I offered my advice to a correspondent who asked for advice on data mapping between old and new data models for a membership system. They are a smallish non-profit. I did some research which I hope you find interesting or useful. My advice is shaped by my experience which includes as you can see, a lot of time in corporate IT. My attitude and judgements are shaped by this experience. i.e. my judgements might be too expensive for a charity.
Mapping
I strongly recommend the use of a data dictionary. When I say strongly, I mean it. Do not do this with spreadsheets, or other desktop MIS, it will break. I have spoken of aristotle meta data repo which has a very expensive cloud hosting options but the code is free. I had second thoughts and so had a brief poke around and found this catalogue of data modelling tools on wikipedia.
Cheap or free packages
Much of what I found implies using Azure or AWS. AWS is more popular and flexible, Azure is in my view easier to use, particularly if you have Microsoft administration skills inc. AD. You might also consider the use of Office 365 and Azure probably integrates better than that. Microsoft now offer a CRM solution, Dynamics.
I was at the time a big fan of SugarCRM as it was open-source and widely adopted, so the cost of enetry and availability of professional/volunteer support was easier. I ran a query for free CRM software and came across an article, at capterra.com, which documented that SugarCRM have issued an “end of life” notice for their “Community Editon” i.e. the free one.
Things I found in 2018,
- I quite the look of Neon CRM. 2018
- I found this, CiviCRM while looking for a potential casework solution for my Union branch. It’s open source (GNU AGPL v3) but don’t think they offer it as SaaS. (Business Opportunity?) 2018
2024
I returned to this in Apr 2024 and remediated the broken links, retired some obviously over aged text and ran a query, “crm for small businesses and charity”. This pointed me at, Top 10 CRMS for charities & non-profits by fundraising.co.uk which has a great requirements statement too, they point at the uniquely free, insightly.
By adding the word ‘free’ to the above query, I found this, which includes ads for the host, g2 and a bunch I have never heard of and yet includes Nationbuilder, which I have heard of. (I wonder if these are focused on the US market. Their 5* picks include DonorDock, & BreezeCHMS , optimised for churches, Raklet, & Continue to Give. Perhaps I should look for a site specifically supporting non-profits.
Image Credit: Handwritten C R M by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 at http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com
I found this, https://civicrm.org/explore-civicrm while looking for a potential casework solution for my Union branch.
I came back to this today, nearly six years after I first looked at it.
I have retired the following comments,
I recommend that you should look at sugarcrm, which was open source, widely used and means that it’s requirements are based on a broad set of needs and that people to help you as staff or not should be available. I am unclear of it’s open source status, and thus whether free version are available any more. My hopes on free and open source were overoptimistic.
I also run query on google on cheap crm software and found, a review by shawn graham; the reviews aren’t great and they all charged monthly but it’s not clear if this is solely software rental or includes hosting.
It is obvious that this market changes, and I am thus unclear if Graham’s review remains useful.