Name: Thriving Through Change: The Nonprofit’s Blueprint for CRM Transition Success
Uploaded: 2025-05-08T19:30:32.122Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 20 s
Description: Thriving Through Change: The Nonprofit’s Blueprint for CRM Transition Success

Transcript for "Thriving Through Change: The Nonprofit’s Blueprint for CRM Transition Success": Alright. Welcome to today's webinar. We are welcoming everybody in. Everyone's coming in. The gates just opened, and so I know everyone's rushing to their seats, digitally speaking, obviously. And so welcome. We're super glad that you're here. As you are coming in, hearing my voice, getting acquainted with this platform, would love to know where you're joining from today. So do us a favor and just let us know where you're tuning in from. Matt from Richmond, what is going on. We are glad that you're here. My name is Scott, and I'm with the Virtuous team here in the Chicago area. So really glad to have the crew here. We got folks we got Pittsburgh, Austin, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Orlando, Cumberland, Rhode Island. Never been, but would love to. Cincinnati. Awesome, man. We got a we got a great crew. I know that we have people kinda joining over the next minute or two, so, I'm gonna welcome everyone and, and give you a couple platform, a little tour of the platform, a lay of the land. So obviously, you're finding the chat just fine. One of the things I love about this platform too is you can include a good GIF in there. So, find your favorite, hello, welcome to the webinar, GIF. I'm searching for mine. They change up the order sometimes, so I have a go to, and they move it on me. It's kinda frustrating. I'm a do a new one. My nephew loves pugs, so that's for him. But anyway, we're super glad that you are here. You are gonna notice above the chat, there's a couple things. There's messages, docs, q and a. In the docs tab, we have some some gifts for you. One, the slide deck that you can download, but also we have our CRM conversion playbook. We'll mention that a little later. Hannah, that's actually my favorite one. That's the one I was looking for, and you found it. Wonderful. I'm glad it's still there. CRM conversion playbook, we have that for you to download, so we'd welcome you to grab that. We'll mention that a little bit later. And then you'll also see q and a. So, throughout today, go ahead and submit your questions there. And actually, look at that as well, even if you don't have questions, because you can upvote certain questions so that we answer those sooner. So submit your questions, upvote questions, we wanna be as helpful as we can today. And you're also gonna see from time to time a polls tab open up, and that is some polls that we're gonna take to just kinda see where you're at, get some thoughts here from you. So again, really glad that you're here. Let's keep the chat going, Kevin. I like that one. Let's keep the chat going. We will record this. We're recording it right now, and we will send this out with the slide deck and the playbook later after the webinar. So keep an eye on for that. And I wanna remind you where you're at. It's like the when you're on a flight. Right? And they're like, you're about to take off and they're like, just so you know, we're we're going to Phoenix. So if you're not going to Phoenix, now is the time to let us know. We are talking today about thriving through change. So the nonprofit's blueprint for CRM transition success and working through what does it look like. Change is not everyone's favorite. Changing your CRM is certainly not something you're looking to do every month. But there's a way to walk through that process to where you actually thrive through it and come out stronger. And so we're super excited today, both here at the Virtuous team and our friends from NPact who are here with us. So I keep saying we, and so I want to, introduce everybody. I'm gonna bring on Carly who is gonna be on as well. We're gonna do some intros one on one one by one. So I'm gonna hand it to Carly to give her intro, and then we'll also meet Annette and come in here. Thanks, Scott. Super excited to get Virtuous. I was a ten year fundraiser, in the nonprofit space. I was the chief marketing and development officer at a $3,030,000,000 dollar nonprofit based in Phoenix, where I led the fundraising and marketing teams. During that time, about three years in, I had to go through a CRM transition myself and actually chose Virtuous from the varying options and went through the actual change that we're talking about today. So I joined Virtuous last year being able to bring my fundraising experience to everything we're doing just to be able to, reach the voice of the of the customer and others who are really living that fundraising, job every day. Yeah. Love that. Also gonna bring on Kevin and Annette. Kevin are are and Annette are our friends from NPact, and we're super excited to have them joining today. So we'd love to toss it to Annette for, an intro as we get going here. Hi, everybody. I am Annette Griffin, and, my background is in data conversion or data migration, twenty years with Blackbaud doing razor's edge church conversions, school, trip conversions also. And then, moving over to NPact where I still do some of those, and I do virtuous data migrations too. So that's my background. More of the technical side. Fingers in the data. That's me. That's awesome. Kevin, we'd love to, to get your your your background here and, a little bit of your bio. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Scott. It's nice to meet everyone. My name is Kevin Wood, and I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I saw Alex and Philip, I think, in the chat are also from Cincinnati. That's why I dropped the Jamar Chase gift a little bit ago. I worked in a nonprofit world for eighteen years as a database manager. I started my career in higher ed. I went to a health care foundation, and then I was at a high school. And so a lot of experience, managing data. And I joined NPact about three years ago, where I've been a consultant. I led our consulting team for a little while, and now I'm director of sales. So I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for the for having us on. Yeah. Absolutely. And, hey, would you just mind keep going? Give everyone, you know, if they're not familiar, an idea of who NPact is and and what y'all do? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, here at NPact, we are a SaaS company as well as a services service company. We have a a a very tenured consulting team that works with nonprofits, all different kinds of nonprofits doing CRM consulting as well as accounting platform consulting. We're a Virtuous partner as well, so we do migrations and and training for Virtuous customers. And we I always like to say we're we're able to knock down whatever barriers you have between your technology and delivering your mission. So we have, our our consulting team has worked in the industry for a number of years, but also has a very strong technical background. So we provide a very unique skill set, to our clients and are able to help them kind of all over the place. We also have some software as well, that, help with endowment fund management and grant management as well. Mhmm. So, yeah, that's NPact. That's awesome. Yeah. We love we love partnering with you all and, know you you you're knee deep in a lot of CRM transitions, with folks. And so, obviously, a great voice to have on today. And so as we get going, I just wanna let you know, here's where we're going. Right? What what is our agenda look like? The first, we wanna talk about why CRM conversion is so hard and why you can't afford to get it wrong. So, yes, it's difficult, but it's so important. And so we'll dive into some of those reasons. We'll talk about pre conversion planning. So before the conversion even starts, was it look like to set the right foundation and to get off on the right foot? One of the most important things, people management. So, again, we say it in here, but your make or break factor. We're gonna talk through that. And then look at data audit and migration. Clean data or bust. Making sure that what we're actually putting in there is clean and, and and ready to go. And then we'll have time at the end as well as throughout for q and a. So, again, submit your questions there. We want to hear them. And I mentioned, I know in my intro about our polls, and so we're actually gonna open one of those right now. We have Riley who's on our team. She's executive producer today in the background, and so she's gonna be opening this poll. And here's what we want to know, what CRM are you currently using? We are gonna be talking through, obviously, transitioning, but, we'd love to know where you're at today. So you'll see that poll, tab open up, a little red dot there. I think you even got a pop up on the screen. Go ahead and answer that. We'd love to know where you're at right now, and we'd love to, just be able to help inform some of the conversations, some of the questions. And so, please go ahead and fill that out. One of the things I like that gift. One of the one of the it's awesome. One of the one of the things that, yeah, that that we find most helpful again is is hearing from people, and so we want to make sure this is kind of a two way street as much as possible. So, yeah, keep those going. We still appreciate it. If you don't see it there, you can, again, put it in the chat like some of you are. And, and we'll leave this open for another two minutes or so, and we'll put a reminder, to keep, filling that out there. So as we get going, the first stop on our journey today, is talking through why CRM conversion is so hard and why you can't afford to get it wrong. And so those are, those are two things that are true. It's really difficult and you gotta get it right. So I'm gonna toss this over to Carly as we jump into this section. Thanks, Scott. Like I said earlier, I have gone through this process of determining, is it even time to switch your CRM? Do I feel the pain points enough to change my CRM? And as you see this man who looks so upset on the screen, what is it that makes our CRMs fall short? Now those listening, you should be able to relate to this if you feel like you're in this position where you're like, I we are putting that image of that guy shaking his head with your CRM name. But I would say there's three main factors that you might be feeling this pain of maybe it's time to switch. The first is that you don't have a 360 degree view of your donors. So maybe you feel like, your data is between multiple systems. So how can you actually treat your donors like humans if you're not actually sure what's being said to them, what's being sent to them? And when they call you, you can't even respond based on, what messaging they've received because you have to look through so many systems. So that lack of visibility is one of the main reasons that, CRMs fall short. The other is and we'll talk a little bit more about this towards the end of this webinar, is just this idea of sending out mass communications when you really want to be personalized. So in this age, we're so used to personal communications ourselves as consumers. And if your CRM can't help you do that, send out personalized communications at scale and you're just kind of dropping these mass newsletters or mass appeals or mass emails, you're not getting that personalized donor journey that you want each of your donors to experience and to feel. So the other piece here is that, the data in your in your, CRM might also feel like you don't trust it. It's not very clean. It takes your staff so long to manually manage it, whether you're, like, importing Excel sheets or, like, going one by one through transactions. All of those siloed systems and that lack of clean data affects all of your fundraising and marketing. So based on those three things, lack of personalization, data silos, and, lack of visibility into your donor, those are the main reasons I would say. Like, if one of those is clicking for you right now and you're like, yeah. I totally feel that, that's a reason to say, okay. Maybe my CRM isn't the right choice for me right now. So we'll I'll hand it over to Kevin to talk a little bit more about why CRM conversion is so hard. I think we all know that. It's like a huge fear, but why it's so important. Yeah. Thanks, Carly. So if we think if we kinda just drill down to to what our our roles are, see the database managers or even fundraisers, we're looking at I I kinda have kinda three or four different key areas that we need our CRM to be able to handle. And if not, it's gonna seriously affect if, how how successful we are doing our jobs. And the first one is fundraising. So if there is any kind of, aspect of your CRM that is not able to help help you raise the most amount of money as possible, then it's gonna be a big hit. So if our online donation forms aren't up to par, or if our event management, event registration forms, if any of those things are just lacking, then, we're gonna see it. We're gonna see it on the bottom on the bottom bottom line. Stewardship is another big thing, and this kinda goes off with what Carly just said. If we're not able to to effectively steward our donors, and that could be, acknowledgments and receipts, that and done in a timely manner or most importantly in an accurate manner, then we'll see the effect as well. If keeping track of, communication preferences so if someone says, I I don't wanna receive a solicitation from you, but I wanna be able to receive the magazine or the newsletter, we need to be able to handle that. And one of the things that I really wanna focus that we and we don't necessarily doesn't rise to the surface a lot, but is staff retention and happiness of our staff. If you're hearing a lot of complaining, about the length of time it takes to produce certain tasks, gift entry or acknowledgments or whatever the case is, and you aren't doing anything to address that, that could have a a a negative effect on the morale of our of our coworkers and could ultimately lead to them finding employment elsewhere. So, we have to take those things seriously and, just a a couple of the reasons, why it can be hard and we can't afford, afford to get it wrong on the first try. Yeah. I think that's that that's super helpful. And and I'm curious if I if I could ask, actually, Kevin and Carly really quick. If there, you know, if if there was, like if someone sat through hearing that and they're like, I get it, but but what what are the what what's the reason that, like, that that most find it so difficult? Or if there's, like, the one theme that you could say, make sure you're really thinking about this, what would that be? We may have differing answers, but I would say it's really staff people in process buy in. So many nonprofits have been doing the same things for so long, And so getting people to change their processes or being able to change their technology is what's so difficult. Yeah. I I'll agree with that. So you either see, come two two different things when a a lot of nonprofits. We have staff that have been there for a really, really long time. And, the last thing that they wanna do is change what they're used to or what they're what they've been accustomed to. Yeah. The complete opposite side of that is that you have, a large amount of turnover and you have a brand new staff. And they're so they're trying to drink from the fire hose and try to learn as much as they can. And so I think providing either one of those, situations with a brand new system to learn is gonna be very, very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'd love to hear from you in the chat too if you if there's some things maybe you've experienced or you're heading into this or thinking about it and you're like, this is the thing that really keeps me up at night or makes me kinda most nervous, anxious, you know, stuff we're trying to figure out. Let us know in the chat. We'd love to just hear from you. Again, this is a two way conversation. So, we are going to keep going as we do that, and talk through pre conversion planning. So what does it look like to set the right foundation? What does it look like to get out ahead of it and really, be in a spot where you're setting yourself, your team, your organization up for, success. So I'm gonna gonna go ahead and toss this over to Kevin, and and Annette as we jump into this. Yeah. So, I think the first step in in kinda starting this process is understanding what you're currently doing, what your current processes are, and what's lacking. I think to a point kinda depending on on what system you're currently on. I saw someone in the q and a, I think, is in excel is is currently managing their CRM in Excel. So obviously, a ton of limitations there. I feel your pain. But so identifying, what's lacking currently. So there's probably things that you just technically can't do in your current system. So being able to identify those, I think, is gonna help a lot. And then moving into the next step is is is how you define define success. What does a good CRM look like? I think, you may already have this maybe floating around in your mind, but I encourage you to put it down on paper is have your, must haves, have your would like to have, and have a list of, we don't necessarily need. I think every CRM is gonna, bring to the table, something that they do really well that other CRMs may not. And so being able to have that list handy, and encourage everyone on your team to have those lists as well, because someone from a database manager is gonna have a completely different list than a fundraiser, than a communications manager, marketing, and so on. So have everyone, have those lists handy so that when you're going out to look, you can really clearly, eliminate, some options from the list, or bring some, options to the top of the list. Yeah. And like I had mentioned earlier, aligning stakeholders, which we'll talk a few slides about this too, is super important. Like, when I was doing my own CRM transition to Virtuous, the change management piece of it was almost as hard as the technology piece just because there's so many departments involved. And if you don't get that early buy in, it can just be, such a such a barrier. But if you do, it can be an amazing opportunity both for the culture of your organization and for all of your processes. Yeah. Right. And, of course, when you're thinking about the process, you know, the the end goal is that go live. You wanna be live on that new system. You're you're raring to go, but you gotta remember there is steps. There are steps in between that you've got to take. We don't wanna skip anything. We wanna take our time and make sure that we get it right. A rough estimate could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty weeks depending on the complexity of your system, could be shorter, just really depends. You've gotta go through those steps. You've got your planning phase where you're kicking off that project and and getting everybody together and on the same page, submitting that legacy data. Key key thing to do at the very beginning because as a an analyst, I can't do my work until I get that data. You know, we can talk about it all day long, but until I have that data in my hands so I can see what you got, we can't move forward. I've got a client right now who submitted data twice to me because they're struggling to pull it out and they're missing pieces and structure changes every time they send it, and I can't go anywhere. I can't start mapping it because the structure changes when they send me something new. So it's it's kinda hard and and it depends on what your system is. I mean, some systems, you just pull a c SQL back up and and there you go. Other ones, depending on what it is, you have to pull it out through the front end and that really makes it harder on you. I understand that. And and we're here to help you as much as we possibly can, get that out and and identify the things that we need to make sure that you have. During that time, once we get that data scheduling, but we actually sit down and go, okay. Let's talk about this. Let's see where our end game is to get you live by a certain time frame. And, of course, the data analyst starts mapping it out. You got your testing phase, which is another several weeks where, you got your ongoing training. Because if you don't know the new system, how can you test it with your data in it, you know, for that testing phase? System design with a consultant so that you can talk about, hey. You know, our system now is different than the system we're going into. Let's talk about ways to make sure that the new system is going to do what you needed to do and take notes on what are we gonna need to to set up to make sure that you're set up for success. Testing feedback once you get that data in your testing environment so that you can see where your records are, follow your records through the data, make a note of any questions you have for the analyst who moved your data over, and and log it so the way if there's any changes we need to make in the code before final run. You've got your go live time. Go time. Here we go. We get that second set of data in there, and the analyst makes the changes that you agreed to, gets that database up there, delivers it to you, and you start having your sessions with your consultant to make sure that you're ready to move forward and and hit the ground running. And, of course, post live, you know, additional training, transition to the success and support for your new system, and and you're on your way, kinda like a bird out of the nest. We we get you ready and flying. I love that. Oh, well, I I do have a a a question here as I as I look at these four. One of them in particular, In in in number two, and and Kevin, I think you spoke to this, but defining success, what does a good CRM look like for your team? Any advice on how people can explore, one, the possibilities and the things that that can be. Because sometimes that's hard. Right? It's like, well, I've only known my platform or software or Excel or whatever it is to do this. And thinking outside of that is, like, well, it's a world I haven't even imagined. So how can how can people understand that? And then and then really come up with and then what is the right fit for us and our team and our needs? Yeah. I I think, a a very big step in in the selection process is reaching out to referrals as much as possible. And just in the nonprofit world in general, we lean on our network, a lot to help us do our job better. But in this case, we should be able work with your your the the CRM candidates to ask for referrals, so similar size, similar geography, similar mission, and then reach out to them and really lean on them to figure out, what it how they're using their technology to do their specific job better, I think, would be a would be a good benefit. In terms of, like, I I think just as much research as you can, that that you you can do, the better. Oftentimes, you'll be able to get a sandbox to play around in, while you're doing your research. So going through all the scenarios that you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, try try to make a list of things that you the of common tasks that you would want to do in the new system. And when you're in the sandbox, go and do them for as much as you can without training, I guess. But go and do them as much as possible to see what the experience is gonna be like for both you and your your grooners as well. Yeah. That's good. Carly, I wanna ask you this question that came in in the q and a. Alex asked, would it be wise to let donors, maybe recurring donors or, you know, major gift donors or or whatever it might be, know that we're going through a transition? Yeah. I saw this question too, and I was gonna ask Kevin, Scott, but thanks for asking me. Well, you can either answer it or ask Kevin. So I will. Answer it, so probably you go first. I'll answer, and then you can follow-up. I would say that if you are doing a successful CRM transition, you shouldn't have to tell your donors, recurring or major donors, that you're going through a transition. I the only time that we would have to tell anyone is if we sent out receipts incorrectly. Otherwise, I probably I probably wouldn't tell them because, hopefully, they're not having they're not feeling the impact. Kevin? So my answer will differ slightly. Yeah. My answer will differ slightly from that. And that's just because I actually went through this process when I was at at an old an old job. We were doing we were switching, SIS systems. So not not CRMs, but we were switching systems. And one of the things that comes with this is an additional price tag that may or may not be in the budget. So you may have to go to donors or a donor or donors to kinda help fund a project like this. And so, we had someone who was on our tech committee, who also was a major that happened to be a major, a major donor. But we went to this person and asked for their input on the process, because they were in the industry. And so they were able to to, kinda add some additional outside voices to our process. And we got that buy in kinda early, and it made the ask later when we're asking that for a donation to help fund the project. It made that go a little bit smoother. So leaning on the people that you're the volunteers that you're all already working with, I think, will help. I don't think necessarily we need to identify major donors or annual donors or anything like that. But the people that are have an active, investment in the mission of your organization so board members would be a good option, committee members, and, and those kinds of constituent groups. Yeah. That's great. I love that. I I feel like, I feel like that's helpful because you you both sort of gave it gave it a different angle, but I think it's actually I think it actually works together, in the way that the way that you move forward with it. Now I know the two biggest things is we kinda heard from the chat that people get anxious about when it comes to transition. The CRM transition is people, and data. And so, thankfully, the last remaining sections are people and data. So we are gonna answer all your questions, solve all your problems, and make it so that this transition is easy. No. I'm just kidding. But we are gonna speak to, we are gonna speak to those things. And so right now, we're gonna jump into people management, your make or break factor. I know a lot of you mentioned getting team buy in, getting the team on the same page, all of that. So, yeah. We're gonna jump in here, and I am gonna hand it over to Carly. She runs with this. Yep. Thanks, Scott. Yeah. I think, like I said before, people management is honestly one of the most important parts of a CRM change. Not just your staff, but also the leadership. I know Kevin mentioned the board. I definitely would include the board when you're doing a change like this. Before you even decided to make the change, I think it's super important to go to your leadership and start with almost like a business case of this is the reason we need to change. This impacts our fundraising. This impacts our staff time, what we're spending on, employees. For me, it even impacted our integrations and savings we could have by moving to a CRM that allowed us to integrate with other systems, where before we were kind of, like, stuck in certain systems that we had to pay for. And also make sure that you're just constantly keeping leadership informed. Like, here's the update. Here's the timeline. Here's where we're at. Here's the different vendors we're looking at, just over communicating. And also invite them to be part of the decision if that's applicable. So whether they're just kind of seeing, hey. Here's my review and here's my recommendation. What do you think about this? That way, they're also not They're not in your specific department. It's important that it feels like everyone in the organization, is bought in on this, especially because so many departments will be so impacted, and they'll be spending a lot of time, learning new processes and learning a new system instead of doing their own jobs. And so having everyone in the organization understand that will just help, across the board. Second is breaking down silos and having champions. This is something that we did early on in my own CRM transition. We created, like, a cross functional team. So from each department, we had, a Virtuous champion. And so their role was really to learn the system as best they could for that department and the processes that they would be responsible for. And then that way, they're the ones kind of training their own team, answering questions so that you don't have 30 people asking you questions. Instead, you just have five or however many. And they're the ones soliciting feedback from the teams, kind of gathering it, summarizing it, and seeing, what's accurate, what you should listen to. This also gives them so much buy in because they feel like they're part of the project. They feel empowered. They feel like they have, like, a leadership role. They're leading their team through it, and they're helping make the decisions, that are going forward. The third thing that we did was, if you haven't read the book Start with Why, it's a great book. And we read that and we talked about what was our why statement of changing our CRM. And I know changing our CRM might sound like just a technical project, but it really was much bigger than that for us. It was we connected it to our mission. We talked about how making this technology change and these process changes was going to allow us to further our mission. And it just kind of became a rallying cry for everyone on the CRM change team and also the organization, and it felt like everyone was kind of backing us. Like, hey. Making this foundational tech change was going to allow us all to further improve the mission of that organization. So keeping everyone informed as well was super important. We met every week. There was always constant communication. We always talked about what happens in the CRM meeting stays there so we could all get frustrated about something if we needed to and also celebrate things. But it felt like we were really kind of, like I said, a cross functional team, really with those champions in the room. And lastly, even if there's people who are not champions, but they're still the ones that are being impacted by this decision, it's great to include them from the beginning. So explain why we're making the change, how it will impact them. Yes. Maybe their processes will change. They'll have to do things differently, but it should be a time savings. It should be less manual work. It should improve their roles or their outcomes, whether they have fundraising goals, or donor relationship goals. Like I mentioned, creating a wise statement is super helpful to get everyone kind of rally around that. And also just having open forums where people can ask questions, like, why are we making this change? What what's gonna happen with this this process that I do on Thursdays? Like, those small decisions are very big for a lot of people in those roles, and answering them and allowing that super clear communication, is really helpful. And I think also just acknowledging that, like, it's gonna be uncomfortable. Your job is going to change. Like, we're all doing this together. We can you can talk about how other nonprofits or, other customers have gone through the same thing and how that has improved their organization, their jobs, even though it was, somewhat painful through the process as you're, again, changing jobs, changing processes, all those different things. But I think really getting ahead of it instead of just being reactive to when staff are asking questions will really help in the process. Carly, I'm I'm curious when it comes to, like, somebody somebody mentioned making sure or or sort of a fear that their team's not gonna fully embrace the new CRM. How did you how did you handle that? Because I think there's multiple aspects of change. One is, like, I don't wanna leave what we have because it's comfortable. I know what's going on. Like, I know the way around, all that stuff. But then there's also another part of, like, we have this new tool we're investing in. And really for it to succeed, like, I need the team to actually fully dive in. So any advice on navigating that? Yeah. I mean, every staff member was part of the different pitches and demos. So and I would also say that everyone felt the pain points. So we really leaned into those pain points. Like, you know how annoyed you are that you can't get a specific report? Like, with this new system, you'll be able to pull that custom report yourself. You won't have to, like, ask your software manager to pull that or or whatever. So we leaned into those things that, like, hey. These are problems. And this is how they're gonna be solved. So everyone could see that, and they were really excited about the future of that. It's just the process to get to that future. Yeah. Yeah. There's that WIFM. Right? What's in it for me? I've always heard that that acronym, but tying that for people to say, hey. You know that that thing that we talked about that drives you crazy. We're gonna solve that problem and and helping that. That's yeah. That's massive. Well, like I said, the two big things that that I think, people worry about is people and team, and then data. And how are how do we make sure everything gets in there, that it's clean, that it's, you know, work for us, that we're not losing things, that we're not missing donors, all of that. So I'm gonna toss it, over back to Kevin and Annette as they jump into, data audit migration and talk through clean data or bust. How do we do it? Sure. So the first point I I wanna make to that that that term normally is done in reverse, the garbage in garbage out. But when we're talking about migrating data, really, if we have messy data that's coming out of your legacy system, you're gonna have messy data going into your new system. This isn't while your new CRM is gonna be awesome and amazing, it's not magic. So if you have bad data going out, it's gonna be bad data going in. And you can't migrate what you don't have. I you'd be surprised how organizations that, expect to magically start being able to report on things that they weren't keeping track of even in a legacy system. So keep in mind of the data points that you are currently, using and that you currently have in your current system because those are gonna be the same data points. While they might look different and they might be in a different location, it's gonna be the same data. And, again, this is just heark hearkening back to the last two points. Changing systems don't magically improve things. So, and the one thing I'll add, I may have this in a in a future slide. I can't remember. But taking the time to switch CRMs is a great time to take a deep dive into your data and clean everything up. Annette, do you have more to talk talk on about? Yeah. And and and like Carly was saying about champions, you should have a data champion too. Somebody who knows your data and is going to be that point person on that data, testing questions to your analyst, things like that. They should be able to dive in and say, alright. Who is using the system? How is it being used? So that you can really kinda get get in there and see, is there stuff in there that you haven't used in years? You know, you can drill down and see what you're tracking and why you're tracking it. Because depending on how you're pulling that data out for the migration, you could leave stuff behind if you truly believe that it's not data that you wish to pull over. So you might have that ability to do that and and keep that data clean coming over. But you need to have that one or two people, mainly one, who who really, really knows that data inside and out to be your part point person to help with that that navigation when we're going through. And I agree with the garbage in our garbage out garbage in. But there's also the garbage in garbage out too, which I'm kinda gonna touch on later. Yeah. Alright. Hey. So moving on Oh, good. Sorry. I I have a I have a quick question, actually. Yeah. There was a a question asked that Annette, I'd love to toss, to you. Hannah asked, if you have donors in your system that haven't given in a long time, do you recommend bringing them over to the new system or only bringing over consistent and new donors? Bring everyone or only some? It really, I would say, depends on the situation. The the software that you're going to, to be honest with you, because most systems will allow you to set a record to inactive or archive them. If you've got a record band situation, you need to double check and make sure do those records count towards that record band if they're inactive or archived. Think about that. Because it may be that you go and send something to some people who haven't given in five years, and they magically reappear and start giving. You kinda like to have that history. So So, really, that is a discussion that you need to have internally, and you can discuss it with the with your consultant too and and kind of run out those scenarios. But you kinda need to know how that new system is gonna handle those those records. Will you be able to pull them in reports if you need to? Do you wanna keep them archived and have them there just in case? So it really is no one size fits all answer to that question. It's it's how you are using what you have and and where you're going. The one thing I'd love to add to that is and I I say I probably say this on every single webinar I'm on, is you need to document as much as you can. Because in your policy and procedure manual, you probably should have a section about, when to delete records. Because as we have turnover in our organizations, the new leadership may not be or the I should say, maybe the old leadership that it that wrote the policy before may not have the same feeling as the new leadership that you have. So, having a policy and procedure manual to fall back on is very, very important, especially when we're talking about something very permanent like deleting records. So have that written down so and have buy in from everyone in the organization about, when is the right case because the last thing we wanna do is press delete. And then the next day, someone come and ask you about one of those records you deleted. Yeah. That's good. Right. I'll I'll take point on this one. Basically, cleaning your data before, during, and after. It's always a good thing because you're gonna get in that test environment and you're gonna see things. I I've so many times I've been like, I'm seeing this in your data and had somebody go, I don't know where that came from. Where did that come from? And it was, like, five years ago, there were some temps that were in there entering data and and things got a little messed up. So so take the time, go through, clean some of it up. You're probably gonna see some things that you didn't know were there when you're in that test environment, when things are moved into a different place in a different system. Afterwards too, this is kinda where I'm talking the garbage in, garbage out. We Kevin Wood talked garbage out of your old system and into your new system is not a good thing. But if we do that garbage in to your new system here, garbage out in your reports, garbage out in your in your queries and things like that. You wanna get that clean so that when you're setting up your reports in that new system, you've got clean data to work with there to to make yourself successful. If you've got data health, options in your existing system, use them before moving it over. You can always run your health options data health options in the new system also afterwards just to make sure that it's kinda squeaky clean there. Look for misspelled names. Look for data that's in the wrong field. Say you've got a system that has fields specifically for emails, fields specifically for phones, but somewhere along the way, it was kind of a hodgepodge. It's an email. I'll stick it in the phone field. Yeah. Whatever. Take that time to see if you can run some reports and and queries and and get those cleaned up. Any duplicate records. Now deduplication is always a rough thing because, you know, how how tight can you make that criteria to make sure that you're finding the correct people, whether you've got a junior and a senior, you know, that happened to live in the same house because, you know, the son is taking care of the father or something like that. See what you can do about cleaning up those records beforehand. Chances are you will have the ability to do it moving forward in your new system, but you kinda know them. So go ahead and see if you can get them cleaned up before they get moved. If you're gonna try to do any bulk deleting, please don't do that until you talk to your migration team because it might be something that hinges on something else. So talk to your team your migration team about that before you do any bulk delete. And like I said before, depending on how you're pulling that data out of the system, if you truly don't need that data, it might be a way to either not pull it over when you're pulling that data out. Or if you're pulling a full backup, identify that information and let your migration team know, hey. We don't want the stuff that's in this table, so just ignore that table, that kind of thing. If that last point about restructuring, if you're planning to restructure anything coming out of your system going into the new system, please talk to your migration team about that. Usually, we see that with the financial buckets. You know, your your communications and your segments and your projects, your campaigns funds, your appeals, things like that. You go, okay. Now is our time. We wanna change the way we're doing this. Talk to your migration team about that to make sure that everybody's on board. We know what's going on. It's in within the contract that you purchased. All of that. There's a lot of, things that go into that. But, definitely talk to your sales team about it too saying, you know, we'd like to restructure some things as we're doing this because most of the time that's kinda not included. So just kinda giving you a heads up so there's no surprises. So I've talked a lot. Kevin, anything to add? No. That's that's that's perfect. The one thing I I I do wanna add though, you had mentioned, I wanted the when you're talking about the timeline, you had said, like, the the you have a test test run phase. And oftentimes, we get into our new system, we see we our responsibility is to make sure that the data is in the right places. And we may get into the habit of seeing, a record that needs to be cleaned up and, you know, like, maybe write it down on a piece of paper and, like, alright. When we're live, I'm gonna go fix this. But, really, the time to fix that is at that time when you find it and fix it in your legacy system. Because we go through that test, that test phase, the test run, and then you're gonna ask for another backup from the legacy system. So ensuring that that's cleaned up to begin with is gonna make your life easier because you're gonna lose those slips of paper that are kinda floating around your desk of of things that you need to clean up. So as you're seeing that, make sure your legacy system is as clean as it possibly can be before that final backup. Right. And something else that I, just thought of too. If you're coming from two different systems trying to merge everything into one new system, so say you're using Eventbrite for your events, but you're using something else, you know, eTapestry or something else for your regular CRM, definitely talk to your salespeople and let them know that you've got things in a couple of different systems because number one, you're gonna probably have duplicates between those systems. And number two, depending on the ID setup and things like that, there might be some extra coding that needs to happen to make sure that things don't clash as we're putting that data into that new system. So everybody kinda needs to be on the same page with that. Yep. Cool. And then as we get into this, this next slide, I would love to to for you to share your, your moving analogy with this. I think this puts us in the, a clear picture of what we need to think about remote switching CRMs. Yeah. Okay. Mapping the data, and that's that's my bread and butter here. That's that's what I do. So, mapping that data, just remember, not everything's gonna look the same way it did before. We do our best to try to make sure that we get it into the proper places and where it needs to be. But it is like moving from one residence to another. You know, you've got your kitchen, you've got your bedroom, you've got your bathroom, and and you've got the basics in there, but they're not always in the same place. You know? You may you know, and putting things into those areas, the kitchen area. Say right now, my spatula is right next to the stove in in the second drawer down. But in my new residence, I didn't really have space for that. So it's in a nice little container on the counter. You know? So it's a little different. Same but different. You know? You gotta kinda have to go with the flow there and learn that it's gonna get better and and you'll understand. It's always scary. Always scary, but you'll get better with that. But mapping helps us figure out where things are gonna go and where they can go. Because depending on new systems also, there may be constraints in the new system that you didn't have in the old system where we need to make sure that we've got the proper pieces in order to make it work in the new system. So that that analyst will be working with you on how things are going. But, chances are that that, migration team has already worked with that system before, so they kinda know how the data is before moving it into your new system. But there's gonna be some extras. We we kinda know where the basics reside, but there's gonna be extras. You could have custom fields and things like that. They're gonna be completely different between clients, you know. And not everything's gonna be a perfect fit, of course. Like I said, today, to get to your bedroom, you might need to just go down the hallway and take a right. You know? But in your new one, you gotta go up a flight of stairs. It's gonna be a little frustrating at first, but you'll get used to it and you'll get your routine down pat. So Yeah. And there's and there's there's processes. Your processes are gonna change. Stuff like gift entry, just the the the steps are gonna be different. So make sure you document that as you're learning and as you're, like, from the jump, document your process so that you can fine tune it as you go through your new system. Yeah. Yep. Definitely. And your security roles are gonna be slightly different too depending on on the new system. You know, thinking about who needs access to what, who needs access to what. And so you'll be working with your consultant on that too. Alright. Go ahead, Scott. Last one. Yeah. I think this, this I think you guys have one more. This one. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, continuing that analogy, and I we've touched upon this, I think, a few times, but just getting everything organized into boxes before you move to this to that new house, I think is is important. So do that due diligence in your in your legacy system. Duplicates don't don't don't magically disappear. The role of of the conversion analyst is to take your data in the state that it's in and move it to the new system. They're not gonna be doing any any duplicate management or table cleanup even. They're just gonna be moving it over. And the idea of that we Annette and I kinda came up with this yesterday as we're talking through this is, organize your stuff into your boxes. You have your your box that needs to go to the new house. You have your box that needs to get donated and go to Goodwill, and you have your box that goes to the trash. So really kinda keep that keep that in mind as we're as we're going through what do we need to keep, what are we able to get rid of, and what can what can we delete. Yeah. Right. And and then also, you're gonna be so excited in your new system, and you're gonna wanna start sending things out, you know, your direct mail's going out and things like that. We can get those duplicates under control beforehand. You're gonna save on your post as your course, and and you're gonna actually see a complete picture of somebody's giving as opposed to, okay. I started out giving in 02/2005, and then somebody somewhere did not notice that I was already in the database. And now I've got a segment of gifts here. And then just last week, I gave another gift, and now I'm here. So I've got I'm here three times. You just don't see that whole picture. If you can get that going, that's gonna make it easier for you moving forward with the new system because everything's gonna be a whirlwind when you get into that new system. You're learning new things. You're setting up new new workflows and all of that, and and you want your data to be as clean as you possibly can so that you can take advantage of those workflows right out front, right out of the gate. Yeah. That's great. Well, listen. We have I mentioned, some resources. Obviously, we're talking all about CRM conversion transition. What does that look like? And so up in the docs tab, if you click that, you'll see our, CRM conversion guide. There's also a link there in the chat that Riley just dropped. Thanks so much, Riley. We can grab that. And so as we keep going, make sure to download that. We'd love, for you to to have that. I'm gonna toss it over to Carly just to give an idea of, you know, we talked about what does it look like to look for a CRM and decide what's good and figure out what's out there. And so we wanna give a little bit of a a peek of of what Virtuous can do in regards to that. So I'll toss it to you, Carly. Sure. I just wanna give just a a second shout out to what Scott just mentioned about the CRM conversion playbook. This is like start to finish. All the questions you may have from change management to data to looking at CRMs, it really should be super helpful if it's something that you've never done before. So it would be whatever CRM you're thinking of, it's not gear it's really geared to helping you change CRM. So if you haven't downloaded that, I highly suggest you do. But I wanted to talk a little bit about what Virtuous is, if you've heard of it or not, and what, type of fundraising methodology we're based on, which is what we call responsive fundraising. And the kind of the the pillars behind that are what you see on the screen here, which is that, we're really trying to be responsive in a way to our donors in the same way that all of us are getting personalized communications from places like Netflix and Amazon and Spotify. We think nonprofits should be able to do the same thing with their donors. And the way to do that is to have a system that allows you to listen to your donors. They're giving you information all the time, whether it's that they prefer email or mail or text message or the water cause versus the Africa cause. They're giving you that information, but you need to have a system that helps you, hold that information in a way that you can actually use it. The second is to connect with your donors. Giving is super personal. I'm sure you can each think of nonprofits that you give to and how you feel like you have a relationship with them. And so you wanna be able to do that with that data that you have, which leads to the third one, which is suggest. So we talk a lot about Virtuous, about what's the, best next step. So is that a financial ask? Is that an advocacy ask? Is that a volunteer ask? A social media ask? Using that information you get from listening and connecting to lead you to what is that next step that makes sense in that relationship. And then lastly, learning. Looking at results, looking at data and reports that you can actually get information from to say, is this working? Is it not working? Am I connecting with my donors? Is my retention increasing? And then the cycle starts over and over again. So what you need to implement responsive fundraising, again, this is really a methodology, is a CRM that allows you to do this. Do you have a CRM that allows you to store that data in a way that you can be proactive, that you can scale personal communications? Oftentimes, you need marketing automation to be able to scale personal communication, so that would be required. We talked a lot about data enrichment today, so that would be super important to making sure that that data is accurate. If it's not, then those personal relationships and that scaling isn't going to make sense to the donors. And then lastly, an online giving platform that allows you to execute on all of the different ways that you can use your donors history, through an online giving platform. I'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. But I wanna show you what this actually would look like. A responsive campaign allows you to have different campaigns for your different donors. So imagine now you send one mass email or mass appeal to everyone, but each of those donors are different. They've come in through different causes. They've come in through different channels. So here you can see all these different donors who have come in through different ways and how they receive their own personalized, donor journey. And we've seen this increase retention, increase average gift, increase engagement, but also lower staff time because this is all done through automation. So you're not having to manually, pull that information and and follow-up. So what this looks like just one on one would be like if Brit came to an event, an hour later, she got a thank you email, a a day later, a thank you call, two days later, a text message. She comes to the website. She gets an email with an a donation ask. A day later, she gives, and then she gets a follow-up postcard. All automated, but all very specific to her and makes her feel like there is this personal connection. And then this can be scaled. This can be done with, different donors, different types, different journeys, whether it's a new donor, a lapsed donor, or they downloaded a content piece. So, again, you can have that personal, that that that personal connection with them. So Virtuous is more than just a CRM. We also offer many of the things I just talked about, automation, email, donor signals, online giving, reporting. I'm gonna just breeze through a few slides so you can kind of see what we, offer. But like I said, Virtuous is a nonprofit CRM built for enterprise, very easy to use. I came from another CRM myself, and it was very intuitive to use Virtuous. If you have a major donor team and that's an important part of your fundraising, Virtuous has a gift pipeline that allows you to really manage a major donor team and donor asks incredibly well. I haven't seen, a feature like this in other CRMs. The automation is honestly the secret sauce of Virtuous. It's both internal and external automation. So a lot of data management that you're doing internally can be automated as well as external communications. There's email platform. You can do a b split testing. Also, we offer a lot of different donor signals, whether you're pulling behavioral insights, mapping where people live, wealth scoring. I mentioned we have an online giving platform that allows you to use that data from your CRM so that you can, have personalized asks right on your donation form. We also have volunteer software and event software and enterprise level reporting. So, really, all of this is in one system, so you don't have multiple systems. But we're our goal really is to help you build more personal connections with your donors and to grow giving. Yeah. We we have another poll here. I know we're we're coming up on time, but we'd love to know, for those of you who'd like to see more. And so we just opened that up. If you would like a demo of Virtuous, we'd love to hear from you. So go ahead and you can answer yes or no. You won't hurt our feelings if you say no. But we wanna know those of you that we can help. So we're gonna leave that up, answer that, please. We'd love that. And as we do, we did have one question that I do just wanna throw out, I think it's helpful, but, Matt said I've never been a part of a full CRM migration. We have things like attached PDFs, scan checks, letters, various resources, journal entries, kind of a standard procedure for gift processing. Can I expect those to migrate with journal entry data? We have it all backed up, but not clearly as organized, as it's in our current CRM. And that, Kevin, you guys wanna tackle that? No. I was gonna say that that depends on the system that you're going into. And if you got all the correct linking information between those those documents and and the gift that it's it's linking to, That's that's really the kicker. Gotta have gotta make sure that you've got all that information. Yeah. That's great. Well, we will, continue here. Kevin, would love to just give a brief highlight, for you to to let us know what Impact can help with, as well, for people interested. Yeah. Appreciate it, Scott. We we do, all things CRM and accounting platform consulting. Like I mentioned earlier, we knock down many of the barriers that stand between your technology and your mission. We also provide system selection services as well. So if you're thinking about, making a CRM transition and you don't know where to go, you don't know where to start, we can help guide you through that process. We are a Virtuous partner, and we I mentioned about our grant endowment fund management technology as well. So if you wanna talk, learn more about any of those things, feel free to reach out to me. Awesome. Yeah. We have a poll open. Yeah. We're so glad to have you guys. We have another poll open, about connecting with the Impact team. So please, please fill that out. We would love to, again, get you connected, if that is you. And then, finally, actually, I'm gonna, just show here that we have coming up RNS. We are super excited about this. Free registration, the responsive nonprofit summit, June fourth and fifth, half day virtual event. And so, go ahead and sign up. Christine Robertson from the impact team will be there as well as, I think, 30 other, speakers who are gonna be a part of the fund. So, go ahead and fill or, you know, click that, scan that, whatever you'd like there to be able to join us. We'd love that. We're also gonna share a quick survey as we finish here. Just let us know, how did this go? Was it valuable? Was it helpful? Helps us to continue to get better and better. So we so appreciate everyone being here. Kevin, Annette, Carly, thank you so much, for sharing your wisdom. Some more stories, but also some things, learned along the way when it comes to, transitioning and thriving through the change. We really appreciate it. Thank you all for having us. Thank you guys for joining and asking great questions. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. And we will be, we'll be coming at you with more content, more things that hopefully is helpful, high value. So keep an eye, for those, and we will talk with you soon. Thanks so much.