5 Steps Nonprofits Can Take to Prepare for a CRM Migration

5 Steps Nonprofits Can Take to Prepare for a CRM Migration

Your nonprofit’s CRM, or constituent relationship management system, should be a central hub for storing data about and managing relationships with donors, volunteers, and other key stakeholders. A good CRM goes beyond simple data storage and analysis by offering additional features like fundraising, event management, and marketing tools. 

If your nonprofit faces limitations with its CRM’s capacity or functionality, it’s probably time to upgrade to a new solution that can better address your needs. However, choosing to migrate—and preparing for that significant change—can be a difficult, stressful decision. 

This post explores key factors to consider when transitioning to a new CRM and the steps you’ll need to take to prepare for the migration.

Should You Migrate?

Because migrating to a new CRM can be time- and resource-intensive, you’ll need to carefully consider your options before moving forward. Assess whether it’s the right time to migrate by asking questions like:

• • Are our current mission-critical workflows (fundraising, donor tracking, etc.) clunky, or do we need workarounds to keep them running?
  • Does our CRM provide visibility across all constituent data, or is data siloed across multiple platforms?
  • How well-structured is our data, and is any cleanup needed?
  • What is the total cost of our current solution versus the potential CRM (including the cost to migrate, licensing, support, integrations, training, etc.)?
  • Can our current solution scale with our growth in donors, beneficiaries, new programs, revenue, etc., or are we close to hitting capacity limits?
  • Can the new CRM support integrations with our other mission-critical tools?

Additionally, you’ll need to secure buy-in from key leaders and stakeholders before migrating. When nonprofit leaders are on board with these changes, you’ll present an enthusiastic, united front to staff to support the preparation process and encourage the new tool’s adoption.

Preparing to Migrate in 5 Steps

1. Establish a timeline.

First, determine when you’ll start the migration process and get a rough estimate for how long it will take. Review your contracts with your existing CRM provider, timing the migration so you don’t have to go without a CRM or pay for two CRMs simultaneously.

Each case is different, making it challenging to estimate how long a migration will take accurately. For example, a nonprofit planning to transition from NPSP to Nonprofit Cloud, both Salesforce solutions, may have a shorter timeline than an organization migrating between two totally separate systems. Other factors that can influence your migration timeline include:

• • Data volume 
  • Data quality
  • Number and complexity of integrations
  • Number and complexity of customizations 
  • Stakeholder alignment and decision-making
  • Training and user adoption

2. Evaluate and organize your data.

Next, look at your data to determine whether it’s migration-ready. In most cases, you cannot simply copy and paste your existing data into the new CRM because differentferent solutions structure data differently. Instead, you’ll need to take this time to learn about the new CRM’s data framework and termiology, and how to translate existing records into that new model.

Here are a few steps that can guide this process:

• • Identify each CRM’s data building blocks. Determine how your current and new CRMs define basic data in their models. For example, how do they define individual pieces of information? What about the containers for those individual data points? Identifying these will help you understand how to convert existing data to fit into the new model.
  • Sort your data into categories. Instead of tackling your whole file at once, consider breaking it into smaller categories (e.g., donor, volunteer, constituent, etc.) to make it more manageable.
  • Evaluate data quality. Avoid migrating data that is outdated, inaccurate, or has inconsistent formatting or duplicates. We’ll dig deeper into data cleanup later in this post.

Your nonprofit should also gather and prepare any information not currently stored in your CRM (e.g., marketing data siloed in an external marketing tool). To sync and unify data, plan to integrate these external solutions with your new CRM.

3. Pinpoint specific goals and requirements.

Meet with your leaders, staff, stakeholders, and any technology partners assisting with the migration to discuss requirements and ideal outcomes. Brainstorm necessities versus “nice-to-haves” for the new CRM, using this to determine whether you will need to implement any customizations. These might include:

• • Necessities: Centralized donor database, charitable gift tracking, campaign tracking, advanced reporting and analytics tools, workflow automation and artificial intelligence capabilities, and stringent security standards.
  • Nice-to-haves: Event management modules, volunteer management features, self-service portals or tools for donors, and dedicated prospect research tools.

Gathering these varied perspectives can help you proactively address any factors that could impact the implementation of the new solution. For instance, your fundraising team can help you plan the migration around the busy year-end fundraising season to ensure you have enough resources during the process.

4. Clean up your data.

As mentioned, your nonprofit should follow data hygiene best practices before migrating records to the new CRM. This way, you won’t waste time transferring obsolete or inaccurate information to your new system. Consider the following steps:

1. 1. Conduct a comprehensive audit. Identify all data sources, gather, and organize this information. Outline what types of data exist (e.g., donor data and the individual fields in a donor profile) and what you’ll migrate versus what you’ll delete. 
   2. Back up your information. Before doing anything else, fully back up your entire database. Doing so means you can recover your original records if anything goes wrong when cleaning and migrating the data.
   3. Remove duplicate and outdated entries. Delete or merge duplicate entries (e.g., your CRM has two records for the same donor because they changed their last name or updated contact information). Remove stale records, such as email addresses that bounce, or mark the donor as inactive.
   4. Standardize formatting. Develop clear rules and guidelines for entering data into your new system. For example, how should staff format addresses, phone numbers, and dates? Share these guidelines with your team and ensure that the standard formatting is used for any records you migrate.
   5. Validate, update, and complete contact information. Test the validity of phone numbers and email addresses, and remove invalid ones. If needed, use data appending services to update or fill in missing information. Consider enriching donor profiles with other useful details (e.g., occupation, employer, demographics).
   6. Review custom fields. Custom fields require additional consideration. Determine which fields are essential to migrate and which are confusing or redundant. Archive or delete unnecessary fields.

It’s so important to plan ahead because, depending on the volume of your data, this process can be time-consuming. Consider assigning several hours of data cleanup to your team each week, training volunteers to assist with simple manual tasks, or hiring additional support.

5. Prepare staff for the change.

The migration will significantly impact your staff’s daily workflows, and it’s essential to prepare them to use the new system adequately. This means incorporating training, troubleshooting, and effective change management strategies into your migration process. 

As Fíonta’s guide to CRM migration explains, change management is “the controlled, systematic process of planning and implementing changes to technological systems or processes.” This step is central to a smooth transition and high adoption of the new system. The guide also recommends taking the following steps:

• • Involve staff throughout the entire migration process, not just during training and documentation. Keeping staff in the loop makes team members feel heard and valued. Additionally, this allows staff to understand the context behind the migration and any custom configurations.
  • Collect and implement their ideas and feedback when possible. Access new perspectives by discussing potential changes and improvements you can make to smooth out their workflows.
  • Leverage staff champions who are already on board with and enthusiastic about migrating to the new platform. Empower them to lead by example, promote the project, encourage their peers, and address questions and concerns. 

Go into this process understanding that there will likely be obstacles, difficulties, and even frustration. Assure staff that it’s okay if there is a learning curve, and put together detailed training materials that address common challenges and questions. This way, you don’t have to start from scratch every time you train a new team member to use the CRM.

CRM migrations are worthy investments that empower nonprofits to do more in the long term, expanding the functionality and scalability of their most important tool. Taking these steps to prepare can prevent costly mistakes and setbacks, ensuring your migration runs smoothly and efficiently.

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