improvments we're considering to make it even better.

To be sure, the New Mexico registry is doing its job quite well. Providers are registering, and folks who need their services are finding help.

So what, you might ask, could be better than that?

If you’re thinking of creating your own provider directory, that’s a great question to ask.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Make it more beautiful

In line with thoughts on the value of good design (and examples) that I’ve shared recently, there’s no denying that a beautiful presentation has significant power to create trust and buy-in among users. — even if precisely quantifying that value can be a challenge.

As an example, take a look at the soon-to-launch New York State respite registry (not my project BTW, just one that was also showcased during our recent presentation at the ARCH National Lifespan Respite Conference). It’s a great example of what can be achieved with a little (or a lot of) judicious investment in typography, color, and stock photography.

2. Add helpful content

First-time visitors to your directory — whether they’re seeking services or offering them — probably won’t already be sold right away on how they’ll benefit by participating.

Adding some instructive information can go a long way. Consider topics like:

• Is this service right for me?

• How does this directory work?

• Are your providers screened, trained, or otherwise specially qualified?

• Why would I want to be listed as a provider?

• Am I qualified to be listed as a provider, and how could I become qualified?

3. Provide testimonials

It goes without saying that you think your directory is useful. But does anyone else think so?

First-time (or fifth-time) visitors may not be so sure.

Trusting one of your providers is an investement of effort on the part of those seeking services.
Creating a listing is an investment of effort on the part of the providers.

Collecting — and sharing — testimonials from both of these groups is an incredibly effective way to let your visitors see the value they’ll get from that investment.

Here’s the thing:

The beauty of a public service provider directory lies in its ability to connect people who really want to be connected. People who may be not able to find each other in any other way.

To make that truly effective, something of a “critical mass” is necessary: Shoppers don’t like to visit a shopping mall with empty stores; and retailers don’t like to maintain stores in a mall with no foot traffic.

By making your directory beautiful, adding helpful content, and providing testimonials from happy folks (both providers and seekers), you can help ensure that there’s a healthy give-and-take of traffic between both audiences.

All the best,
A.

Respite providers registry: demo talk

If you’re interested in building a service provider directory with your CRM data, you might like to take a closer look at the New Mexico Respite Provider Registry as an example.

Thanks to the kind invitation of the folks at the New Mexico Caregivers Coalition (NMCC), I presented an overview of this public directory at the ARCH National Lifespan Respite Conference 2025, last week in Huntsville, Alabama.

The slides for this talk are here, and I encourage you to give it a quick look.

A brief overview of what we covered:

• User experience both for “searchers” and “listed providers”

• Searching by service type, geographical proximity (e.g. “within 20 miles of Santa Fe”), and more

• Easy account creation and profile management for providers

• Registry administration by NMCC staff:

  • Review listings and approve / deny / suspend, etc.

  • Enforce requirements for periodic updating of profiles

  • Staff editing of profiles

• Automatic email reminders to providers who haven’t updated their profiles in X days

• Development of the registry:

  • Time to launch (e.g., ~2.5 months from project start to launch date)

  • Maintenance effort and costs (e.g. ~30 hours of outside support to date, since launching 2 years ago)

Tomorrow, I’ll write again with some thoughts on improvments to make it even better.

All the best,
A.

Building a service provider directory with CiviCRM

Does your organization have members who'd benefit from being listed in a publicly searchable directory?

Think about it:

• The data is already in your CRM.

• Your members are probably already keeping it up to date themselves.

• Making (some of) that data searchable and publicly available is not especially difficult.

If your members are offering services to the public, making some of that information in a public directory is one way your organization could provide a significant value to your members.

A couple of examples, both powered by CiviCRM data:

• The Massachusetts Council on Family Mediation offers visitors their Find A Mediator directory to search for family mediation providers by geography, area of practice, certification, and name.

• The New Mexico Respite Provider Registry allows respite care providers to create and manage their own public listing, which site visitors — folks in New Mexico who are actively seeking respite care — can search by name, geography, areas of specialization, and more.

Each of those examples relies on standard out-of-the-box CiviCRM features, plus some custom development to make it work "just right" per the organization's needs.

Here's the thing:

If you've got professional members who'd benefit from additional exposure to a curated audience that you can attract, then building a directory from your existing CRM data is within your reach — and could be a major point of value in your membership growth plan.

All the best,
A.

The first pancake

A friend from Russia once told me they had a saying in her family:

The first pancake always comes out funny.

I don't know if that's a Russian saying or if it was only in her family.

She was using it as a wisecrack about her older sister who, judging from her reaction, had heard it before. But I must have used it a hundred times myself since then, in plenty of other contexts:

• first draft of a blog post

• first time trying Jiu Jitsu (or dance, or a musical instrument, or a foreign language)

• first time driving a car on the open road

• first time building a report, or configuring online event registration, or almost anything else, in your CRM.

They're all going to "come out funny," unless you just happen to get lucky.

The only way to avoid that is to never get started.

… which is also a good way to avoid the tenth time and the hundredth time, when it finally starts to look good.

Here's the thing:

You can't be trying new things all the time …
And you don't want it to look funny every time …

But if you want to get good at it, you'll have to endure that first-time awkwardness, at least for a while.

All the best,
A.

How to make a sandwich

Could you write instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Burroughs, once gave us exactly that assignment.

She said, “You write it out. I'll bring the ingredients and follow your instructions precisely.”

Of course, Mrs. Burroughs had a point to make.

She knew as well as we did what the outcome should look like, but she made a point of following our instructions to the letter in a way that would result in anything but an edible sandwich, no matter what we'd written.

We all had a good laugh, and she noted for us the lesson:

When you know what the outcome is supposed to be, claiming that you followed all the instructions is not as useful as showing that you got what you started out to create.

I took home a couple of additional lessons:

• It's easy to get caught up in the details and forget the outcome you're trying to achieve.

• Some things are so simple they don't need explanation. To much explanation can even make it worse.

• Often, there's no “one right way.” It's okay to give it a try and see what comes out.

If I could do the assignment again, I think I’d just write this:

1. Think of what a peanut butter and jelly sandwich looks like.
2. Arrange some bread, peanut butter, and jelly, so it looks like that.
3. If you need help, ask me.

And that's the remaining lesson:

When you can't figure out how to get the results you want, it can help a lot to step back, figure out where you're getting stuck, and ask for help from someone who's done it before.

All the best,
A.

Making CiviCRM beautiful

How important is it that your CRM should look beautiful for your staff?

After all, staff can be trained. And they should, in theory, already be bought-in on your mission. Maybe you don't need to impress them with beautiful design.

But then again, there's no denying that they are people, and are thus susceptible to subtle cues that lead to trust, confidence, and pride in their work.

Or the lack thereof.

Just as you might invest in maintaining pleasant and modern office decor, there are tangible benefits to giving your staff a CRM interface that's it's pleasant to look at.

If you've been running CiviCRM for a while, you may expect it to look something like this:

But with a few simple configuration changes, it could look more like this:

All the functionality is exactly the same, and I would argue that the latter design is indeed preferable.

It just looks nicer.

And if you could have that, for virtually no additional cost or effort, would you want it?

I would.

Here’s how to get it:

1. Navigate to Administer > System Settings > Extensions, and there install the extension “RiverLea CiviCRM Theme Framework”

2. Navigate to Administer > Customize Data and Screens > Display Preferences, and there find the setting, “Backend Theme”; for this setting, select any of the “RiverLea” themes. (The above screenshot uses the one labeled “Walbrook (RiverLea ~Shoreditch/Island)”, but you can easily switch to another if you prefer, or just switch it back to “Automatic” if you want the “old” look.)

Now, isn’t that nice?

All the best,
A.

P.S. The RiverLea extension has been part of CiviCRM since version 5.80.0. And since CiviCRM’s last security release was 5.80.2, I’m assuming you’ve got it!

Be sure it works

Can you guess why I was the first one to register for CiviCon 2025? And for the post-conference sprint? And for the pre-conference Admin Training?

• Because I was worried about space running out? (It could, but that’s not it.)

• Because I was just so excited to see CiviCon happening in the US again? (I am, but that’s not it.)

How about this:

It's because I was the one who created those event registration forms.

Why should that matter?

Before I told the entire world that registration was open for those events, I wanted to be 100% confident that the registration process was solid.

So I logged out of CiviCRM. And visited those forms myself as an anonymous user. And then registered and paid. For each event.

Sure, I didn't have to. If I had skipped that step, everything would probably have been just fine. Probably.

But then again…

I spoke with someone last week at an organization whose main donation page had been broken for months before they realized it. Fortunately, a friend emailed him personally to let him know.

But from our conversation, we felt pretty sure that he would have spotted it long ago, if he had tried making a donation himself after the last time he made changes to that page.

Here’s the thing:

None of us are perfect, and any number of little mistakes can make it difficult or impossible for our constituents to take that next step.

And if they’re having trouble donating, or registering for events, or completing a membership form … you probably won’t hear about it. They’ll just move on to something else.

If you’re lucky, a friend will notice and let you know. Eventually.

But a couple of minutes testing it yourself … that’s usually time well spent.

All the best,
A.

Wait, what’s FormBuilder?

Sometimes I just write stuff and assume folks will know what I’m talking about. Not great, but it happens.

List reader MJ wrote back with a question on my Search Kit. Form Builder. email:

Good morning, Allen! I just wanted to clarify—when you mention "form building," are you referring to the registration forms for our events? If so, I'd be really interested to see what you have in mind.

Thanks, MJ

It’s a great question for me because it reminds me that not everyone is as “deep in the mud” of CiviCRM as I am.

So to explain a little more:

What is this Form Builder you speak of? And can it help with my event registrations?

This is not directly related to event registration — indeed, at this point, it can't handle paid event registrations at all (or any kind of payment). And it's not much related to anything you've probably done in CiviCRM so far — it's a totally new set of features!

FormBuilder is the new drag-and-drop form creation tool in CiviCRM. It's similar to working with Profiles, in that you can specify which fields appear on the form, but it does much more:

• Position fields easily in any order, in a variety of layouts, with the drag-and-drop form editor.

• Create special-purpose forms for data entry by logged in users or anonymous visitors.

• Specify which permissions a user needs in order to access the form.

• Define a specific URL (web address) to access the form

• Easily group fields in sections or boxes with various options for outline style, background color, etc.

FormBuilder doesn't yet support payments, so it's not going to replace your contribution pages or event forms for paid registrations or memberships — but that's on the list of features "soon to come" (whenever "soon" is).

But its powerful layout tools, along with the types of data it supports (activities, related contacts, cases, and more) make it much more flexible than profiles, and useful for a wider array of needs.

For example, I'm using it now with a client who's doing a series of surveys as part of a grant-funded research project, and it's the kind of thing we really couldn't do (or rather, not do as well) with Profiles.

You can find it under Administer > Customize Data and Screens > FormBuilder. It won't hurt to play around with creating new forms if you like, but I'll offer two qualifiers there:

1. Probably best not to modify any existing forms that you find there; CiviCRM is probably relying on those to function just as they are designed now, and fiddling with them could have some surprising and undesirable effects.

2. Getting started on your own is a steep learning curve. The official FormBuilder documentation can help, but even the official docs have trouble keeping up with the rapid pace of improvement in FormBuilder.

So to sum up:

If you've never heard of it, you probably don't want to dive into it. But when you have an unusual need that can't be handled with Profiles, someone who's familiar with FormBuilder might be able to suggest ways that it could help.

I hope this helps!

All the best,
- A.

Starting the relationship

What does it take for someone to progress from hearing about you for the first time to being a repeat major donor?

For most of your supporters, that journey will start off something like this:

1. They hear about you

2. They're interested in you

3. They care about your cause

4. They believe in your work

5. They seek out ways to help

6. They take action to help

That progression is a funnel that decreases in number at each step:

Of a thousand people who hear about you for the first time, something less than a thousand will be interested in you. And far fewer will make it as far as taking action to help.

So part of the challenge here is increasing the number of people who make it from one step to another.

What's even more challenging is this:

At those early stages, you probably won't even know who they are.

This above all else is the reason your communications must be crystal clear about:

• What you do

• Why to do it

• The difference you're making

• One or two bone-simple, "heck yeah," easy, no-commitment ways for them to stay connected (and to tell you who they are).

Because once you've got that, the real relationship can begin.

And without that, you have almost no way at all to help them take that next step.

All the best,
A.

Search Kit. Form Builder.

Form Builder.
Search Kit.

Very powerful.
Relatively new.
Rather complex.
Super flexible.
Rapidly improving.

Have you tried them?
Have you heard of them?
Are you loving them?
Are you frustrated by them?

Frankly I've been unsure how to introduce them to CiviCRM admins.

They're very powerful, but require a good understanding of CiviCRM's underlying data structures —something many non-technical admins don't think much about.

If you’d like to learn more, I've got two options for you:

1. Sign up for the pre-conference Admin Training at CiviCon in May. Both Form Builder and Search Kit are on the agenda.

2. Reply here within the next 7 days, and I'll schedule a free one-on-one session to explore these features with you. Yep, no charge. It's worth my time to learn more about how to explain them to non-technical admins, and if it's worth your time to learn more about the features themselves, then we have a win-win situation. (Space is limited, and it’s first-come-first-served, so don’t wait!)

All the best,
A.

“But we did the work!”

How important is good old hard work? And by comparison, how important is the outcome of all that work?

Here’s a story my grandfather liked to tell:

I was sitting right there on the porch when these two fellas come up the street, walkin’ along in the median, with shovels.

One of ‘em would dig a hole. Then they’d look at it for a minute. Then the other’n would fill ‘er in.

Then they’d walk on and do it again.

Well I hollered out and said, “What in the hell are you two boys doin’?”

And one of ‘em said they was plantin’ trees. Plantin’ trees, he says!

Well I said, “How you figure?”

And he says, “Well, this here’s our job for the city, and we do it like they told us. I dig the hole. Johnson puts in the tree. And Bill here, he fills it in.”

I said, “Where’s Johnson?”

And he says, “Johnson called in sick this morning. Says he’s feelin’ awful. ‘Course, we all know he’s gone fishin’. … But me and Bill here, we ain’t loafers. We show up and do our work!”

Boy, he really loved that one.

But here’s the thing:

It’s a silly story.

Nobody can be so short-sighted as to think that their job is just to do what they’re told, without regard for the actual outcome — can they?

Nobody can get so caught up in the details of their work that they forget to consider whether they’re accomplishing something useful — can they?

Nobody can get so focused on tools and techniques that they forget why they acquired the tools in the first place — can they?

Sure they can. Happens all the time.

Don’t let it happen to you.

All the best,
A.

Do you own your CRM data?

A well known political fundraising platform has been in the news recently, as they seem to be suddenly on the edge of closing their doors permanently.

This raises the question: What happens to the organizations who are using that platform?

Will they be able to export their data reliably, in order to use it elsewhere?

It’s a good question to ask:

If you needed to move away from your current CRM provider, or switch to a different CRM system entirely — for any reason at all — would you be able to take your data with you?

If you're using CiviCRM for your fundraising and outreach efforts, the answer is almost certainly: Yes.

I've heard from several CiviCRM service providers on this topic in the past couple of days.

Without exception, all of them make a point of ensuring that their clients can get a full and complete copy of their CRM data at any time, for any reason.

(And if you're hosting your system yourself, you don't even have to ask for the data.)

To be fair, there would be some work involved:

• You might need a specialist to help you, if you want to move that data into a different CRM system.

• Even if you stayed with CiviCRM, you’d still probably need some technical help to get that set up with a new provider.

But it would be possible.

And because CiviCRM is a widely used open-source system, you would have a good selection of experience specialists who could help you where needed.

As with anything, ownership comes with some overhead. After all, it's up to the owner to make sure everything works as well as it should.

But it should give you some comfort to know that you have options.

And that you're not trusting the future of your CRM data to a company that could simply close its doors — on you.

All the best,
A.

Good enough is good enough

Last week my doctor prescribed a couple of MRIs, for which he referred me to his hospital's radiology department.

I got the appointment scheduled and then asked for an estimate of costs. (For my own good reasons, I'm a self-paying patient in almost every case, so I usually count the cost pretty early in the process.)

The estimate came in at $11,000. You and I can sit down over a beer some time and lament the state of healthcare pricing, but I'll spare you the rant.

For now, I'll just say that I reached out to a local imaging center I've used before, and found that they can take exactly the same images for $1100.

Yes. That’s a 90% difference.

So of course, I re-scheduled with them.

But you might be wondering:

Why would the hospital charge so much for essentially the same job?

The answer is:

This hospital has the best imaging equipment in the entire area. They can do things nobody else can do. Their machines can scan at much higher resolutions than the place I'll be going.

But I checked with my doctor.

My situation doesn't require the super high resolution imaging. He doesn't need it, and won't be using it for me.

Polaroid quality is good enough.

But then you might ask:

Allen, wouldn't you want nothing but the very best when it comes to your own health?

It depends on what we mean by "the very best."

Whether it's my own health, or the success of my business, or the home that I live in, or the tools I use at work, the "best" choice is the one that gets the job done in the way I need (or want) and doesn't soak up too much of my time, attention, or funds.

After all, there are plenty of better things I can do with $10,000 than pay for high-resolution images that my doctor doesn’t even want.

Here's the thing:

Your systems, I might guess, are not perfect. Nor are your staff. Your board members, any new program you might roll out, your software tools — none of them are perfect.

You could, if you wanted, spend a lot of time, money, and mental anguish trying to make them so.

But the truth is: Good enough really is good enough.

Are you thinking of making measured improvements, for the sake of a well articulated and clearly valued goal? Go for it!

But are you tempted to use up your time, attention, and other resources wrestling with little imperfections? Maybe think again. Is it really worth it?

All the best,
A.

Measuring outcomes of good design

Here’s some real data from an organization using CiviCRM. What could cause these jumps in annual contributions?

A colleague came back to me today with the above graph and a great response to a question I’d posed a few weeks ago.

I had said:

… I'm not yet sure how to articulate the measurable business value of a “great-looking” visual presentation.

I'm curious whether you have some thoughts about the cost/benefit factors that go into assessing the value of such improvements. Is this something you talk about with clients?

And today, he came back with this (shared here with his permission):

Tho I didn't have much to say, I have been thinking about this. Then today I saw [the above] chart for one of my clients. And there's two important things that happened in this chart… First in 2020 they invested in a new website design, logo, name. Everything looked much nicer after that. It stops a decline in members that's been running for 6 years. Then in 2023 they start using CiviEvent, income doubles.

Obvs it's not all causal - ie there's a new staff member in 2019-ish, and that helps the new website and new events programme succeed. But you can also see how the site changes fit with their income…

To highlight some great points he’s making:

• Few things have a single cause, and correlation is not the same as causation. (They did, after all, add a staff member in 2019.)

• But there’s a strong correlation between design/usability improvements and constituent support levels:

  • Design and branding refresh, followed by ending a 6-year ongoing decline in memberships.

  • Integrated online event management through the CRM, followed by doubling annual total contributions/receipts.

It’s easy to think of design improvements only in the context of emotional metrics like “we think it looks out of date.”

But careful consideration can link it to more objective metrics like "it's harming our reputation and thus our outreach and/or income.”

Here’s the thing:

An improvement in design and usability isn't just about making things “look pretty.”

It's about easing the journey that each of our constituents must make, progressing to the next step in their engagement with our mission.

And that has measurable benefits that all of our statekholders will care about.

All the best,
A.

P.S. I’m still looking for ways to estimate things like “how much our curernt design is harming our work” or “how much improvement we could expect.” If you have thoughts on that, shoot me a reply!

Things you can…

Things you can outsource:

• Auto repair

• Medical procedures

• Babysitting

• Exercise equipment ownership

• Catering

• Laundry

• Graphic design

• Software development

Things you can't outsource:

• Becoming a great driver

• Keeping healthy

• Relationships with your kids

• Exercise

• Becoming a great cook

• Your personal fashion sense

• Your brand and message

• Mastering your own systems

You can hire someone to do the standardized stuff that’s either too technical or too tedious.

But some things, only you can do. You can get someone to help you do it well. But nobody can do it for you.

Which is kinda awesome.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM 6: time to upgrade?

CiviCRM has just released version 6.0 — and you probably don't need it.

It's not a security release.
It doesn't fix any major bugs.

So what does it do?

• It does fix a lot of obscure bugs — ones you'll probably never encounter.

• It does make new installations look pretty darned beautiful (but makes no such changes when upgrading).

• It does add a few nice features to FormBuilder and SearchKit.

• It does have a few nice accessibility improvements for visually impaired users employing screen-reader software.

• It's the first official release of CiviCRM Standalone, for use without a CMS (Drupal, WordPress, etc.)

So yes, for geeks like me, it's pretty sweet.

But here’s the thing:

If you have better things to do than chase the latest technology — and I believe you do — I recommend letting this one go by, and upgrading only when you have a specific reason to do so.

As with anything, upgrading your software is an investment that comes with costs and risks, in addition to any benefits.

If you can quantify those costs, risks, and benefits, you'll know if it's worth the investment.

If it's not, it's perfectly fine to leave well enough alone.

All the best,
A.

Getting the answers you need

Easy how-to answers are available right inside of CiviCRM, if you’re using the DocBot extension (see yesterday’s email if you missed it).

Naturally, it lacks the critical thinking you’d expect from a knowledgeable person, but it’s a great way to find the kind of answers that are hidden within the thousands of pages of CiviCRM’s official documentation.

As a quick example, here’s an email exchange I had with list member Kim just a few days ago (shared with her permission, of course.)

Kim wrote:

Hi Allen,

If I create and run a General dedupe rule, is it going to show me the suspected matches, like it would with a Supervised rule? I've read the literature over and over again and am not sure how these two rules behave differently.

Thanks,
Kim

And I responded:

Hi Kim,

When you run any dedupe rule, they'll all behave the same (according to the configuration of the rule, of course).

As for the "Usage" setting of any deduple rule, this section from the docs may help: https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/common-workflows/deduping-and-merging/#understanding-dedupe-rules-supervised-unsupervised-and-general

Does that help?

- A.

And Kim, kind soul that she is, responded:

Yes! Thank you!

Simple enough.

But, check out this similar “conversation” in DocBot:

Me: What's the difference between a General dedupe rule and a Supervised one?

DocBot:

Based on the documentation, here are the key differences between General and Supervised dedupe rules:

Supervised Rules:

- Can be configured with a broader definition of what constitutes a duplicate

- Allow the user to decide whether to act on the potential duplicate match

- The user interface will alert the user if a potential duplicate is found, but gives them the option to keep or merge contacts

General Rules:

- You can configure multiple General rules for each contact type (unlike Supervised or Unsupervised rules, of which you can only have one per contact type)

- Provide additional criteria to scan for possible duplicates beyond the default Supervised and Unsupervised rules

- Offer more flexibility in defining duplicate matching criteria

The documentation notes that you can create "any number of additional 'General' rules to provide other criteria to scan for possible duplicates." When determining duplicates, CiviCRM checks up to five fields that you can specify, and you can even set a length value to determine how many characters in a field should be compared.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the Deduping and Merging documentation.

Not bad, right? It’s even got a link to the relevant documentation, right there in the answer.

Here’s the thing:

It’s great to have an expert on call. But there’s always at least some overhead there — whether it’s a financial cost, or just the time it takes to communicate.

But mastering your own systems — and indeed, taking charge of your own learning — is critical for getting the most out of your chosen tools, without having to incur that overhead each time you reach out to your perferred outside specialist.

Tools like DocBot are a great addition to your aresenal.

All the best,
A.

P.S. - In case you’re wondering, I still love to hear, and answer, any questions from anyone on this list! I just get excited when I see ways for folks to get the job done without waiting on a reply from me!

Documentation is huge

When you’re trying to keep your team all on the same page, maintaining your internal documentation is huge … by which I mean, it’s very helpful.

On the other hand …

When you’re looking through CiviCRM’s documenation for a quick answer, you can quickly find that this documentation is actually huge … by which I mean, it’s enormous. It’s just a massive amount of information.

But there’s a tool for that.

It gives you plain-language documentation help right inside of CiviCRM.

It’s an extension called DocBot.

It’s a pretty handy way get answers conversationally, with reference to the official CiviCRM documentation.

So you don’t have to read pages and pages of docs. Just ask DocBot.

And it keeps getting better. Just last week the CiviCRM team announced that they’d trained it on all the major extensions in the user documentation, including CiviDiscount, CiviRules, Inlay, Form Processor, Entity Construction Kit, and more.

It’s also continually learning from new content in the Q&A community at CiviCRM Stack Exchange.

Here’s how you can try it out:

• If you want it directly on your CiviCRM dashboard (as in the screenshot above), you can just install it from Administer > System Settings > Extensions > Add New. Drop the dashlet on your dashboard, and it just works!

• Or, you can just visit it directly at its own website, for a quick chat.

This was first announced in a civicrm.org blog post almost a year ago, but as with many things, it takes time for word to get around.

I recommend you check it out.

All the best,
A.

“Impactful” is relative

Getting substantial results for your effort should not be an experience reserved only for larger nonprofits.

That's something I want to mention about that beautiful mailing I raved about yesterday.

One of the great things we saw was that, with just this one mailing, The Bay was able to triple their number of recurring contributions.

Results like that are virtually impossible for large organizations, because they're already cruising at a high altitude.

But look again at Morgan's comment about the impact:

All in all, accounting for hard and soft costs, we netted ~$1,300 from one time donations, plus ~$250 monthly from the new recurring donors.

If you were the American Red Cross or the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, those are not large numbers.

But if you're The Bay — or perhaps the organization where you work — those numbers mean a lot.

Here's the thing:

Small organizations run on tight budgets.
Their staff are often stretched very thin.

But their small size gives them important advantages:

• Staff are often very close to the front-line mission work, so they can see the stories that are waiting to be told.

• They can usually pivot more easily, adjusting to try new ideas for getting their stories out to their audience.

Because they're not already cruising at 30,000 feet, small changes can lead to results that are in, the scheme of things, very impactful.

If you're at a small organization, getting that million dollar bequest is pretty unlikely.

But effective outreach to people who care about your cause ...

And making big gains that matter to your work ...

Those are within your reach.

All the best,
A.