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Charities talk a lot about transformation. But too often, when it comes to tech—especially CRM systems—the transformation is mostly painful and rarely transformational.

I’ve seen it time and time again: a charity spends months (or years) implementing a CRM system, only to end up with something no one uses, staff resent, and donor data gets lost in. The system becomes the bottleneck, not the solution.

Here’s the problem: tech upgrades in charities are often driven by ambition, not clarity. We want better donor journeys, stronger reporting, slicker systems. But we jump in before we’ve mapped what we actually need, or whether our teams are ready for it.

The truth is, a CRM system is only as good as the culture around it. If staff aren’t trained, if leadership don’t model data use, if processes aren’t adapted—it’s just expensive shelfware.

In my own work advising charities, I’ve seen success when:

- We start small: pilot, review, refine
- We involve users early—so it’s not a top-down imposition
- We link it to real outcomes: better donor engagement, more insightful reporting, less staff burnout
- We avoid ‘consultant creep’—the project shouldn’t need rescuing with £50k more six months in

Especially in international contexts, tech choices need to account for local bandwidth, user skill levels, and data protection risks. A CRM that works in the UK might collapse in a rural field office. Design accordingly.

Charities don’t need the fanciest tech—they need the right tech, well used, by people who understand why it matters.

Have you been through a CRM rollout?
What worked—and what went wrong?

Let’s share stories so others don’t fall into the same traps.