More time to make a difference.

The term 'CRM' has different meanings in different settings. In fundraising it often refers to 'constituent relationship management', but we tend to regard it as much more client-focused.

So essentially the Charitylog CRM is really a database holding the information about your clients, your interactions with them and anyone else involved in the operation of the organisation.

However large or small your charity, you will need to have knowledge of who you are working with and what you have done, if only to make it simpler to communicate with clients and provide information to funders.

Choosing the right CRM for your charity

You can have a free 30 day trial of Charitylog Starter but we don't provide a free downloadable version. Give us a call, we will arrange it and one of our support team will help get you started.

We are keen to talk to you, see what you are looking for, show you how Charitylog fits and discuss which version might be best for you. If it doesn't fit, we will tell you that as well.

If you sign up for Starter, you can use it for 30 days without charge. We will provide an online session to get you started and also 60 days of free telephone support. If you don't want to continue after the 30 days, simply let us know and we will not charge you and we will delete the database. There are no obligations.

Typically a Project would equate to a service being provided, or perhaps a funding stream. One of the reasons for this is that there is a lot of reporting based on the concept of a referral being linked to a project.

If a client calls asking for information about benefits, that might be a referral linked to the ‘Benefits’ project. If they are also asking about Befriending, that might be a referral to the 'Befriending' project. It may be that there is separate, specific funding for the Befriending project and therefore you need to report about activity just in that project. Ideally therefore, you would have at least 2 projects in this scenario.

This is why Charitylog Plus and Ultimate allow as many projects as you like - it allows you to create a more representative view of your organisation.

In the same way that you might record a contact with a client asking about benefits, you could also record contacts with a volunteer during their recruitment process. Again, this might be linked to a Volunteer Recruitment project. So the use of projects can be widespread in the way your organisation runs more generally rather than just client referrals.

The best way is to talk to us. We can chat about what you do, what services you provide, the way you do things, what reporting needs there are and help you decide.

Apart from Starter, where there is a free 30 day trial, we are very happy to provide a demonstration for you.

Charitylog Starter is designed for use by very small charities where the main need is to keep track of people and record interactions with them. Because it is intended to be simple (and to try to keep to a realistic budget for these small charities), we provide a walk through to get you going. You also have 60 days free telephone support.

If you feel you need additional training we are happy to provide it at the usual training cost. 

We provide an agreed number of implementation and training days as part of any Charitylog we sell (apart from Starter, where we provide a free 30 day trial and help get you started).

During the Implementation process, we will talk about how your organisation works, what workflows and processes you use, what data needs you have, what your funders are asking for as reports and so on. 

We can then guide you on how to set up the system and make the best use of it.

We also provide telephone and email support as needed (60 days free telephone support for Starter).

Yes, we actively encourage its use by volunteers as we believe that time can be saved and more volunteers are becoming IT literate (not that a high degree of literacy is needed).

There are protections within the system to ensure they only see what they need to. Also, the licencing model that we use does not require you to purchase a licence for each user even though they should have their own log in credentials.

When we sell a Charitylog system (apart from Starter), we always provide a Review session as part of the price, usually half a day or a day.

We tend to do the Review session about 3 to 6 months after you have gone live. By this time you will be familiar with the system and we can then see if there are ways to use the system more efficiently, provide guidance on adding extra areas of use if relevant and, importantly, look at reporting given that there will be data in by then.

Experience over many years has shown that this is a very valuable part of our overall service.

We have ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditations and also have the ISO 9001 quality accreditation.

All the data is stored in highly reputable data centres in the UK and we will not move the data out of the UK.

As well as charities, we work with a number of local authorities providing services such as the SEND service - they generally require us to demonstrate a very high degree of security which should act as reassurance to smaller charities with less IT and legal resources.

Many CRM providers require every individual user to have a licence and this can prove to be costly, especially if you have a large number of occasional users, such as volunteers. We felt that it would be fairer to price the system on a sliding scale according to income (or the income of projects covered by Charitylog), with a generous allowance of 'concurrent users' (see the FAQ on concurrent users).

We hope this approach means that organisations of different sizes can accommodate the cost of the system without the endless restrictions caused by limited user licencing.

When two people are using the system at the same time, there are 2 concurrent users. If 10 are using it at the same time, then there are 10 concurrent users. You can still have as many registered users as you like as long as they are not all logging in and using the system all day at the same time.

If there are 5 concurrent users allowed, we do not prevent the 6th user from logging in - this can be very annoying when it happens.

However, we do take a more relaxed view than this and if there is doubt, we tend to average it out over a working day so, generally speaking, we do not find the number of concurrent users is a bar to the system. Indeed the whole point of our licencing method is to encourage usage.

Yes, Charitylog will work 'out of the box'. However, we have found that most charities benefit from using its flexibility and therefore they may change the terminology, or take away fields they don't need, or add on extra fields for something that is not included in the standard Charitylog set up.

Similarly, they often represent their workflows within the system which makes life easier for the users and also ensures the proper information is collected and processes followed. They may also have specific types of assessment they want to include.

Apart from Starter, we include a specified amount of help and training to turn the standard system into a system that fits the way you work and what you do.

Not al all, we are happy to talk to any organisation about how Charitylog might help them. We believe it can be used in many settings and we even use it as our own CRM.

So if you are a CIC or even a commercial organisation, please contact us and we can discuss how we might help.