Looking for Funding for your Non-Profit CRM Project
Over the last two years, we have helped several of our non-profit clients to secure over £350k of grant funding to cover costs of their CRM implementation projects. Here we’ve highlighted several commonly reoccurring questions that arise within these funding applications. So if you’re thinking about applying for funding, these may be a good starting point – you can relate them to your own organisation, and begin to think about your approach and estimate appropriate costs.
A quick point to note here: All Funders have their own guidelines, so please refer to these before answering any questions. The below pointers are just to help you anticipate some of the questions that might be asked.
Funding for your CRM Project
Motivations: It is important to clarify your motivations for implementing a CRM and present a clear Business Case. For example: Is it going to make you compliant with data protection guidelines or procurement requirements? Is it going to help you manage business and team performance more easily, or enable you to measure your impact and report to Funders more readily? Funders often prioritise grant applications by need, so it may be valuable to articulate what could happen if you don’t invest in a system.
Return on Investment: It is useful to articulate a clear, tangible financial benefit from your investment in a CRM system, both in the short and long term. If you are going to invest £x into a system, how much do you envisage this saving you in reduced administration costs, leakage costs, or missed opportunities? How much do you envisage it helping you generate in terms of increased sales or funding?
Change Management: Funders love to see that change management has been considered, and that the organisation will properly plan and embed a change management strategy to ensure that the planning and adoption process is managed in the best way possible. Statistics show that over 60% of IT projects can fail due to underlying issues that can be prevented with a change management plan from the start. To learn more attend our Change Management workshop or our Free webinar: Rolling out a CRM nationally and internationally.
Project Management: Ideally any CRM project should be led and managed by someone who is internal and permanent to the organisation and that they have sufficient skills, time and knowledge to lend to the preparation, review and adoption process of a new system and management of internal team members and external consultants. This ensures that the project is properly managed on all sides and will reduce risks related to costs and time slippage. Agile project management is a typical approach to managing IT project these days.
Business Analysis and Requirements Gathering: If an organisation can show it has already invested in a business analysis and scoping exercise (led by someone internally or with an external consultant) to document their requirements and receive quotes for the work, this can demonstrate that the organisation is committed to implementing a CRM. A scoping session can help the team to explore the benefits, the digital opportunities, explore requirements and create a consensus, which all helps to generate internal buy-in to a CRM. To learn how to do plan your requirements properly you may wish to attend our CRM Planning Workshop on the 24th February.
