Not Databases But CRM
The job description for my position was titled “Database Program Manager”. Database is a generic term for a pile of structured data that could be used to do just about anything. Your personal phone list is a database, as is the 2000 Census, MoviePhone, and the library card catalog. When I took the job I asked, what kind of databases am I supposed to build?
Nonprofits have diverse databse needs: Washington Environmental Alliance for Voter Education needs a database of precincts and how they voted in past elections, Washington Toxics Coalition needs a database of nasty chemicals, Resource Media needs a database of media outlets. All of these needs are mission critical, but there’s no way we could get good at doing all of them. Being a jack of all trades in the database realm is a sure path to insanity and financial ruin…trust me on this one.
Pretty early on I decided that focusing on relationship development was the best path. In the business world these relationship development functions are called Constituent Relationship Management, CRM for short. I proposed that if enviornmental nonprofits could get good at CRM, they would be better off, and the database program would be successful. To stay focused, we’d have to say no to non-CRM projects.
The folks at 37 Signals say that embracing constraints leads to creativity. I hoped this would be the case with my program. I hoped by focusing on CRM we could get really good at helping nonprofits excel at relationship development as a philosophy for interacting with customers. And maybe investing in this philosophical change would be more beneficial to the movement than trying to do the myriad types of database projects that may come our way.
November 18th, 2005 at 10:35 am
A quick thought: Your thought about moving away from thinking of this as a database is RIGHT ON!!
However, “CRM” doesn’t quite capture what is going on. Really, CRM is about consolidating a number of different databases and their different business processes into one place. In the commercial sector, it’s largely been salesforce automation (helping salespeople track their selling of widgets), marketing automation (tracking the responses to marketing campaigns to group the value of customers), and customer service.
In the nonprofit sector, there are lot of different mini-applications that have traditionally stood alone in silos: donor management, grantor management (raising money from foundations), volunteer management, media management, client management, partner management, marketing/communications, event management, advocacy campaigns, etc. These common processes often live in their own separate custom databases, excel spreadsheets, or file folders with lists. The idea of CRM is to bring these all together in one place — or at least have the ability to pull from all your data coherently. Why? So when you run an event or a fundraising campaign, you can reach out to all your constituents to participate. So that your volunteers become donors and visa versa, and so both become advocates of your mission.
Databases were interesting 15 years ago when they first started entering organizations widely. Today, if you’re still thinking “database” (i.e. like, I just need a new donor database or a volunteer database), you’re missing the point. It’s hard to grow the value of relationships with no coherent memory — it’s schizophrenic (or something like that movie “Memento”). Smart organizations and executives are thinking holistically about the ALL their constituents and how to strategically grow the value to mission (lifetime value) of each based on a coherent memory of past interactions.
December 12th, 2005 at 9:03 am
[...] I’ve talked about how we’ve decided my job is to implement CRM, not create databases. What we’re trying to do is help groups make the shift to “customer centric” relationships–focusing on the value they provide for their constituents, and thereby increasing the value of that relationship for both parties. We think CRM can be the technology support groups need to make this change, and lack of good CRM is one of the main reasons groups are doing this more effectively right now. [...]