CRM
What it is for
- One up-to-date list shared by the team, instead of three spreadsheets that contradict each other
- The history of each contact: fees, gifts, attendance, exchanges, what was promised
- Reminders and thank-yous sent on time, because the tool knows who has not renewed
- Clean exports for the general meeting, the activity report and grant applications
- GDPR compliance: who accesses what, how long a record is kept, how it is deleted
For an association
Business CRMs are designed to sell: opportunities, a pipeline, forecasts. An association needs to follow members, donors and volunteers, with yearly fees, receipts, attendance at activities. Non-profit tools, or simple tools linked to the website, do the job better, at lower cost. The criterion that matters most is not the feature list: it is the person who will keep the tool every week.
How to choose
- Write what you want to know about a contact, and what you want to send them: that is the data structure
- Count the contacts and the people who will touch them: with one person and a few dozen records, a spreadsheet still holds
- Look at what already exists in the association (accounting, newsletter, forms) and what the CRM will have to connect to
- Test the tool with twenty real records before importing everything
- Set the GDPR rules from the start: access, retention period, unsubscription
The data to keep, and no more
- Identity and contact details: name, email, phone, address if you send mail
- The role: member, donor, volunteer, partner, and since when
- Fees and donations, with their date and amount
- Consent: what the person said yes to, and when
- The last exchange, so as not to chase someone you talked to yesterday
In Kern4Good
The programme helps choose and set up a CRM as at-cost consulting: data structure, import of the old spreadsheets, GDPR rules, link with the website (membership form, donation button), training of the people who will keep it. A first conversation is free, then a quote says the days, at 400 EUR. The CRM for non-profits theme and the Pricing page say more.
Further reading
Isn't a spreadsheet enough?
Up to a few dozen contacts and a single person keeping it, yes. Beyond that, or as soon as several people touch it, a CRM avoids duplicates, losses and mailings to people who asked not to receive anything.
Can the CRM send our newsletter?
Many do, or connect to a sending tool. It is a selection criterion to set from the scoping, with the handling of unsubscriptions.
How much does a CRM cost for an association?
There are free tools up to a certain number of contacts and subscriptions of a few dozen euros a month. The real cost is the setup and upkeep time: that is where at-cost consulting helps.
Should we migrate the whole history?
No. You import what is still useful: active contacts, the fees of the last two or three years. The rest is archived. A clean import of two hundred records is worth more than a raw import of two thousand.