1. Pick the Right Platform

There are a lot of options for CRM platforms on the market, and step one is taking the time to do your homework and determine which will work best for your organization. In order to ease this process, develop your requirements and a clear understanding of the problems you’re trying to solve. Read articles and reviews from third parties (see Resource Review below), and talk with other nonprofits that do similar work and are of similar size. Find a platform that your entire team will be comfortable using, as any database or CRM is only as powerful as the information that is entered.

Choose a platform that will suit you five years down the road, while also meeting your current needs. Of course, cost will be a determining factor, including setup and customization costs plus ongoing fees, but make sure you are also considering your return on investment, such as increased donations. The biggest companies in the field today are Blackbaud, Salesforce, and NetSuite. Salesforce is the most popular tool for nonprofits and gives away ten free licenses, plus they have a great hub called The Power of Us, where customers can collaborate, share best practices, and see solutions. NetSuite offers five free licenses to organizations to support their donor relationships, financials, and volunteer program. Blackbaud is an expensive but powerful tool best suited to larger organizations with multi-million-dollar budgets.

2. Identify an Owner

You need someone on your team to take ownership of your CRM and be its champion. Ideally, this is a systems-focused person who understands and enjoys data collection and analysis, but he or she should also be enough of a “people person” to work well with all departments of the organization, including development, marketing, volunteer management, finance, and others.

Once selected, this person should first create a timeline, budget, and strategy for implementation of the platform (factoring in all the steps below), and be responsible for integrating and customizing it for your organization, or at least overseeing the volunteer or firm that does. He or she will be in charge of collecting and inputting data, as well as guiding other members on the team to contribute.

It will be your champion’s job to engage the end-users of your CRM as early as possible, facilitating adoption. Your champion will also oversee troubleshooting, reporting, and analytics, and be able to track key metrics and create organizational dashboards, which can happen automatically with time. Remember that your point person will need support, training, and access to further educational opportunities, such as conferences and webinars.

3. Find and Clean Your Data

Once you have a CRM champion in place, focus on maximizing the value and utilization of this tool. Based on your goals and objectives as an organization, identify the key performance indicators that will help you gauge performance. Remember, beyond tracking fundraising results, you’ll also want to monitor programs, finances, volunteer efforts, and more. To figure this out, you’ll likely want to talk to leaders and front-line staff across all departments, possibly in a group setting. Be sure to include your executive director and board, as those are two key audiences for the reports you’ll generate, so knowing what information will be most helpful is critical.

Once you’ve clarified what information you want to track, find out where this information currently exists and how it will be used moving forward. Once you know where all your data lives and are ready to migrate or input it into your database, you need to “clean” it. This means ensuring that it’s accurate and current, eliminating duplicate entries, and that data on all key donors, volunteers, and staff and board are included.

LinkedIn is a great tool for filling in missing blanks and, if you have the budget, which can sometimes come from “capacity building” grants from foundations, you can hire a systems implementer. These are consultants or firms like Exponent Partners that specialize in helping organizations gather, clean, and input their data, as well as integrating and customizing CRM platforms for you.

4. Invest in Training and Documentation

Once your CRM platform is in place, your champion must introduce it to each department and all key personnel, providing them with training and guidelines for usage, including a data entry protocol to ensure consistency. To maximize benefits, your entire organization has to be comfortable with your platform and integrate it into their workflow. For most users, it’s sufficient to only train them in basic functionality, but for department heads and more advanced users, your champion should spend time training them to do things like running reports and creating dashboards, which are reports that integrate a range of metrics to provide a bird’s eye view of the organization or a program or department. Once created, these dashboards can be automatically generated by your CRM and emailed to relevant team members, providing helpful insights regularly.

Your champion should also create a frequently asked questions (FAQs) document to reduce time spent answering common inquiries, and he or she should update this document over time as FAQs are identified. Your champion should also create a simple user manual that outlines the various processes you’ve put in place, clarifying their value and offering important how-to information. Most platforms provide numerous training videos and free webinars that your champion can also selectively share with your team over time.

5. Stay Current

To ensure that you get the most out of your platform, you’ll need to keep it maintained and up-to-date. This means having an ongoing process for keeping your data clean and staying abreast of new features and software updates. CRM providers often release new training videos or webinars, usually for free, and these will help your champion ensure you take full advantage of this powerful technology. Most providers also produce annual conferences that are great places to learn new ways to more effectively leverage your platform, as well as meet and learn from other users.

Do. . .

• . . . interview similar nonprofits to obtain their feedback on particular platforms before deciding which CRM is right for you.
• . . . test out CRMs you are considering to ensure they are user-friendly and easy to use.
• . . . ensure your systems are all integrated and able to seamlessly share information.
• . . . select a champion to “own” your CRM and have him or her train key personnel on how to use it.

Don’t. . .

• . . . pick a platform or tool just because it is free; make sure it’s right for you.
• . . . rule out platforms because of cost without factoring in your return on investment.
• . . . fail to clean your data on an ongoing, regular basis.
• . . . input all of your data into a new system at once; start with a small sample and test.