When CRM goes wrong: the Existential Crisis

When a charity is thinking about a CRM for the first time, I always ask the same question: what is this going to do for you that a set of spreadsheets can’t?

Often the first answer is unclear. Sometimes it comes down to a sense that a CRM is just something organisations of a certain size are supposed to have, so getting one feels like a natural part of growing up. That instinct is where a lot of CRM trouble begins, and it’s the problem I want to talk about here.

I run workshops for charities on getting the most out of a CRM, and I usually start by saying that the central challenge is making sure your system fits your organisation. The idea is simple; the reality gets complicated fast. Your CRM is the underlying platform plus whatever configuration you’ve made to it, which means it’s in a sense unique even when you’re running a popular off-the-shelf product. And the parts of your organisation it needs to fit run from the maturity of your programmes to the budget you have for this kind of thing.

For all that complexity, the trouble usually traces back to one thing. There are several ways fit can go wrong, but the most common, and the one I’ll focus on, is a CRM that lacks a clear purpose. I think of it as the system’s existential crisis.

A CRM lacking purpose

When I push for clarity on what the system is actually for, the goal is to prevent drift, so what you end up with is as close as possible to what you need. Any vagueness sends things off track. So “we want to save our frontline staff time” isn’t enough. It needs to be “we want to reduce the time our volunteering team spends matching volunteers to beneficiaries.”

These problems will change and evolve over time, just as your organisation does. Being specific now doesn’t lock you in. The point is that at any given moment you should be clear about the purpose, more likely the purposes, your CRM serves. Thinking in detail about the specific problems it should solve is one good way to find them.

This matters just as much for organisations that already have a CRM, particularly when it feels like things aren’t working. Here you need to diagnose the problem in terms of purpose. “It feels really clunky to use” may be true, but it’s not specific enough to point to a fix. The task is the same as before: be as precise as you can about the problems it should be solving and isn’t. That gives you a much stronger basis for action, whether you handle it in-house or bring someone in. With external partners especially, I find this kind of clarity is one of the biggest factors in whether a project succeeds.

So the key idea is this: often the issues you’re having with your CRM are really a symptom of an unclear sense of what it’s for. Getting clear about that purpose, resolving the existential crisis, is the first step to getting back on track.

Whose purposes?

One last thing, and it’s an easy one to miss. Different people in your organisation will want the CRM to solve different problems, so it pays to take a holistic view when you’re working out what it’s for. Focusing on one group’s needs at the expense of others tends to backfire.

A common version of this: charity leaders focus mainly on what the CRM can report. Streamlining quarterly reports for funders is an appealing prospect. But getting that data out relies on the data being in there in the first place, and I’ve seen the data-entry side neglected entirely in favour of reporting. The result is that the onerous job doesn’t disappear, it just lands on frontline staff wrestling with cumbersome data entry. A bit of thought up front avoids it.

If your CRM feels like it’s hindering more than helping, the instinct is to look at the system. Often the more useful question is the one I open workshops with: what, specifically, is it here to do?