Why you need Constituent Relationship Management

Your organization probably has defined its mission and has a clear picture of what it wants to achieve. Obviously, constituents play a vital role in that mission and goal as you are reading this chapter. A plan of what needs to be done with those constituents would be the first thing to do before you do anything with software. We could call that plan a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. For many non-profit, advocacy, government, and membership-based organizations, CiviCRM is the best tool to support you in achieving your goals and to ultimately help you in your mission.

Does your organization lack a unified and integrated system for managing contacts? Do you spend your energy simply trying to keep track of who your constituents are, without ever understanding how they have interacted, and will continue to interact, with your organization? These are common issues for non-profit organizations, be they large or small, centralized or distributed, more or less organized. Can you answer yes to any of the questions below?

At the heart of any constituent relationship strategy and the tools that support it is the need to manage contact records. Yet CiviCRM is much more than just a contact management system. As an integrated online system that handles contacts, donations, pledge commitments, event registration, bulk e-mail, case management, grant distribution, campaign tracking, survey collection, and other functions, CiviCRM provides the tools required to dig deeper, and collect more, from your constituents. And with a proven track record, consistently receiving top ratings from non-profit technology user surveys, you can rely on this toolset to help you deliver results.

By referring to a CRM strategy, we intentionally seek to include the broader management and mission goals along with the technology solution. Tools alone are not enough to achieve success. There must be organization-wide support, and a holistic viewpoint, to manage constituents effectively. Furthermore, the implementation of any tool must begin with an analysis of needs and objectives. We need to have a clear vision of what we are seeking to do and where improvements should be made, before we pick up the tool and start working with it.

A successful CRM strategy can help your organization in many concrete ways. Here are some examples:

CiviCRM can help in all these areas, providing the building blocks and tools for constructing your constituent strategies.