CiviCRM Tools Trial Recap: Curate your data to nurture your community

On Wednesday, 25 March 2026, Lauren Collister (IOI) and Yo Yehudi (OLS) joined members of our community of practice to share how they use CiviCRM to support their community management work. 

In this blog post, we share a brief recap of the session, including recordings of Lauren and Yo’s presentations, as well as some links to resources to help you get started with Civi (or another CRM of your choice!). 

We’d love to continue our exploration of open-source tools for STEM community managers, so if there’s a tool you use that you’d like to demo, let us know by emailing info@cscce.org. 

What is CiviCRM? 

CiviCRM is an open source Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system that was built as a more flexible and affordable alternative to proprietary CRM systems. CRM systems compile information about your members from a range of different sources, including your community platform and your communications channels (e.g., email and social media), and are commonly used for fundraising efforts and sales. Because they can also be used to track relationships between members, they are also an attractive tool for community managers looking to strategically nurture their communities. 

As an open source platform, CiviCRM offers flexibility in terms of how the platform is configured, and can be self-hosted, reducing some of the initial set-up costs. However, self-hosting requires technical skills. CiviCRM Spark, a hosted alternative of the platform, is also available for a monthly fee. 

An intro to Civi and how IOI uses the platform

Lauren kicked off the Tools Trial with a brief overview of the ways that IOI uses CiviCRM, and then took us through a demo of the platform (using our Comms Director, Katie, as an example!). IOI’s primary use case for CiviCRM is to track external stakeholder engagement, but they also use it to manage events and send their monthly newsletter (within Civi, you can build and track HTML email campaigns). Lauren’s presentation included a couple of useful tips for Civi users, including how to bcc your Civi instance and automatically track your regular email communications with key stakeholders. 

Continuing the conversation with OLS

Yo then picked up the conversation and added some additional context from OLS’s use of Civi, which includes managing honoraria payments and building custom forms to refine data entry (and reduce some of the administrative burden of keeping any CRM up to date). Like Lauren, Yo credited CSCCE community member Emmy Tsang, who contributed to setting up and socializing Civi at both IOI and OLS (thanks for indirectly contributing to this Tools Trial, Emmy!).  

Key messages from this Tools Trial

  • One of the biggest tradeoffs you’ll be faced with at the outset is working with a developer to stand up your own instance of CiviCRM vs. paying a monthly fee for the hosted version (CiviCRM Spark).
    • Pros of Spark: You don’t have to worry about updates and maintenance, plus you’re contributing to the ongoing development of an open source product.
    • Cons of Spark: Your ability to customize the platform is limited, and, of course, you’re adding a monthly payment to your budget. 
  • Your CRM is only as good as the data it contains – so make a plan for keeping things up to date that works for you (Lauren has a Friday afternoon time block for updating the CRM, whereas Yo prefers updating in realtime).
  • You’ll probably have to fashion your own workarounds to certain things no matter which CRM you choose – none are perfect! This might involve intentionally deciding which pieces of the platform not to use (and supplementing with something else, e.g., using a shared Google Doc for meeting notes instead of the built-in tool in Civi).
  • If your community is small, a shared spreadsheet might work better for you, at least in the short term (but consider looking into Airtable, SharePoint lists, or Zapier to help automate some tasks).

Thank you, and…next time? 

A big thank you to our speakers Lauren and Yo, and to everyone who attended and made this a lively and productive session! If you’re interested in presenting on a future Tools Trial, we’d love to hear from you (info@cscce.org), Some platforms that came up in this Tools Trial that people expressed interested in going deeper on include Zapier and Airtable, but we’re open to other suggestions! 

Additional resources

Disclaimer

Please note that by hosting and presenting in these trials neither CSCCE nor any of the participants (or their organizations) who attend these trials are endorsing the platforms.