The Movement for Black Lives’ first CRM

Before this, technology, donor management, and systems for managing data had grown organically, supported by just enough investment to achieve the goals at hand. These solutions were not designed to handle the volume they were now experiencing and the policy, governance, and documentation surrounding them were similarly underdeveloped. A new foundation that wove technology, data, policy, procedures, and governance together was needed to manage the volume of donations and relationships being created. But at the same time, M4BL needed to continue growing and evolving and couldn’t redirect everyone’s focus to solving this single, but critical problem.

This is where ParsonsTKO got involved. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we had undertaken a major pro-bono project for the Advancement Fund, helping them navigate a very similar situation where a sudden influx of donations led to a need to quickly scale. We were offered an opportunity to conduct a contact modeling workshop for M4BL to both help them explore how they wanted to manage donors and audience relationships, and demonstrate how we would work with them.
This work led to PTKO helping M4BL wrangle the standup and configuration of the organization’s first ever enterprise CRM deployment (EveryAction) and a very difficult data migration, transformation, and cleanup effort. This was not an easy road, as M4BL had over 30 distinct sources of data, each with different formats, structures, gaps, naming conventions, accuracy, and gaps in the data. Our involvement here outsourced much of what could have been thousands of hours of data entry and configuration. They had never needed policy and documentation about where data was stored and which data was their source of truth, but they needed that now. Because of their sudden success, they didn’t have the bandwidth to explore this data with us, and many folks inside the organization didn’t have context or familiarity with the uncovered data.
Our approach was to work closely with M4BL to understand their unique culture and office philosophy. Empathy and trust were essential to this project, as we would often have to act and make choices on M4BL’s behalf when examining and triaging data. This meant reimagining how “typical” business systems might work. For example, we helped them translate their non-hierarchical organizational structure into the CRM, such as adapting default CRM department roles to utilize “table” and committee structures that are the critical operating units at M4BL. Even with limited time, they were empowered to prioritize newly discovered data by leveraging an evaluation pipeline we created for them.
Our use case modeling work was valuable to build consensus and understanding of the capabilities the organization needed and how Everyaction could support them. As the first enterprise CRM effort in the organization’s history, many decisions about what was important to the organization about each relationship they wanted to manage and nurture were being made for the first time.

To be successful, M4BL needed to use their limited staff time to focus on strategic and operational planning decisions, and we needed to provide the direct capacity and expertise to turn raw legacy data into valuable connective data that could be imported into EveryAction. The capacity we provided took many forms, including our strategists liaisoning and advocating for M4BL’s needs and challenges directly with their CRM vendor. With our deep understanding of EveryAction’s functionality, data migration tools, and staffing, PTKO was able to advise EveryAction’s implementation team on the best way to support M4BL’s needs and also provided feedback on their documentation. This collaborative relationship led to a more efficient implementation and data migration for M4BL and EveryAction and helped build a more trusting relationship between all three parties.
All this data & CRM configuration work was in the service of helping M4BL scale its ability to manage donor relationships, communicate with its supporters, and work more efficiently and effectively. As they’ve achieved major milestones along the data & configuration pathway, we’ve started to work with key M4BL tables & business function owners to help them adopt EveryAction as an actively used business tool.

Replacing legacy and ad-hoc ways of working has meant reengineering business processes and reconciling with the opinionated way that EveryAction expects you to work. Our work has saved their staff over 800 hours of labor compared to the effort required to do the same work using their legacy business processes. Not only are we saving their staff time, but we have increased everyone’s confidence in the data by ensuring each data source has been reviewed, improved, and curated before being integrated into the whole.
While there are still miles to go on this road, we’re thrilled that our work has helped M4BL seize the opportunity to move forward and continue their important work and growth.

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) coalesces and stewards the power of over 200 Black-led organizations, giving life to a diverse, evolving, and responsive ecosystem fighting to change the material conditions of Black communities. The realization of the collective vision for a free Black future will not be driven by a few charismatic individuals or national leaders, but from the community-rooted and locally-led organizations of this ecosystem. Strong organizations build strong movements.

And yet, Black-led and multiracial nonprofits have been under-resourced for generations. Smaller staff sizes, fewer organizational tools at their disposal, and under-resourcing by the philanthropic sector have prevented investment in the systems needed to strengthen and grow these organizations. For the movement to succeed, M4BL must invest in the foundational organizational support and staff capacity required for ecosystem nonprofits to thrive.

M4BL is uniquely positioned to serve as a hub of training, staffing support, organizational resources, and infrastructure development to break the cycle of under-investment in Black-led community-based nonprofits best positioned to create change. With the launching of the Resource Table, M4BL will support the development of new pathways to support, sustain, and strengthen the movement’s ecosystem organizations and broader BIPOC communities.