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Moving to a new CRM or database is a big undertaking, so you need to get it right. Here’s some steps we think every organisation, large or small, needs to go through to make sure they’re ready.
- Get management on-board – without top level support, your project will struggle to succeed.
- Identify a project team – if nothing else, you’ll need someone to lead the project. Who’s going to be in charge? If possible, and for smaller organisations this might be tricky, involve anyone who’s work is going to be affected by a new system. Create a small team of people who can represent their colleagues so that you can be sure you’re covering all the bases.
- Understand your requirements – what do you want to achieve? You need to have a complete understanding of how everyone in your organisation is going to use a new system and what they want it to do for them.
- Identify a budget – a system that works well will cost you money, even if it’s open source. Nothing straight out of the box will exactly meet your needs so why not set aside some money to develop something that will suit you. It doesn’t need to be a massive amount and development can usually be done in stages, spreading out the cost.
- Identify other resources needed – especially staff time as this can be where a project flounders as staff try to fit it in around other work commitments.
- Produce a requirements document – it doesn’t have to be long and it shouldn’t be technical. It should outline all the areas of your organisation’s work that will be affected, outline what functionality your system needs (taking event bookings, recording donations, managing membership applications and renewals, etc), and it should specify what other areas a new system needs to integrate with and how (website to enable bookings to be made, finance system to track payments, etc).
- Identify potential developers to by asking other non-profits that you work with.
- Use your requirements document to go out to tender – specify a deadline and stick to it.
- Shortlist from the responses you get and interview those you think you could work with.
- Appoint a developer.
Now you’re ready to begin! See the Implementation Guide – part 2 for the next steps…
