Uncover the Costs: What Your Association Needs to Know About Database Projects

Tired of your team running in circles, putting in long hours and tonnes of manual effort instead of helping your members? When implemented poorly, technology will create additional frustration instead of saving your association time, money and focusing on your members' growth.

As part of a digital optimization initiative your association should look at updating its database. Our guide will break down major costs, both financial and time, when it comes to putting into place a database/CRM which works for your association, instead of creating work for you. Database and CRM? Since these two words are interchangeable in our context, we will use both terms.

This guide will focus on Members Village database solution for comparison, however, you can take away the following and apply it to your project with another vendor. We will not cover do-it-yourself data tools and CRM's as we cannot quantify the cost to you, costs such as timelines, hard costs and missed opportunities.

A good CRM will enable your team to easily search and manage data. Your members will also have access to self-help tools to manage their own data, a subset which you define. And lastly, we recommend you obtain at least 3 proposals for any database project, these high level questions should be answered clearly:

• Will your member data comply with Canadian privacy laws such as PIPEDA?
  Storing your data on servers which are located outside of Canada can mean you are not in compliance.
• What is the frequency of data backups?
  Data backups should be performed daily, at minimum.
• Does the CRM comply with CASL?
  When using your database for marketing and sales processes (such as membership) you will want to ensure that you comply with CASL as it relates to sending emails.
• What is the frequency of data backups?
  Data backups should be performed daily, at minimum.
• If your association grows, will your CRM grow accordingly?
  If the proposed database solution cannot scale then your costs will multiply.
• What support comes with the database software?
  Once live, it is important to have clarity around who will provide ongoing maintenance and support of your new database.

Any proposal you receive should answer these basic questions and we would consider it a red flag if one of these are not included.

Detailed Breakdown of Database Expenses

The following breakdown will offer an estimate comparison of creating a database from scratch vs an installation on Members Village. We will also include maintenance costs which should be factored in - these software maintenance costs such as updates.

Focus of this breakdown is on associations with a revenue of $1 million or less, and we will use a $125 per hour rate to calculate costs of services (such as database design or consultation).

Additional Costs of Maintaining Your Database

Your association should also account for additional costs in your database project, these include:

1. Hosting for your database at $240/year. Please make sure that the hosting servers are located withing Canada.
2. SSL certificate, $150/year.

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