Growth both in corporate and nonprofit organizations includes building a solid CRM (Customer Relationship Management). I recently faced this problem, and began thinking of what is actually required for a productive database.
Whether you run a small business or nonprofit, being able to access records and reach out to your customers is crucial to success. Tracking sales or donations allows an organization to plan for the future.
I knew I wanted ease in how we process gifts, ability to track trends and effective mechanisms to send relevant responses and constituent touch points. Like many small nonprofits and businesses I needed a plan.
Ken Miller, President of Denali Fundraising says it’s vary rare that smaller shops have plans where they ask “What are the goals, then what is the process and are we going to utilize and/or allocate physical resources (people and training) to accomplish our goal?”
Process Gifts
My database should make it easier for a donor to give. Look at Amazon with this in mind and you begin to see what everyone expects today. They process my credit card almost instantaneously, send me an immediate thank you message and follow up in a couple of days.
My database needs to integrate with online programs and credit card processing systems. It should consider how various software technologies fold together. As Ray Gary, CEO of iDonate says, you don’t want just “…a donor management system, but an interface that integrates on many (fundraising) platforms.”
Track Trends
If you’re like me analytics can be a wonderful nightmare. It’s great to have a lot of numbers, but what is really important to track? I need a database that can make educated suggestions based on proven ROI techniques.
Miller (Denali Fundraising) reminds us there are a lot of people offering advice who have a “lack of knowledge, lack of application, lack of a goal, lack of analytics, metrics and, the main thing a lack of donations in the bottom line.”
Relevant Responses
To be relevant my database should meet donors or customers where they’re at. I should be able to easily thank them by tweet, text, email or snail mail. Customers want to be responded to in the way they encountered and interacted with you. Social media may be a great way to reach people, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to put them into the “prospect” side of a mailing.
Communication must follow up beyond the thank you with touch points. A good database should be programmable to help me set in place a strategy for sending the right amount of emails, eblasts and other communications.
I’m still looking for a database. As I peruse the comments of many of the sites I’m struck by one evaluation that seems to point out the obvious. No database will do everything. In fact, most will do some things better than others, so decide which is the most important.
That leaves me with two thoughts. First, I need a stronger plan that shows more fully what I want to get out of a database; and secondly, I may need multiple platforms to interface so I can interact with constituents in different ways.
Taking these two things into consideration should help keep small businesses and nonprofits o the right track to building a solid foundation for future customer growth.
Peter Zehren is vice president of communications for the AFP SEWI.
