Which CRM for a small NGO? Everyone says Salesforce NPSP but it looks like overkill and I do not want to migrate twice.
honest answer for under ~500 donors: a well-structured google sheet, and i am not being flippant. the discipline of updating it is the actual thing, not the software. most small orgs migrate to a CRM to avoid confronting the fact that nobody is updating anything.
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I will push back. The sheet works right up until the person who built it leaves, and then nobody knows what column J meant. We lost about two years of donor history that way. A CRM enforces a structure that survives staff turnover, and turnover is the defining feature of this sector.
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that is the strongest argument against my position and i have seen the column J thing happen too. i would still say: fix the discipline first, because a CRM nobody updates is just a more expensive column J.
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On that we completely agree. The tool does not create the habit. It just makes the habit outlive the person.
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salesforce npsp is free for 10 users and genuinely powerful and will also consume six months of someone’s life. that is the trade. if you do not have a person who will own it, do not start.
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We have about 200 donors and nobody who would own a Salesforce implementation. Sheet it is, with a proper structure. Thanks both, the disagreement was more useful than agreement would have been.
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