Recently I've been lucky enough to be working with Age UK Kensington & Chelsea, helping them make the move to a new database/CRM system. Part of this has work has involved extracting the information from their outgoing system, which has given me the chance to do a bit of analysis. This heat map shows two years, or thereabouts, of referrals to their Dementia services (advice, 1-to-1 support, befriending, groups and more). Maps and heat maps are fabulous. They certainly take a

Jargon is everywhere and it generally does us no favours. The IT world is particularly bad for this. There are TLAs everywhere! (Three Letter Acronyms) There is often confusion between "CRM" and "CMS", especially within frontline charities. Frontline charities are those that deliver services to people, and therefore the work they really want to do is being out there, serving their communities, rather than operating a computer. Databases are a necessary evil for charities like

Following on from yesterday's blog post about Zoho, I've been working with Salesforce today, and thought I'd put up a quick post about its suitability for a frontline charity. Salesforce, like Zoho, offers a free "way in" for charities - the first 10 licenses are free. However, unlike Zoho, the free version you get access to is just the same as the paid-for version, so I have to say that for a free CRM, Salesforce has the edge here. I've found that many charities have somethi

GDPR It's going to be a big year for UK charities because GDPR is coming in May. GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) will extend the existing Data Protection Act, and bring more duties and requirements for everyone storing and using personal data - which of course includes all charities. Whether you're a charity that focuses on fundraising or on service delivery, there are going to be some new hoops that you'll have to jump through, such as being able to easily dele