Your Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) platform impacts every facet of your organization. Because it is so deeply ingrained in everything you do, you must have ways to measure its success. Measuring the long-term success of a CRM implementation must go beyond time and budget.

 

This is because advancement CRM platforms are starkly different from legacy systems, and there should be additional, dynamic measurements of success. 

 

Here’s what to consider. 

Decision Making 

When it comes to your CRM, the efficiency of your decision-making is more of an indicator of success than people tend to focus on. Stalled decisions are likely because of a gap in understanding. Often these gaps in understanding may be harder to detect users may be afraid to tell someone and appear inadequate. 

 

This is why efficient decision making is a key indicator of your CRM’s success. If you’re experiencing delayed decision-making throughout your CRM implementation, you must get to the root cause.

 

Evaluate what you are trying to accomplish and why—specifically, what is the big picture? Ensuring your team has a keen understanding of your goals and objectives helps them overcome uncertainty and empowers better decisions. 

Stakeholder Engagement

Implementing a new CRM is a huge transition for most institutions. It’s also a significant investment in time and resources. And because of the commitment required, an essential part of a successful CRM adoption is the level of engagement from your stakeholder population. 

 

CRM implementation success comes with stakeholders being exposed and engaged during the early phases—not just at the end. Measuring your stakeholder engagement throughout the project helps you identify issues sooner rather than later. 

 

For example, project forums are commonplace in a CRM implementation. These forums assess the progress being made to date. Sometimes these forums demo the platform to garner stakeholder excitement. But if your stakeholders aren’t showing up, there may be a need for more commitment to this process. 

Project Communication

CRM project communication should be assessed in the same way as a marketing campaign. Specifically, identify your key performance indicators (KPIs) to precisely measure performance, allowing an evaluation of the strategy’s effectiveness. For example, KPIs for a marketing campaign may include market share, profit, revenue, or percentage growth. 

 

Marketing metrics to consider for measuring CRM project communication success include: 

• Open rates
• Click-through rates 
• Bounce rate
• Cost per lead (CPL)
• Cost per acquisition (CPA)

These measurements can help you assess project communication effectiveness and identify challenges in your messaging early on.

Project Roles

When implementing a CRM, it is rare to have staff who fit entirely the skills, capabilities, and experience required. A measure of success during your CRM project is the flexibility and willingness of your team to expand their roles and learn new things. 

 

Otherwise, a rigid set of stakeholders, users, and staff members will make it more challenging to adopt your advanced CRM. Are your team members saying, “I don’t have the skills, but I’m willing to do what it takes.” If so, this creates an opportunity for success rather than rigidity.

 

We all pride ourselves on being adaptable and flexible in today’s world. While a reasonable effort, especially in rapidly changing industries, there is some benefit to instilling more rigidity in some areas, especially regarding advancement operations during a project campaign.

 

An advancement campaign is an organized, targeted fundraising endeavor over a specified time frame. There are different types of campaigns, and despite the size and scope of an organization’s campaign, there are also multiple phases.

 

There are a few areas in your advancement operations campaign that you should be uncompromising and instill some rigidity—doing so can help you gain clarity.

 

Here’s what to consider. 

Reporting

Everyone agrees reporting is essential during all aspects of advancement, but even more so during a campaign. But the question remains, what do we report and when? When you’re in a campaign—especially an extensive campaign—you need to be uncompromising with how you conduct reporting. 

 

Create a process that is repeatable and consistent, including communication parameters for reporting the “what” and “when.” Delivering a consistent message instills confidence in reporting practices—particularly in executives within the organization as well as your donors. In addition, when your campaign team clearly understands what and when to report, clear and concise reports are produces. This organically eliminates worries about “funny money.” 

 

If you need clarification on reporting guidelines, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) released the CASE Global Reporting Standards, which offers global guidance. It has a digital subscription and six country-specific supplements for the first time since its initial publication in 1982. The CASE Global Reporting Standards (previously referred to as the CASE Reporting Standards and Management Guidelines) are a common set of standards, guidelines, and definitions for reporting the results of educational philanthropy activities at schools, colleges, and universities across the globe.  

Culture 

Another area you should be uncompromising during your advancement campaign is building a strong culture. A strong culture fosters collaboration, encourages questions, and accepts input from all those involved in advancement operations and the campaign. It also creates an atmosphere that inspires as little judgment as possible. 

 

(We recognize you’re dealing with real people, and aspiring a no judgment zone is unrealistic, so we recommend aiming for as little judgment as possible.)

 

One way to inspire a strong culture is to create a robust and authorizing atmosphere by encouraging self-exploration. This autodidactic environment eliminates the need for “handholding” and empowers self-motivation. 

 

Additionally, your culture should allow your team to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is a catalyst for growth. If you have an environment where everyone matches As with the As and Bs with the Bs, they aren’t uncomfortable or growing. 

Mission and Vision 

Institutions have a mission statement that’s tried and true. But the person leading the campaign (usually the head of philanthropy officer) may have a different vision. Delivering a consistent message—to donors, supporters, and the board—regarding your mission and vision is critical throughout the campaign. 

• Don’t compromise supporting the institution’s mission statement. 
• Do be flexible when crafting the vision and how it supports the mission.

A consistent message (especially toward donors) creates momentum and inspires giving throughout the campaign.

 

Meetings, of course, have their purpose and are an important part of your Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) implementation. But unnecessary and ineffective meetings—especially Zoom meetings—can negatively impact psychological, physical, and mental well-being. And the number of meetings has increased significantly (13%) since the start of the pandemic.

 

Your CRM implementation is a big undertaking and likely requires many meetings for your project team—on top of their already burdened workload.  

 

Here’s how you can avoid CRM project meeting fatigue. 

Meeting Etiquette 

Meeting etiquette has been lost. Like regular business etiquette, meeting etiquette encourages attendees to behave professionally and respectfully, be on time, listen without interrupting, avoid phone use, and be prepared.

 

It should also include a keen sense of participant’s availability and resources. 

 

Schedule based on availability and avoid overlapping lunchtime. Double-check if people are free and do not interrupt them during focus time. The more uninterrupted time CRM teams have, the higher their productivity is. 

Additionally, have a deep understanding of your CRM project team’s availability of resources. If your team is under-resourced, they won’t be as productive as they could be during a meeting. 

Preparation

Your CRM implementation teams’ calendars are packed. Therefore, it’s helpful to know what will be covered, who needs to be there, and the impact the meeting will ultimately bring. 

 

If you’re facilitating the meeting, send the content ahead of time that you plan to cover. People may accept a meeting invite and ignore the content and preparation. Avoid this by asking participants to review the meeting material and complete assigned tasks—allowing adequate time for participants to prepare. 

 

Efficiency is the goal of meetings. Set goals and aspirations for what you’re working toward in the CRM project. Create goals collaboratively; asking for input can shape responsibilities and motivate staff to meet their goals. Then, during your meeting, follow a list of things that should be addressed and reported. 

Meeting Cadence 

Establishing the proper meeting cadence is essential. If you’re meeting too often, you may not be allowing enough time to get things done. On the contrary, conducting meetings too infrequently could result in your CRM project falling off track. 

 

A meeting cadence is a pattern of regular team meetings. Short, frequent meetings increase a team’s work momentum. Groups that provide oversight, such as boards and committees, hold longer meetings less frequently. Schedule according to your project’s timeline and tasks at hand.

Moderation 

When people come together, especially for meetings, sometimes they can turn into “grievance sessions.” Avoid these grievance meetings by effective moderation. 

 

Assign a moderator to each meeting. The moderator’s role is to act neutrally, holding participants to time limits and keeping them on (or off) topics. This may require respectfully interrupting someone if they veer off path or begin to discuss something controversial. 

 

The implementation of a new advancement Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) is a significant investment of time, money, and resources. It is important to your institution to show this investment was worthwhile.

 

Realizing the full benefits of your CRM implementation requires you to be intentional at the beginning of the project. This includes defining your project goals and building an infrastructure to measure your progress through to completion and beyond.

 

Establishing goals and building an infrastructure to measure your progress is not an exercise that you do at project completion.

 

Instead, you should establish goals for your advancement CRM project early on. Here’s how to get started.

 

Step One: Brainstorming

During this phase, you’ll need to brainstorm to clearly indicate the problems you are trying to solve (and why) with your new CRM implementation.

 

Usually, the problems a new CRM aims to solve fall into three categories: technology, process, and people or behavioral. These are all things you can investigate leading you back to the problems you’re trying to solve.

 

Technology Changes

 

• Catching up: Your current technology is outdated or you’re outgrowing it.
• Innovation: You want to take advantage of new CRM opportunities and technology.
• Realignment: You want (or need) to move technology that is more affordable—whether it’s a matter of aligning staff skills to support it or transitioning to an outsourcing model.

 

Process Changes

 

• Silos: You’re trying to move from siloed processes—to a more collaborative and integrative working model.
• Efficiency: You’re trying to increase efficiency or some other process changes.
• Productivity: You want to increase productivity in certain areas.

 

People/Behavioral Changes

 

• Reorganization: You’re hoping to reorganize roles and responsibilities or make personnel changes.
• Behavioral: You need to cultivate behavior changes toward a common goal including transparency, collaboration, and culture of philanthropy. Breeding a culture of philanthropy within the organization is not just the front-line fundraisers responsibility—everyone should be driving toward that culture.

Step Two: Prioritization

You may end up with a long list of things you want to accomplish with your CRM implementation project. But can all of those be impacted within the timeframe of the actual project itself or soon after? If not, you’ll need to narrow down your goals by using prioritization to rank them for viability and level of impact.

 

For example, if your project is within a year or 18-month time frame, look at your list of goals and decide what will be the most beneficial to complete within that time frame. Ask yourself these questions.

 

• What would make the most impact?
• What can be done within the project timeline or within 6 months after project completion?
• What would give us the most return on our investment?
• What will move the needle in a significant manner?

Step Three: Infrastructure to Measure Progress

You’ve established your goals and prioritized them for impact level. Now you need to establish infrastructure to measure your progress. For each goal, you’ll need to describe what success looks like, and decide how you can measure it.

 

• Establish a baseline: Record where you are today so you can accurately measure your progress. You won’t know if you improved if you haven’t established a baseline.
• Identify a timeframe: Indicate processes and intervals for how you’ll measure your progress. What is the measurement you will take in the future and how will you compare it to your baseline? When will the first measurement be taken? For example, will you take a measurement in six months from your CRM project start or is it three months?

 

Common timeframe intervals to measure your advancement CRM project progress include:

 

• The first time the goal is measured

• Project milestones
• At Go Live
• Three months after Go Live

 

Here’s a process change measurement example and how you can measure your advancement CRM project success.

You want to be donor centric. One of the easiest, fundamental elements of being donor centric is giving a gift in a timely manner. How quickly can you communicate to your donor that you’ve given a gift? Remember, you’ve taken something that’s broad scale, and now you need to decide how you can measure that in an actionable way.

 

• Goal: We want to be donor centric and clearly convey to each donor that every gift they give is appreciated and has an impact on our mission.
• Defining Measurable Success: Reduce the time it takes to send a personalized thank you note or acknowledgment to the donor.
• Current State (Baseline): Today we send a letter within five business days.
• Future State: We email the donor within two hours of receiving the gift.

 

When it comes to goal setting for your advancement CRM project, you can also follow the Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) methodology.

Your Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) implementation is likely to last through the holidays. On average, for smaller institutions, a CRM project duration is 12 months. Whereas larger institutions, their CRM project can last anywhere from 12–18 months. So, it’s inevitable that your team is going to take your CRM project through the holidays. But work-life balance and productivity can co-exist if you plan for it.

 

Planning your CRM implementation through the holidays doesn’t have to be an angst-filled event. Reduce the stress on your team by respecting the time they’re giving to work on the project. The end-of-year holidays focus on family and friends—something we’ve realized even more important in the last couple of years—which should not change just because you’re doing a CRM project implementation.

 

Focus your efforts on how you’re treating the people participating in your CRM project more than the progress. Your team should not be expected to sacrifice their time through the holidays to participate.

 

Here’s how to manage your CRM implementation through the holidays.

Identify Breaks

Purposely establish a wind-down plan for your CRM project during the holiday season. This period doesn’t mean your team goes idle. Determine with each workstream where the break will occur. Review what has been achieved up until that point. Categorize the completed deliverables and those in progress.

 

During these wind-down meetings, plan clear breaks during the holidays and identify non-working days—days that nothing is planned (no exceptions.) Establish a stopping point where your team feels confident with their completed deliverables versus those in progress. This will help you decide where to pick up when you reconvene.

 

Plan Self-Paced Activities

The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not the time to start new initiatives. Avoid planning large meetings during this time. This helps alleviate the complications of scheduling since most people tend to take time off through November and December.

 

The reality is that activities for your CRM implementation project can happen. But instead of planning team projects, take advantage of self-paced individual activities that help move the project forward during this time.

• Create templates
• Refresh policies and procedures
• Research concepts, new features, or technology
• Encourage supplemental training

Take Time for Training

Use the holidays as a time to focus on training. Typically, the holidays are a less demanding time—creating the perfect opportunity for your team to participate in training they may not have been able to do otherwise.

Avoid CRM application training but encourage supplemental training activity. Have staff take advantage of training that may increase their knowledge or skill set that would enable them to contribute to the project more effectively. Examples of supplemental course topics to aid your CRM project may include:

• Effective Marketing for Successful Fundraising
• Developing Annual Sustainability and Major Gifts
• Managing the Capital Campaign
• The Art of Fundraising
• Effective Leadership, Successful Fundraising
• Engaging Women as Donors
• Fundraising from the Business Sector
• Social Selling

 

The holiday period is a time to focus on family and friends, but that does not mean it is a useless period for your CRM implementation project. Communicate clearly to your team to ensure they are still maintaining progress on your CRM project but take advantage of this well-deserved less demanding time.

Having a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) communication plan is important, especially during your implementation phase. The way in which you communicate with users before, during, and after your CRM implementation is crucial to the project’s long-term success. Open and consistent communication throughout your CRM implementation keeps your project on track (and in scope)—ultimately supporting your timeline and budget.

 

Traditional project communication is no longer enough. A project status report illustrating percentage complete simply won’t suffice given how much information vies for our attention. You’ve got to go further, especially with the level of importance of your projects.

 

Now is the time to consider a digital transformation on your advancement CRM project communication. Digital transformations are forcing organizations to change the way they conduct CRM project communication—creating a need to adapt to the new market reality. This change is driven by donors who expect content to be delivered in relation to what they’re doing anytime, anywhere, and in the format and on their device…the same goes for your users.

Here’s how to give your advancement CRM project communication a digital refresh.

Step 1: Create A Communication Plan that Provides Added Content

Content is an asset to any organization and any department, but especially when it comes to advancement. Content helps you build trust and connect with your target constituents, but also acts as fuel for your other marketing and communication techniques. It’s the base upon which you promote your organization, so it’s essential to give it the attention it deserves, especially during your advancement CRM project implementation.

Step 2: Use A Multi-Channel Communication Strategy

Having a multi-channel communication strategy allows you to not only reach a wider audience, but you are able to reinforce your organization’s message. Using email, mobile, and social can support your message tenfold.

Integrate a variety of content strategies including:

• developing articles for your project website;
• creating social posts to share your project journey;
• offering a behind the scenes look to increase excitement in an email campaign; and
• featuring a team or individual working on the project through your social media.

It can be difficult for stakeholders to effectively communicate during an advancement CRM project implementation—even more if they aren’t directly involved. Connecting with them through digital platforms is imperative to your CRM project’s success.

Step 3: Talk About Project Challenges

Your CRM project is tough. Being transparent and talking about your challenges openly (and honestly) can increase stakeholder engagement. Share the challenges that your team was able to overcome through your communication channels. Discuss what tactics and tools you used to help manage the challenges. Being forthcoming and allowing people the opportunity to develop a greater understanding makes your project more relatable.

Step 4: Highlight Team Members

When conducting a CRM implementation, your team may very well be one of your most important assets. Highlighting your team members and recognizing their commitments are always a good idea. But if you’re looking to do a digital transformation, highlight the team members who may have volunteered to work on your advancement CRM project through your digital communication channels.

Step 5: Use Video

Don’t be afraid of video. Video messages will increase engagement. Video is a great option for messages from your project sponsor. Additionally, visibly seeing the project sponsor allows the potential for individuals to make that connection and further be inspired by what the project sponsor has to say.

 

Another option for your video messaging is to conduct an interview. Select those that have gone through a successful project implementation. Interview them to get some lessons learned and apply the tips to your project. Sharing with your audience will boost engagement and make your institution feel relatable.

 

As you push out this content, be mindful and take opportunities to make it interactive, reinforcing stakeholder understanding of your CRM implementation project. Establish an infrastructure and analyze your open rates, click rates, and see what people are interested in to further refine the messaging in the content you create.

 

Lastly, make sure you provide your stakeholders a way to provide resources and feedback. Further informing the information you put out about your advancement CRM project.

 

 

There’s never enough time and resources when a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) Implementation is underway at your institution. But before you begin, it’s essential to pay attention to the scope of what needs to occur. You may be wondering, what does that entail? 

 

Your project is not just about implementing the CRM software you choose—it’s usually more comprehensive than that. Defining the scope of CRM projects means figuring out which areas need to be included in the CRM implementation plan. Understanding the scope of your advancement CRM implementation is essential to establish what the effort will (and will not) cover and prevent feature creep and project bloating.

 

Here’s six steps for how to understand and plan the scope of your advancement CRM implementation.

 

 Step 1: Set Your Parameters 

 

To begin the scoping process, reflect on what you’re hoping to improve using a CRM system—narrow your focus to help you understand what kind of scope you need. Then, to keep expectations realistic, make a list of questions for yourself and the vendors of your shortlist platforms. 

 

Consider things like:

 

• Budget
• Timeframe
• Amount of training you think you’ll want

 

By asking these targeted questions to the project managers and stakeholders, you can move forward confidently with parameters that meet your needs.

 

Step 2: Define the Scope 

 

Defining the scope may be easier said than done. But with a bit of preliminary planning, you can get up to speed right away. 

 

Ask yourself these questions. 

 

• Is our CRM scope broad or narrow? 
• What is the timeline—will it be all at once or staggered?
• What is my general budget?  

 

Ask your vendors these questions. 

 

• How long does this solution take to implement? 
• What training resources are included in the base cost? 
• What type of customer service do you offer? 
• How well does the CRM platform integrate with other systems? 

 

Step 3: Decide on Additional Technology Components and Platforms

 

What technology platform are you going to use? This includes all the software involved—not just the vendor software you purchased like Salesforce Affinaquest or a Blackbaud CRM. It has all the software that is (or will be) installed that supports the CRM vision. 

 

Usually, CRM software can’t operate alone. It needs a place in the ecosystem that it can be integrated. And you need to identify all those other systems it must integrate with. This could include a data warehouse or a data analytics platform—these are most often implemented in tandem with a CRM package. 

 

Step 4: Gather Information from Relevant Departments

 

Now that you have the basics down, it’s time to gather your specific requirements. Long-term CRM success often has less to do with the technology you use or the money you spend and more to do with adoption. 

 

Because of this, it’s important to make sure everyone is on board from the beginning. Ask for feedback from the departments in your organization about their needs and goals for the CRM. 

 

Also, think about your institution’s infrastructure and processes that will be impacted, as well as instructions to identify key performance indicators (KPIs). Then, make your intentions to upgrade and integrate a CRM system apparent to all those whose work will be impacted by the changes. 

 

Step 5: Identify Your Users   

 

Who are your actual users that will be a part of this project and implementation? 

 

This includes those who directly access the CRM software but also those who will be the data consumers. Consider all users who may be consuming data through other measures. This includes users who are accessing information from a self-service portal. 

 

For example, your finance department would be considered users because they may be accessing your CRM application to post to your general ledger. They’re not logging in to the system, but they are consuming the data—so they’re considered users.

 

Step 6: Distinguish Business Processes

 

Create an inventory or identify the business processes that the CRM implementation will enable. It is essential to identify those that are a part of your scope and detail out processes within your organization that are out of your scope. 

 

For example, you might distinguish a business process that impacts this project, but you do not want to touch the XYZ process. Solidify what’s in scope as is what’s out of scope—doing so helps set expectations for your user population. 

 

Defining the scope of your advancement CRM is vital for your institution. It offers better insight into the overall cost of your project and the features you need. Additionally, it provides a better understanding of your requirements and what you’re expecting from the project from all members of your institution.

For all of my colleagues in Advancement Services or for anyone in charge of Advancement Information Systems; I have a Precision Practices tip for you. I’m going to talk about the difference between Implementing a CRM Solution for Advancement versus Implementing CRM Software.

 

If we look at implementing new CRM software as the entirety of the project, here’s what happens…we install our software, add some configurations and customizations to make it work for our specific institution. That’s it! These items consume our focus, attention, and resources. A successful project requires much more than that, so let’s shift our thinking to Implementing a CRM Solution for Advancement.

 

Let walk through what that looks like. If you focus your project on implementing an entire solution for Advancement, that does include implementing the CRM software. But we also want to integrate the CRM software into the entire fabric of the technology ecosystem that already exists.
This can include things like:

• An integration with a Document management system
• An integration with a Financial system
• An integration to the Grants Management system
• For a University, an integration with a Student Information System
• For a Hospital, an integration with a Medical Records System

 

But we don’t stop there…

 

The second component we MUST add is how do I make the CRM software a valuable tool for every staff member that uses it. In that case, I’m actually talking about a broader component of the project that will include an on-going Training Program. From a product training perspective, all of my staff members need to have a certain level of proficiency with different modules of the CRM software. It is highly likely that I’m also going to implement new workflows. As part of my Training Program I will also need revamp my policies and procedures. The primary objective is to provide guidance and establish a new business practice in daily operations for everyone who uses the CRM software.

 

The third component we MUST consider is Data Governance. There is a lot of information that is going to move in and out of the CRM software as it becomes an integrated part of the technology ecosystem. I need to look at establishing a Data Governance Structure. This is a Committee or Team who will actually provide guidance on an on-going basis to maintain the data quality and make sure the CRM software retains useful information.

 

The fourth component when Implementing a CRM Solution for Advancement is populating the new CRM database with information from our existing system. How do I get my old data from my legacy system into the new CRM? This might not only be information that’s coming from the legacy system, we might also have shadow databases sitting out there that also need to be considered as well.

 

As a recap, we explored 5 Components that you MUST have equal amount attention and resources when Implementing a CRM Solution for Advancement:

• Implement the new CRM software with configurations and customizations suitable for my institution
• Integrate the new CRM software in my technology ecosystem
• Create a comprehensive Training Program that incorporates product training and new business practices
• Establish an ongoing Data Governance Structure
• Identify all sources of data required to move to the new CRM database

 

If I incorporate all of these components in my project charter and project management plan, I will achieve the true benefits of the CRM software and also meet the expectations of my Advancement staff.

 

I hope you found this helpful, comment and let me know what other items you would add to a MUST DO list when Implementing a CRM Solution for Advancement.