CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We, Isles, Inc., are evaluating CiviCRM versus SalesForce for implementation in our organization. We are a community development corporation with 75 employees and a variety of services offered in six service areas - real estate development (affordable housing), community planning and research, environmental and community health, financial self-reliance, an alternative high school (YouthBuild), and job training for students and adults. We intend to use the chosen system to support fundraising, contact management, volunteer management, event management, service delivery, and outcomes tracking.

We would very much appreciate any current user of CiviCRM with somewhat similar requirements sharing their experiences with us. We have a short list of question that we would like to pose if you are willing to spend about 20 minutes.

Thanks,
Charles

Here is the questionnaire we use for interviewing:

#   Question / Data
1   Person Spoken To
2   Phone Number
3   Organizaiton URL
4   What System do you use?
5           How long has your system been in place for?
6   How many people in your organization use it (total and as a percentage of all staff)?
7   How long did it take to implement – planned originally, and actual?
8   How much did it cost – budgeted and actual?
9   What do you use it for (fundraising, CRM, program tracking, evaluation / outcome tracking as examples)?
10   How is it working out for you? (this is an open ended question to lead into main purpose of the interview)
11   Do you regret the system choice in any way, if so, why?
12   What were the three biggest problems you faced during the implementation?
13   What have been the three hardest things / biggest problems that have occurred since the deployment?
14   Do you have other observations on how the system when implemented did not meet your expectations when you started the implementation / selected the system?
15   How much internal support do you use specifically assigned to the system (in FTE)?
16   What do support personnel do?
17   How much external support do you use specifically assigned to the system (in $)?
18   What do they do for you?
19   What advice would you give another nonprofit about to start on a (CiviCRM or Salesforce) implementation given your experience?
20   Is there anything else we should have asked that you think we might want to know?