4 Tips for More Successful Virtual Board Meetings

As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic forced boards of directors and their committees to move from in-person meetings to an online setting.

In some ways, that change has been great. Meeting online can save board members’ valuable time and make meetings more convenient. However, we’ve seen that meeting exclusively online has also hurt many boards’ cultures and it's been harder for board members to make human connections with each other.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a few key tips to help your board strengthen the effectiveness of its virtual meetings. While many of the sources we reference deal specifically with board meetings, the tips described can apply to most virtual meetings.

1. Establish Your Board’s Virtual Meeting Etiquette

We all know some of the common rules of etiquette for in-person meetings. Show up on time. Raise your hand to speak. Stay present and refrain from getting distracted by your cell phone.

Virtual meetings, however, are somewhat new and we’re all figuring out the best rules for these meetings. Some common pieces of virtual meeting etiquette include:

• Having your camera on.

• Keeping yourself muted unless it’s time to speak.

• Dress appropriately.

• Stay aware of your background (a wall is the best bet).

• No meals during meetings.

• Use verbal cues in lieu of body language.

Other important etiquette factors could include engagement with one another. How will participants ask questions? Should they use the chat or raise their hands? Do they wait until the end or can they interrupt? Having these expectations set at the beginning will help the virtual meeting flow more smoothly and reduce wasted time.

Whatever etiquette guidelines you choose to adopt, clearly communicate them and make sure you keep people accountable to the standards. Otherwise they might start to slip through the cracks, leaving a potential for distractions and less effective dialogue.

2. Create the Space for Connections

In-person board meetings offer a chance for board members to come together and develop their relationships with each other. Before and after the meeting, board members might strike up conversations, but in virtual meetings, that can be harder to replicate

A couple of simple things you can do to promote the connections among your board in these meetings are to:

• Conduct a meeting ice-breaker so that board members can get to know one another better. If you Google “virtual meeting ice breakers” you’ll find a number of great resources. Here’s one that we like.

• Provide board members with an option to join the meeting for up to a half-hour ahead of time just to connect and talk amongst themselves. We’ve seen this approach work great in advance of strategic planning meetings. Some of our customers use this time to share a virtual cocktail or break bread with each other, making the meeting time much more enjoyable.

3. Invest in the Right Technology

At this point, you’re probably aware of some of the most popular technology for virtual meetings. Most board members have become comfortable using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or other remote conferencing platforms.

There are other resources that integrate with these platforms to enhance the meeting experience. Collaboration tools like LucidChart, Jamboard, or Miro are all great for nonprofit work because they allow the team to work together on visually represented concepts or ideas. Team members can share charts or diagrams to show data, and others can make changes or suggestions in real time.

There are other tools out there, like Otter, that will record and take meeting notes. And other applications, like Krisp, that will enhance the sound quality of your meeting.

As remote meetings continue to rise, the technology will likely become more sophisticated, but whatever tools you use, make sure the whole board knows how to use them to get the most out of the experience.

4. Remember Regular Board Meeting Best Practices

Bad meetings are notorious time wasters, and board members don’t have much time to waste. With that in mind, be sure to implement common meeting best practices so that they are most effective. Here are some resources to help you with those practices.

• We wrote an article about the power of setting outcomes-based meeting agendas. Here is a sample meeting agenda that we reference in that article.

• The Council of Nonprofits has a great list of ten best practices for in-person board meetings that can also be applied to virtual ones.

• Here is a list of the top 10 nonprofit board meeting mistakes to avoid.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, virtual board meetings shouldn’t be less effective than your in-person ones. They’re just happening over the phone or video conferencing software. We hope that the tips we’ve provided here will help you in your efforts to create more productive and engaging virtual board meetings.

Best Practices for Transitioning a Director off Your Nonprofit Board

All good things come to an end eventually, and great board members are no exception. When the time comes for these organizational leaders to transition, it’s important to have a clear offboarding plan in place.

Directors leave a board for a variety of reasons. For starters, board terms don’t last forever, so the exit could be a natural part of the board member’s life cycle. It could also be related to some sort of unforeseen, life-changing circumstance. Whatever the reason, a thorough offboarding process helps the nonprofit smoothly transition the person, honor them for their service, and tie up any loose ends.

Below, we will outline best practices for handling board member transitions. However, it should also be noted that sometimes board members are asked to step down due to some sort of difficult situation. While some of the practices listed below would apply to that situation as well, there are nuanced differences that we will not emphasize in this post. You can read this blog post to learn more about addressing challenging board members.

Follow Bylaws Closely

Every organization should have clear protocol documented in their bylaws for onboarding and offboarding board members.

Bylaws give you specific rules to follow. They’ll outline the process and help you have a consistent procedure for every board member. Following the bylaws closely is essential to having a smooth transition. The bylaws are also a legal document, so failing to adhere to the documented protocol could lead to legal challenges down the road.

If your organization doesn’t have this protocol in place, it’s important to get that remedied as soon as possible. The Foundation Group, a leading provider of formation and compliance services for nonprofits, explains that organizations in these circumstances should amend the document to include provision “before any further action is taken.” Likewise, they caution that “your bylaws should also contain provisions for how to make such amendments, so make sure you follow that process accurately, as well.”

Plan an Exit Interview

Evaluation of the board itself is one of the many responsibilities held by a nonprofit board. Exit interviews provide a great opportunity for remaining board members to receive feedback from those on their way out.

Nancy Droesch and Susan S. Stepleton, longtime nonprofit leaders and board members of Council of Accreditation, say that exit interviews can particularly help with gaining unbiased feedback. “Not only do these board members know intimately how the board functions,” the writers explain, “they no longer will have to put in the work to fix perceived weaknesses.”

The duo points out that exit interviews are most successful “with the right prompts.” Nonprofits need to ask questions that spur on good feedback. The process shouldn’t just be about going through a checklist. Rather, it should create space for the interviewee to thoughtfully engage with questions and provide meaningful responses.

Questions that prompt this kind of insight will focus on experiences and stories. They’ll be open-ended, enabling the interviewee to reflect on their time on the board. Here are a few specific examples:

• How would you describe your experience serving on board?

• In your own words, can you describe the culture of the board?

• What were the board’s strengths and weaknesses?

• Did you feel adequately prepared and trained for your responsibilities? If not, how could the board have done a better job?

• What would you tell an incoming board member to help them succeed?

• Are there any general suggestions you have for improving the board’s function?

Although each organization will want to find questions that relate to their particular board, having a few general questions like these can help your team get started. Nonprofitnext also has a more comprehensive list of questions worth considering.

In addition, they point out the importance of having a clear internal structure for the exit interview, claiming that “the Board Chair should decide who and how the exit interview is handled.” The specifics of that process will vary depending on the organization, but all should have some sort of process in place for when the time comes.

Honor the Board Member

Board members dedicate a lot of their time, energy, and resources to the organization during their tenure. Officially recognizing their efforts when they leave is a great way to show them that the organization appreciates all the work they put in, and there are a few ways to do this.

Honoring a board member can be as simple as acknowledging their exit and thanking them in a newsletter or on the nonprofit’s website. This public display of appreciation also lets your donors and other supporters know about the transition.

This example from the National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias gives a good foundation for what a public post could look like. The blog includes the following information for each exiting board member:

• Name and brief bio

• Role on the board

• Specific or unique contributions

• Thank you message that includes their length of time served on the board

Other ideas may include hosting a small dinner or gathering in their honor, inviting other board members or specific donors. The organization can also offer a small gift as a token of gratitude.

For particularly outstanding board members, organizations may consider adding an honorary title or special status, though we recommend offering this sparingly. Boardsource explains that overusing these honors causes them to lose their importance. “Retiring board members should not automatically be given particular honors or positions; such titles should be earned,” they write. Having set criteria and a determined process can help ensure “an impartial selection process” that is fair and “reduces hurt feelings” of other board members.

Consider Ways the Person Can Stay Connected

Just because someone is transitioning off the board doesn’t mean they have to cut ties with the organization as a whole. In fact, their intimate knowledge of the mission and their experience makes them a valuable asset long after their term ends. Because of this, the offboarding process should include ideas for how that person can stay involved.

Dr. Cynder Sinclair, a nonprofit coach with over 30 years of experience, shows that most board members want to stay involved in some fashion. It’s not like the years of passion and dedication just go away with a title change. Those things still run within them, and organizations can try these ideas to keep them connected:

• Inviting them to join committees

• Communicating through newsletters and emails

• Starting a separate communication channel exclusively for former board members

• Hosting special gatherings with former board members

The other practices mentioned above become even more valuable when you consider how they will help you establish a relationship with the former board member in their new role. Exit interviews can include questions about how they would like to stay involved, and publicly honoring them reminds them that the organization cares about them as people, not just as board members. These simple steps can go a long way in fostering relationships with these people who Dr. Sinclair calls “hidden jewels” of your nonprofit.

Secure Any Sensitive Information and Materials

Board members often have access to sensitive information. Whether it’s in the form of printed documents, software login, or anything else, it’s important that your organization secures any material that might jeopardize the integrity of the organization. This can save the board member and your organization from potential legal issues at some point.

Keep detailed records of all the information board members have access to. This could be part of the onboarding process that benefits offboarding. Your organization can create a checklist that accounts for each item that needs to be returned or which passwords need to change.

Closing Thoughts

Developing a smooth offboarding process will make it easier to transition directors from your board. Your organization’s bylaws should outline a clear path for moving these leaders out of the organization in the most efficient way possible.

The steps we outlined above do not necessarily pertain to those who are removed from the board under challenging circumstances. Such a process requires some additional considerations, but following these practices will help you smoothly offboard directors whose roles have come to a natural end.

Understanding the Key Responsibilities of Your Board

A well-operating board is one of the most vital elements of success for a nonprofit. The board works closely with the executive director to ensure everything stays on mission and is aligned with the vision. 

This is easier said than done, though. 

Each board has its own minor differences. Specifics differ depending on the organization’s size, maturity, mission, and goals. This can make it difficult for executive directors to know exactly what to expect from their board specifically. 

The more the executive director can understand their board’s key responsibilities, the better chance the organization has at maximizing success.

We want to help you develop that level of understanding for your organization, so we’ve outlined 5 key responsibilities of successful nonprofit boards. 

1. Ensure a Documented Strategy

The board has a responsibility to ensure the organization has a documented strategic plan that gets implemented in the best way possible. We believe that this is the board’s most important responsibility since it provides a foundation for all that the nonprofit does. 

The board's engagement with strategic planning varies from organization to organization. A small nonprofit with minimal staffing may have a working board that gets actively involved in executing the plan while a larger, more established board may strictly provide oversight and support as the staff executes the plan.

To be clear, the board doesn’t have to create the strategic plan. They’re only responsible for ensuring that a documented strategy exists and is used.

The strategic plan itself will often vary in detail, size, and duration depending upon the nonprofit. Some organization’s have a one-page, one-year plan that works perfectly well. Others have a more developed, long-term document that provides more detail. It really depends on where the organization is in its lifecycle. Our guidance is to keep the plan and strategy as focused and practical as possible so that it can be most effectively utilized. 

2. Provide Governance 

The executive director handles the organization’s day-to-day operations, but the board functions as an overall governing body. They act as overseers of the entire organization and take collective responsibility for what goes on within it. This starts with establishing, updating, and upholding the organization’s bylaws, a set of documented rules that help set the foundation for the board’s governance. 

The bylaws function as a type of internal list of rules and regulations for governing the nonprofit. Having them in place helps the organization operate with ethical and legal integrity. The board ensures that the organization adheres to the bylaws, and they are responsible for reviewing and updating the bylaws as necessary. 

The board can also help with organizational risk mitigation. The executive director and staff can easily get caught up in putting out the fires that naturally occur in their roles. They don’t always have the time, experience, or energy to look at the big picture and see potential pain points in processes or in the organization as a whole. The board can fill this gap by identifying and providing potential solutions for a variety of risks regarding the organization’s financials, programs, staffing, facility use, etc. 

Each of these governance items falls under the umbrella of the basic legal responsibilities of a nonprofit board. Broadly speaking, these responsibilities are referred to as the “three D’s”: the duty of care, the duty of loyalty, and the duty of obedience. These are well-established elements of nonprofit law. 

3. Support and Guide the Executive Director

Executive directors work tirelessly and make great sacrifices to fulfill the organization’s goals. It can be a thankless job, so the board has a real opportunity to step in and provide support. 

They can do this by offering wise guidance and counsel to the executive director. This could happen through scheduled check-ins where board members ensure the executive director has everything they need to be successful. We often recommend that the board chair, in particular, schedule monthly one-on-one conversations with the executive director. In other circumstances, board members could offer more specialized advice, especially in their specific areas of specialization such as law, insurance, finance, or human relations.

Your board should also provide a regular evaluation process for the executive director. This typically happens annually but it may happen more frequently as well. The evaluation process and the related conversations should provide the executive director with constructive feedback that helps them and the organization grow. 

4. Ensure Adequate Resources

The board ensures that the organization has adequate resources — especially finances and community relationships — in place to accomplish its mission and vision.

This does not mean, necessarily, that the board is responsible for acquiring these resources themselves. Fundraising, contrary to what many people think, does not have to be a primary responsibility of the board. The most financially sustainable nonprofit that we’ve worked with doesn’t have a fundraising board. Board members should contribute what they can — and fundraise if it makes sense — but it is not a blanket requirement of board service. In fact, recent research (see page 23 of Leading with Intent) that prioritizing fundraising above anything else can take away from organizational strategy, relevance, and impact. Instead, the board focuses on ensuring that the best fundraising processes are in place and that the finances are being adequately managed by the team set in place.

Lastly, the board should ensure that the organization has positive relationships within the community. Board members utilize their networks and connections they have built over the years to represent the organization within the community, advocating for the organization, and enhancing its public standing.  

5. Develop and Evaluate the Board Itself 

A final responsibility of every organization’s board has to do with growing and developing itself through recruiting new members and evaluating its own effectiveness.

Before recruiting new members, the board should first identify the qualities of the board that they want to create. Things to consider are the desired board’s size, needed skill sets, and the diversity of its members. The nonprofit’s bylaws will also provide requirements for the board’s composition. With the desired qualities in mind, the board can then seek new members to fill any gaps. 

The process for nominating and recruiting new board members is often specified in the bylaws. For example, the bylaws may dictate the presence of a nominating committee and/or who on the board has the authority to nominate new members. 

Recruiting new members is commonly done through active outreach by the board members and executive director. The board can also seek new members through board recruitment events like those held by Board Match. One of our customers has successfully recruited over half of its members through recruitment events. 

In addition to being thoughtful in how it recruits new members, an effective board can further develop itself by completing and discussing an annual self-evaluation. A self-evaluation template like this one can help the board members clarify the types of questions that they want to ask of themselves.

Final Thoughts   

A nonprofit’s board has a huge impact on its overall success. A good board ensures that the nonprofit stays on mission and pursues its vision. But a board that doesn’t understand its key responsibilities can lead to misunderstandings, confusion, and potentially worse problems in the long run. 

Having clarity around the responsibilities we outlined here can help your board avoid these pitfalls and operate successfully. 

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We just launched our online strategic planning course called START! START provides organizations with a practical strategic plan that they can successfully achieve. Learn more about how START can transform your organization.

10 Tips For Better Employee Engagement

If there is one thing that drives the success of a nonprofit organization, it's the people that believe in its purpose and contribute to its growth. As part of a growing nonprofit, your goals should be to continuously feed this passion by fostering an organizational culture that thrives on healthy levels of employee engagement.

But how can this be achieved? Below, we'll discuss ten tips for better employee engagement in your nonprofit.

Delegate Clear Responsibilities and Empower Your Employees

Employees of nonprofits are typically driven, passionate people who want to see the organization, mission, and sector succeed. However, if you want to get the best out of your employees, it's important that you delegate clear responsibilities with certain levels of accountability.

Giving your employees a clear understanding of their day-to-day, along with the broader strategic direction of the organization, empowers them to make decisions independently without the need for the regular direction of organizational leadership. This fosters healthy levels of autonomy and happy employees. As their supervisor, you win and they win.

Keep Communication Lines Open

There are few things in any organization as important as effective communication, and your nonprofit is no different. However, proper communication means something different to everyone, and finding out how your employees best communicate is essential when creating mutually beneficial dialogues.

How do you know what works best for each employee? As important as it is to set a culture of communication and clearly define the tools and patterns of communication, it’s also important to ask your employees what works for them. Work with your team to design a way of working that provides the best results for everyone involved.

Whether you conduct regular in-person meetings, web conference calls, or have regular over-the-phone check-ins, your employees should feel like they have a regular conduit to you. This will allow them to be aware of their shifting priorities while also feeling they have a sustainable format to connect with you as needed.

Identify and Reinforce the Organization's Vision

At one point or another, you may find that some of your employees hit a productivity wall where they feel less engaged than they used to be in their current roles. When this occurs, it's important to spend the time to reinforce the organization's vision and the individual role they play when supporting it.

Your employees equally want to enjoy where they work and the work they do. One way to ensure this happens is by regularly reminding them of how important they are to you, your organization, and your constituents. This feeling of belonging and purpose will help them get past productivity hurdles that may otherwise get in their way.

Create Manageable Workloads

Do your employees have enough to do? That may be a tricky question to answer without fully understanding your employees' capabilities or the day-to-day operational constraints they may be working with. It's essential to carefully consider your employees' abilities in relation to the amount of work they're tasked with.

Creating manageable workloads for your employees ensures that they are fulfilled day-to-day with the work they're accomplishing without feeling overwhelmed. This helps avoid employee burnout which inevitably can lead to poor morale and lack of productivity and efficiency.

Provide Regular Feedback

Regardless of how great your employees may perform, spending time giving regular feedback on their performance is a sure way to get long-term engagement from all members of your nonprofit team. When you give feedback to one of your employees, the context of the feedback needs to be as impactful as how it is delivered.

When giving feedback, you should be careful not to make it negative as much as constructive. The purpose of your feedback should never be to punish but rather to correct. Of course, not all feedback needs to be built around corrective action. Positive feedback can be even more impactful, and you should always look for opportunities to give it when you can.

Support Work-Life Balance

In order to ensure your employees stay engaged with the organization for a more extended period of time, it's vital to foster a healthy work-life balance. This can sometimes be challenging as nonprofit employees are often passionate about the projects they take on, and it can be tempting to put more time into the organization on a day-to-day basis than is sustainable.

Be sure to encourage your employees to maintain balance when working more hours than they should. This may mean mandating that they take time off at regular intervals, reduce hours when necessary, and find ways to step away from the daily grind when it starts to impact their ability to focus.

Flexibility in working hours and work location can provide value to the employee without negatively affecting work performance or productivity. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that work from home is here to stay. Crafting a policy that supports flex time and place will help you recruit and retain employees that are committed to your organization and passionate about the mission.

Keep Goals Measurable and Achievable

It’s important that you are clear with employees about the expectations of their role while ensuring they have a measurable path to success.

Every organization needs clear objectives, but this is especially the case when running a nonprofit. Whether those objectives are financially driven or are part of executing the nonprofit's mission, employees should be informed of their role in helping to achieve those targets.

Keep your goals measurable and achievable in order to get the most engagement out of your employees. By putting in place smaller milestones that they can achieve, you'll help build their confidence and build a much healthier culture of personal and professional growth.

Celebrate Employee Success

It can be easy to get wrapped up in the daily grind and forget about the hard work your employees do on a regular basis. Don't let the daily pressures of running your nonprofit lead you to forget about celebrating each of your employees' individual or group success from time to time.

While working for a nonprofit organization can be rewarding, every employee likes to know that they are appreciated for the effort put out every day. Take the time to celebrate with your employees whenever you can and continue to feed the excitement of watching your nonprofit succeed.

Provide Support Where Needed

Remember that while you may hire a staff member to complete a specific set of tasks, their success is often a direct reflection of the support you give them on a day-to-day basis. The more support you give, the more effective the output of the employee. Be sure to make yourself available whenever you can to support your employees regularly and give them the tools and knowledge they need to succeed.

Invest in ongoing training -- whether through your state organization membership, funding attendance of a key nonprofit conference, providing access to tools like LinkedIn Learning or Pluralsight Skill, or purchasing courses on Udacity or from various domain experts, like our START strategic planning course.

Allow For Honest Feedback

Just as important, if not more important, as giving feedback to your employees is the willingness to be given feedback as the need arises. The ability to remain humble and accept input from your employees is a defining quality of a great nonprofit leader.

Never shy away from the ability to receive thoughts, ideas, or concerns from your staff members, and be sure to give them a safe environment to do so. Curated feedback never benefits anyone. Open yourself up to being vulnerable, and you'll be amazed at the level of respect you're given for it.

Final Thoughts

It's vital that you never forget the importance of regularly engaging with your employees. By following these ten tips for better employee engagement, you'll ensure your employees remain excited about your nonprofit's goals and continue to play an active role in achieving them.

In the comments section below, share with us other tips you have for engaging your employees or has been particularly impactful to you.

Choosing a Nonprofit CRM

When you consider the most valuable aspect of your nonprofit organization, what comes to mind? You probably immediately think about the organization's big-picture objectives and mission statements, what they mean to you personally, and how achieving them can positively impact others in various ways.

Of course, you know that to achieve these objectives, you are heavily reliant on all of those supporting your nonprofit, your "constituents" in which you place your trust, confidence, and respect to help you build and sustain your organization's forward momentum. Depending on your organization, these constituents can be made up of donors, funders, volunteers, board members, staff, and other organizations or individuals who help support your nonprofit's financial and operational needs.

But establishing and maintaining these critical relationships requires keen attention and follow-through, both of which are easy to lose sight of as your nonprofit grows, as does your list of active constituents. This is where the value of CRM comes into play.

What is A CRM SysteM?

The acronym CRM can mean different things for nonprofit and for-profit organizations. While CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager in traditional business spaces, the term refers to Constituent Relationship Management in nonprofit organizations.

A Constituent Relationship Management system or solution is a tool that nonprofit organizations can use to track, monitor, and improve engagements with all their relevant contacts. This is achieved by providing an on-premise or cloud-based database solution for collecting and storing your constituent information, streamlining targeted and personalized communications, optimizing fundraising capabilities, and automating various workflows and processes.

Should Your Nonprofit Invest in A CRM?

Whether or not you choose to invest in a CRM tool is entirely up to you, the size of your nonprofit, and the organization's goals when it comes to scale and sustainability. However, for many nonprofits, CRMs have become less of an option and more necessary, especially when improving engagement, maximizing fundraising efforts, and improving organizational efficiencies.

Maintaining relevant and impactful relationships should be one of your primary goals when growing your nonprofit. While keeping yourself organized through email clients, social media platforms, and digital calendars might get you to a certain point with this initiative, new opportunities will quickly dissolve without using the right tools and systems.

CRM solutions allow you to manage all of your constituent relationships in one unified platform, eliminating manual and repetitive processes while being able to focus on establishing closer relationships with supporters.

How to Choose the Right Nonprofit CRM

If you've been considering investing in a CRM platform for your nonprofit, it's important to note that there is no shortage of options to choose from that range in all types of sizes, feature sets, and price points.

Companies like Salesforce, DotDrives, Bloomerang, Neon CRM, and Little Green Light are only a few of the many CRM companies with a strong reputation for helping nonprofits improve their donor management and constituent engagement strategies. But while these and other similar solutions may look like they're the best option for your organization, there are some important considerations you should make when choosing the right CRM for your nonprofit.

Profile Tracking

Most CRM platforms will have some type of relationship-tracking functionality. However, you'll want to ensure that the system you choose allows you to create custom profiles and fields relevant to your constituent types. While having the ability to store basic information on board members, donors, funders, clients, etc., is necessary, the platform you choose should be flexible enough to be customized to your nonprofit's unique relationship profiles.

Donation Management

An invaluable feature of certain nonprofit CRM systems is the ability to simplify the donor management process. This includes proactive outreach campaigns, auto-generated donation tax receipts, document generation and storage capabilities, and other relevant features useful for managing close relationships with current and potential donors or funders.

Event Planning and Coordination

Certain CRM platforms have given organizations the ability to plan and execute fundraising events and other critical nonprofit functions. Having all of your constituents managed in one place is more efficient when sending invitations, managing RSVPs, and scheduling follow-ups.

Reporting and Analytics

Part of improving your strategic planning process has to do with extracting relevant data from your relationship history and creating actionable insights that can help you make informed decisions for your nonprofit. You want to find a CRM platform that can provide you with these deep insights through transparent donor reports, donation trends, and transaction and payment tracking.

Simplicity

An often overlooked feature is how simple the CRM is to use. If you get a souped-up platform at your fingertips but you’re only using 5% of the functionality, you and your team are less likely to actually use it. Make sure your CRM makes often-used functions simple and straightforward to use and get value from.

Automation

One great feature of many CRM systems is the ability to automate many daily workflows and processes through useful native integrations. Every CRM differs, so find the one that streamlines as many third-party services and solutions as possible, giving you the ability to use one source of truth when driving communications with your constituents.

Affordability

Of course, we couldn't talk about how to find the CRM platform that's right for you without talking about cost. As with all tools and technology, CRM solutions can vary considerably in affordability; find one that offers you a sustainable pricing model.

Pricing models for CRM platforms can be formatted and tiered in several ways, including by user count, the number of emails sent per month, required database size, or the level of integration you're needing. Again, it's vital that you consider your organization's needs now and in the future and choose a platform that you're able to get the highest return on investment.

Setting Yourself Up For Success

While finding the right CRM tool is important, sourcing the right onboarding partners that can help you get the most value out of it is vital.

CRM platforms can be an invaluable tool for any nonprofit, especially as you begin to grow your number of constituents and focus on creating more automation in your day-to-day routine. However, remember that CRM tools are simply that — "tools." In order to get the most value from these solutions, invest the necessary time and effort into adequate training and customization.

Finding the right CRM solution for your nonprofit, and teaming up with the right partners who can help you extract the most value out of the solution, will maximize constituent relationships and create a sustainable path for your nonprofit's success.

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We just launched our online strategic planning course called START! START provides organizations with a practical strategic plan that they can successfully achieve. Learn more about how START can transform your organization.