Your organization probably has defined its mission and has a clear picture of what it wants to achieve. Obviously, constituents play a vital role in that mission and goal as you are reading this chapter. A plan of what needs to be done with those constituents would be the first thing to do before you do anything with software. We could call that plan a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. For many non-profit, advocacy, government, and membership-based organizations, CiviCRM is the best tool to support you in achieving your goals and to ultimately help you in your mission.
Does your organization lack a unified and integrated system for managing contacts? Do you spend your energy simply trying to keep track of who your constituents are, without ever understanding how they have interacted, and will continue to interact, with your organization? These are common issues for non-profit organizations, be they large or small, centralized or distributed, more or less organized. Can you answer yes to any of the questions below?
Does everyone keep their own Excel sheet with constituent data?
Do you have several systems that essentially store the same data?
Do you have a system developed by a volunteer or staff person who left some time ago?
Do you spend a lot of time reconciling lots of data from different areas in a progress report?
At the heart of any constituent relationship strategy and the tools that support it is the need to manage contact records. Yet CiviCRM is much more than just a contact management system. As an integrated online system that handles contacts, donations, pledge commitments, event registration, bulk e-mail, case management, grant distribution, campaign tracking, survey collection, and other functions, CiviCRM provides the tools required to dig deeper, and collect more, from your constituents. And with a proven track record, consistently receiving top ratings from non-profit technology user surveys, you can rely on this toolset to help you deliver results.
By referring to a CRM strategy, we intentionally seek to include the broader management and mission goals along with the technology solution. Tools alone are not enough to achieve success. There must be organization-wide support, and a holistic viewpoint, to manage constituents effectively. Furthermore, the implementation of any tool must begin with an analysis of needs and objectives. We need to have a clear vision of what we are seeking to do and where improvements should be made, before we pick up the tool and start working with it.
A successful CRM strategy can help your organization in many concrete ways. Here are some examples:
Improving the frequency of donations; increasing the average donation amounts; improving the retention rates of your donors.
At a more basic level, enabling supporters to donate online through your website instead of mailing checks, or calling to submit a credit card transaction. Reducing how much manual data entry is required of staff, and eliminating double entry into multiple systems (such as a contact database and accounting software).
Automating the registration process for members attending an upcoming conference.
Increasing the likelihood of your existing subscribers becoming more involved with your organization and its mission. Encouraging commitment by empowering constituents to better self-manage their involvement in your organization.
Ensuring that more of your members show up to volunteer through automated reminders.
Identifying contacts already interacting with your organization who have the right skill set and interests to be worth approaching about an open board position, or committee leadership.
Making information easily available that quantifies what a great job you've been doing, including the number of hours volunteers gave to your organization last year, the number of cases managed, and the number of new viral signups from your latest urgent action e-mail.
Improving year-to-year membership retention rates by communicating the renewal process more effectively and providing better tools to simplify the renewal steps.
Providing a voice to existing constituents through online surveys that shed light on their greatest desires and hopes for your organization.
Empowering volunteers to work on your behalf by sharing your message through their social circles.
CiviCRM can help in all these areas, providing the building blocks and tools for constructing your constituent strategies.