Focus on These Critical Areas If You Are Implementing a New Advancement CRM

 

Implementing Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives can be overwhelming—they require change, disrupt processes and workflows. They force your organization to think about how you manage your existing data and deciding how you’ll move forward with data collection.

 

Internally, business processes and technology may need to be changed. Externally, constituent experiences can be disrupted, requiring you to shift in how you communicate.

 

Improving your CRM platforms can leverage an integrated advancement solution that helps break down data silos, drive major gifts and online fundraising, improve reporting and insights with artificial intelligence (AI), personalize engagement, and steward longtime supporters.

 

Now is an incredible time for Advancement teams to focus on improving and modernizing their strategies for success.

 

Focus on these critical areas if you are implementing a new Advancement CRM—primarily if staff work remotely or have worldwide concerns.

 

Stakeholder Engagement

 

Stakeholder engagement has always been an essential part of Advancement, but it needs an overhaul—the way it’s been done is changing. Gone are the days (at least temporarily) of traveling for face-to-face interactions.

 

Video visits were trending even before the pandemic. One-third[1] of all advancement teams were already using video chats as visits, but now it’s an overwhelming majority. This trend will likely not disappear.

 

The shift to digital engagement holds massive potential for fundraising. A gift officer can make dozens of video calls in a day versus a handful of in-person visits—doing so at a fraction of the cost.

 

There will always be a need for face-to-face visits with prospects, but incorporating more resources into building out digital advancement programs can help deliver personal, concierge-like experiences to more donors at scale.

 

Project Communication and Transparency

 

Project communication is challenging without layering on the obstacles brought on by the pandemic. Teams remain working remotely. Many are facing worldwide concerns that extend far beyond your organization.

 

The way you communicate varies greatly depending on the project’s role and stage—but project communication and transparency have never been more critical.

 

A CRM accurately and efficiently drives prospect research and reporting—helping you streamline gift entry, inform strategy, measure campaign effectiveness and return on investment (ROI), and access predictive analysis tools.

 

Focus on reliable information and transparency about the benefits your organization offers your constituents, funders, and communities—they are critical to your legitimacy, funding, and competitiveness.

 

Requirements Management

 

Poor requirements management processes have been associated as a leading cause of project failure. Requirements can be classified into functional and non-functional.

 

Functional requirements are capabilities that the product or service must satisfy user needs. These are the most fundamental requirements often referred to as business requirements.

 

Non-functional requirements include usability, performance, reliability, and security requirements. These are qualities that a product or service must have—they are no less critical than functional requirements.

 

Requirements management helps suppliers and customers understand what is needed to avoid wasting time, resources, and effort. To be effective, it must involve all four requirements processes: planning, development, verification, and change management—which also should be associated with formal standardized organizational implementation.

 

Many requirements management tools are already well-positioned to handle the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Critical areas that requirements management will significantly influence for years include remote working, consolidation and automation, and AI. Organizations that have already adopted these practices stand to benefit greatly and rise above the competition.

 

Requirements management will have to facilitate an agile approach to business. Simultaneously maintaining an efficient development process may mean shorter time-to-market, more imaginative prioritization of business demand, and integration of design thinking processes into development.

 

Iterative Planning

 

Managing new roadblocks, disparate team members, and responding to the new budget and resource constraints should be reflected in your project management processes. With economic and market turmoil, you’ll need to use all available resources to guide decisions with data analysis and predictions for your top prospects and trustees.

 

This current pandemic is not a time to drop everything and panic—it is an opportunity to manage projects and continue to deliver value to your organization.

 

Iterative planning—the process of creating new strategies or developing new products—will be a necessity as organizations may be vulnerable to the economic fallout of the pandemic.

 

Not to mention, the pandemic has decreased median income wealth in the United States[2]. Mid-tier giving will likely be more critical than ever—significantly if top donors scale back the same way they did in 2008.

 

High levels of uncertainty require you to operate at high speeds. Here is a five-step cycle you can apply to plan ahead, responding to the rapidly changing environment.

 

  1. Get a realistic view of where you are starting.
  2. Visualize multiple versions of your future and develop scenarios.
  3. Establish your stand and overall broad direction.
  4. Decide actions and strategic moves that can be applied across scenarios.
  5. Set points that trigger your organization to act at the most opportune time.

 

Develop a team dedicated to planning. They should focus on developing your modular and support your iterative planning cycle throughout the crisis.

 

[1] https://www.prosek.com/unboxed-thoughts/source-development-survey-shows-big-majority-of-reporters-prefer-phone-over-zoo/

[2] https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2020/4/8/course-correction-will-the-coronavirus-crisis-upend-the-higher-ed-fundraising-model

Data Security: A Primer for Advancement Leadership

Data security is critical to making sure that vital information from your organization is not easily accessible, but maintaining data security isn’t easy. In fact, there have been 540 data breaches this year.

 

That’s 163,551,023 people affected in 2020 so far by breaches in data security. Let’s dive into this critical topic as more and more workers and students sign in online every, single day.

Top 6 Causes of Data Breaches

To increase your knowledge about data security, here are the top causes of data breaches.

1. Weak and Stolen Credentials

Passwords that are cracked through brute force algorithms are a main cause of data breaches, but so are stolen passwords.

 

To keep your passwords safe, make sure that you’ve made them complex enough to render them “unhackable”. You can randomly generated passwords and manage them with tools like LogMeOnce or LastPass. Extra points for a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

2. Application Vulnerabilities

Hackers find the technical vulnerability in a software and then exploit it. Before using or launching a new application, make sure your team tests it for vulnerabilities and finds ways to patch those security threats. This includes applications that house your constituent data, like your Advancement CRM database.

3. Malware

“Malware” is short for “malicious software.” It describes a variety of threatening methods that are designed to infiltrate and damage, disrupt, or hack a device. For example, think of viruses, worms, ransomware, and Trojan Horses. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of malware.

4. Malicious Insiders

Taking care of your employees so that they don’t become a future risk to your institution is important, but so is screening out those who seem predisposed to betraying their employer. Malicious insiders are the employees who have access to sensitive information and then purposefully commit a data breach to harm the institution. Better hiring and screening processes, along with maintaining a good organizational culture and robust employee training programs, can help prevent these insiders from coming on board and wreaking havoc from within the organization.

5. Insider Error

Employees who do not have malicious intent but commit a data breach by mistake are also a threat. These employees may not be aware they’ve done anything wrong, but one accidental keystroke can cause a serious data breach.

 

For these employees, it’s important to remind them to take more care with their work and to encourage them to be transparent when they’ve made an error. Employee training is a crucial step to prevent these errors. Together, you can grow and learn, ultimately stopping similar mistakes from happening.

6. Physical Theft

Theft of a device that holds your institution’s sensitive information falls under this category. To prevent these breaches, you may want to take extra care in where you physically store this information—consider using a safe or a security system.

Why Preventing Data Breaches Is Important

Data breaches are preventable. In fact, 4 of the 6 causes of data breaches can be prevented based on changing human behavior. This means that every staff member in Advancement can be a part of the solution.

How To Prevent Data Breaches

There are several measures you can take to prevent data breaches.

Security Policy Training and Education: Setting The Standard

When you’re creating your security policy training and pulling together your educational materials, it’s important to clearly set the standard. When you’re completing this step, it helps to ask yourself and your colleagues the following questions:

  • What is the policy?
  • Why is it beneficial to the organization?
  • How does a security breach impact Advancement?
    • By making a breach relevant to Advancement itself, you’re adding a sense of urgency for employees to comply.

You’ll also want to discuss examples of behaviors that adhere to the policy and examples of behaviors that would violate the policy. By giving employees clear examples, you’re ensuring that they’ll fully understand what does and does not constitute a data breach.

Advancement Leadership as Security Champions: Lead by Example

As a leader in your Advancement team, you must champion the cause to protect sensitive information and build confidence with your donors and supporters. Give periodic Executive Briefings on the key points below:

  • Know what data you have, including its:
    • Location (is it in an on-premise data center, is it vendor-hosted, is it in a storage room, or is it in Mike’s desk drawer?)
    • Format (is the data in a digital copy or a hard copy?)
    • Volume (how much data is there, really?)
    • Classification (whether the data is sensitive or confidential)
  • What potential vulnerabilities exist based on the data you have, the software you’ve used, and access you’ve given staff members?
    • Map these vulnerabilities out and identify them, before a breach occurs.
  • What plans are in place to reduce the vulnerabilities your company has? Are they working? (Tip: If they’re not working, brainstorm ways to improve.)

Communication Plan for Data Breach

Have your plan ready before a data breach occurs. Establish a communication plan such that you and your leadership team can be immediately informed if there is a threat or possible threat of a data breach. Creating a data breach task force or committee can also help streamline that process internally. Determine how you will communicate to your constituents.

Performance Evaluations: Enforce Security Policies

You can’t simply rely on IT to be the sole security watchdog for your organization. By the time they are even aware of staff behavior that has compromised the organization, that door may have been open for months. Staff should be evaluated on a consistent and measured basis.

Data Security: Final Thoughts

Assessment of your Advancement team’s Data Security requires a 360-degree look into how your institution is performing, the vulnerabilities that exist, and ways that existing processes can be refined to prevent future data breaches.

 

When you’re trusting employees with sensitive data, remember—human error can and will happen, but with the right precautions, you’re taking safeguards to prevent future accidental breaches from happening again.

 

Malicious actors also exist, but again—with the right measures, you’re taking steps to prevent them from hacking into or stealing your data.