What Is Your CRM for?

15 years ago, when I started working with nonprofits and their data, moving data from one system to another was frequently pretty difficult, and so we had a lot of motivation to put all the data we needed to answer a particular set of questions in a single system. At the time, Salesforce was  clearly the best tool for a nonprofit that had data in multiple systems. It made a lot of sense for a nonprofit to say Salesforce is the single source of truth, particularly for revenue. 

Everything in that paragraph has changed.

It is now much easier to move data from one system to another. Across the boards, tools are expected to connect to other tools. Middleware like Zapier is available even for very small organizations. For all kinds of reasons, Salesforce isn’t nearly as compelling for nonprofits as it was then. It isn’t at all clear that organizations need a single source of truth the way they used to.

That’s not to say I want to see nonprofits with conflicting revenue data in different systems – that would be a nightmare! But it does mean that organizations should take a moment to think about exactly what their CRM is for and what it isn’t for. Maybe it is your single source of truth, but maybe it is a tool primarily to support fundraisers, which is a different thing entirely. Maybe the CRM is a window into most transactions, but not the place you do much analysis, because if you rely only on reports in your CRM you’re settling for less information when you go to make decisions. 

Whatever you’re trying to do with your CRM, say it out loud and write it down. Anytime you ask it to do something new, make sure it is consistent with that use, and make sure there’s not another tool in your tech stack that could do a better job of it! We’ve got so much more choice when it comes to reasonably-priced tools now, we shouldn’t insist on doing everything in one place.

These decisions shouldn’t be made by a tech team or by a fundraising team in isolation. The decisions have got to be collaborations between the teams responsible for these things, and leadership should be aware of the decisions that have been made. Collaborating like this can be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but with the right guidance the results can be transformative.