Choosing a CRM is one of the highest-leverage decisions trustees make. It shapes Gift Aid recovery, donor retention, reporting and the day-to-day life of your operations team for years — often longer than the trustees who signed it off remain on the board. Get it right and it quietly compounds. Get it wrong and you pay for it in staff hours and lost income every week.
This guide deliberately focuses on the questions trustees should ask, not on feature checklists. A feature list tells you what a product can do; these questions tell you whether it fits you.
Start with the income model, not the software
Before you look at a single demo, map your income lines:
- One-off online donations
- Regular giving and Direct Debits
- Cash and contactless collections
- Restricted appeals and emergency funds
- Legacies and major gifts
- Trading and events income
A CRM that handles three of these brilliantly and the rest poorly will create silent gaps — and you usually discover them at year-end, at the worst possible time. The shape of your income should drive the shortlist, not the other way around.
Treat Gift Aid as a first-class requirement
If your CRM cannot submit Gift Aid claims directly to HMRC through Charities Online, you will rebuild that workflow in spreadsheets — and inherit all the rejection risks that come with manual claiming. Confirm the supplier appears on HMRC’s official list of recognised software suppliers. This is a quick, verifiable check that filters a shortlist fast.
Get GDPR posture in writing
Lawful basis, consent records, retention rules and subject-access workflows are not optional add-ons — they are your legal exposure. Ask the supplier for a one-page summary of how each is handled, and sanity-check it against the ICO’s guidance for organisations. If a supplier struggles to produce that page, treat it as a red flag.
Think about total cost across five years
The licence is only one line. A realistic five-year total includes:
- Data migration and cleansing
- Integrations with your website, payment provider and finance system
- Training and onboarding
- Ongoing support and account management
- The hidden cost of staff time spent on workarounds
A “cheap” platform that needs constant manual reconciliation is rarely cheap. Our charity CRM buyer’s guide includes a structured way to compare these honestly.
Pilot with real data
Insist on a pilot using a representative sample of your own donors and a recent appeal — not the vendor’s tidy demo dataset. Anything that breaks in a pilot will break worse at year-end under real pressure. A supplier confident in their product will welcome this.
Plan the exit before you sign
Before you commit, confirm what happens to your data if you leave: the export format, the timeline, and the cost. A supplier that hesitates here is telling you something important about the years ahead.
Get the board aligned early
The board does not need to choose the product, but it does need to sign off on data, risk and the change budget. Bring trustees in at the shortlist stage, not at the contract stage — late board involvement is where good procurement decisions quietly stall.
Weighing up whether to buy a platform or build something bespoke? Read our companion piece on off-the-shelf vs bespoke charity software, and once you’ve chosen, our charity management system is built around exactly these requirements.
Want a structured CRM evaluation template? Download our charity CRM buyer’s guide or talk to our team.
