The Guide to Major Trusts 2025-26. DSC (Directory of Social Change)

CRMs: Crucial Relationship Management

Samuel Davies | 27 January 2021 | News

Sometimes work is work, and other times, especially when speaking with supporters or meeting beneficiaries, it’s much more than that. It’s a vocation, a mission, a hope of making a positive difference. Whether our intentions for our work are philosophical, practical, or somewhere in between, relationships are undoubtedly the key to our success.

Depending on the charity, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software might be better known by the moniker: ‘The database’, or ‘the spreadsheet’, or even for larger charities, ‘our data team’.

Often, when I’m thinking about CRMs it’s in the context of the current challenge I’m facing in pulling a list of contacts for a marketing activity or mailing. It is too easy to confuse the ‘how do I?’ with the ‘why am I?’ when it comes to using the data on our CRMs and the intentions with which we use it.

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