unreal drum
We've got a lot of people sending emails to politicians, and setting up connections. We should gather and organize this information. We can use that to keep track of progress, test approaches, prioritize countries, prevent duplicate efforts, etc.
Who has ideas on what software to use?
I was thinking airtable + integrate it on the PauseAI website.
supple hinge
Because I can't yet imagine how a publicly accessible CRM system would be secure, I'm imagining an internal CRM for vetted users, with a public form for submitting potential entries/updates
(e.g. some e/acc is gonna try to wreck it)
bleak osprey
Zoho CRM works great, but the paid version is pricey. They do have a free version which I've never used, though. More to the point, I'm not sure if they have a max number of seats: https://www.zoho.com/crm/lp/free-crm.html?network=g&device=c&keyword=free crm software&campaignid=15172962852&creative=661346952360&matchtype=e&adposition=&placement=&adgroup=127255532577&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAuYuvBhApEiwAzq_YiblYrhrghhvJNRVJJ0WnycT7NVrOhs7-MEjWaIncH0M4-CUn3DS5ABoC1-AQAvD_BwE
supple hinge
I think you could do airtable for the public submissions, and then a few vetted users comb through that to update the internal CRM. Or maybe it's airtable all the way down
A CRM could also be used to track volunteers, who is where with what skills/interests
marble badger
Project Tracker: https://maximolog.notion.site/Track-lobby-efforts-crm-d545cc6672b64e5582e4fa07007fe3cf?pvs=4
primal surge
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1arZjIPe4luvixfTrgLoYYFXPEc8UDIk3zgu60pQmy_0/edit?usp=sharing @marble badger
Potentially simple solution?
unreal drum
I think the data model needs to be scoped on individual mails and politicians. Would probably require a true CRM (e.g. pipedrive)
primal surge
unreal drum
Haha nice! 😁
unreal drum
@frosty totem
frosty totem
Oh man, this is fantastic! Nicely done.
primal surge
unreal drum
Made a submission form for lobby actions (Work in progress!) https://airtable.com/appWPTGqZmUcs3NWu/pagoraIwzlYm2QwjD/form
@frosty totem
frosty totem
Brilliant!
I will spend some time today creating different form templates (in addition to the lobbying form you just sent) which we might be able to integrate with the rest of a CRM.
bleak osprey
There's no category for "Snail Mail". I'll use email for now, but the UI should definitely be updated
frosty totem
Just updated the outreach action submission form with some more categories & questions.
Additional context: we are planning to use a centralized submission form where volunteers can log Congressional outreach, lobby meetings, outreach to influencers/public figures, partner orgs, etc. This form will be the one-stop shop for all outreach tracking and will allow us to better track all the amazing outreach taking place.
Outreach Tracking Form: Please take 30 seconds to fill this out whenever you reach out to or meet with a politician, influencer, organization, or anyone else!! https://airtable.com/appWPTGqZmUcs3NWu/pagoraIwzlYm2QwjD/form
primal surge
Just updated the outreach action submission form with some more categories & que...
can there be made a more easy version of this, with less stuff to do?
e.g. one quick one and one 'advanced' one?
I'm more likely to fill it out if so
esp if the info can be added/edited later
unreal drum
can there be made a more easy version of this, with less stuff to do?
I think the fields are optional
frosty totem
I think the fields are optional
Correct, the fields are optional, just double-checked.
frosty totem
Made a few of the fields mandatory (type of outreach, type of official, name) but everything else is optional.
sweet fable
Is there a list with all the data entered to Airtable? So we can see who has been contacted?
unreal drum
yes! that's the point of the list. It's very young though, so not a lot is in it as of now
unreal drum
@earnest musk has some ideas on CRM tooling, also some open source options that may be more powerful / suitable than airtable
Core issue with current approach is not being able to see our own stuff
marble badger
Core issue with current approach is not being able to see our own stuff
What do you mean?
primal surge
What do you mean?
I assume Joep means that like the excel doc or that codepen, it's more fun and engaging when you can easily see what others are doing and how you compare to others
unreal drum
Not just comparing / leader boards, but also being able to see your own submissions. I noticed I was asking myself 'Did I already register this mail?'
marble badger
Well let's think about it this way: there is data that is ok for everyone to see (for example projects, tasks) and data that is not ok for everyone to see (lists of volunteers). With Airtable we can make some tables public and others not, so we should be able to make public everything that we want, no? I don't see the advantage of, say, excel doc
earnest musk
I'm really excited to set this up!
I think we can hit two birds with one stone; 1) provide value to our volunteers via a good CRM, 2) track their efforts.
To grow our volunteer count, one important part of it is to have them feel their work is meaningful. This is an incremental task, nothing we’ll perfect in one shot.
Asking volunteers to track their progress via signing an airtable form makes it feel like they have to do another dull task. It's another ask from our end, even if it only takes 30 seconds (volunteers wanting to do this task well by filling in more than mandatory fields will likely spend much more than 30 seconds - increasing our ask even more). In the current shape, I unfortunately believe the sign-the-airtable task is decentivizing and could mean lower overall impact. In asking volunteers to do stuff, the minimum is to provide compelling reasons for why they should do it - this in itself makes their work feel more meaningful, but I don’t believe it's sufficient in this instance to scale up fast.
It would benefit us tremendously to have some value proposition to them, to enable them to act with higher quality and ease. If we’d have, then we’d organically grow our volunteer count. In the ideal case, they’ll give us data without an ask or nudge. I think we can get close to such a point if we think through the execution properly. In the current setup, we’re mainly leveraging their goodwill, a resource that we should use very sparingly.
Above enabling them, there are ways of making their work more enjoyable and meaningful such as rewards, feeling ownership, accountability, gaining ingroup / outgroup status, coworking systems, networking / bonding opportunities, etc, that we can think about setting up the CRM.
I’d suggest we use a CRM where there are 3 different views available of the same CRM database:
(1) Whole database with all information from all senders and receivers. This is what a select few very trusted individuals can see. If we feel the need to go far with security, then signing an NDA to view this database could be an option. We’ll likely need to think a bit about GDPR.
(2) A personal CRM / CRM subsystem for volunteers. They can only see and edit the part of the database in which they are contributing to. This is a value prop; they are enabled to do better lobbying via using the CRM, and we get to track their efforts. Volunteers need to create a sign-in for this.
(3) The whole database only with sender name and receiver name fields. We might want to prevent the failure mode where many volunteers have written a message to the same person. When a volunteer wants to contact someone, they first search this database – especially if the receiver is famous. Coordination is another value prop for volunteers. This database view might very well be problematic from a privacy perspective, from both volunteers and the receivers (imagine being a politician and everyone in our movement can see that volunteer x has talked to you). Potentially use an NDA for security.
The ideal scenario is where we can use the same CRM for all our purposes – events and outreach. It would be good to have separate categories or options of sorting people to reach out to: politicians, musicians, artists, influencers, journalists, natsec professionals, volunteers, etc.
Before we settle on a CRM system, I think it could be good to think about how this CRM integrates with the rest of the ecosystem. It would also be good to think about how to make this scalable: having the infrastructure ready if we 10x - 100x our volunteers in a short duration – something that could happen if humanity gets a warning shot.
A solution could be a free, open-source CRM such as SuiteCRM. It satisfies the criteria outlined above, but there are alternatives I haven’t looked into.
Like always, I strongly endorse anyone to challenge any of the points I've put forward. I just care about is finding the best solution.
marble badger
Just want to mention that you don't need to sign into airtable to fill in the forms - are you thinking of providing direct access to the tables?
Ah nevermind I understand you meant "fill" not "sign in"
marble badger
I completely agree with all the needs you have outlined above but it is still not clear to me that Airtable does not cover them.
earnest musk
I'll have a look! It would be nice to not have to migrate our data
dull ginkgo
im not a fan of what i've superficially seen of airtable (aka UI) but I don't even know about CRM so I my opinion doesn't matter lol.
Unless we start to integrate a lot more things with airtable I will probably not be affected.
primal surge
I'm really excited to set this up!
I think we can hit two birds with one stone...
Oh yeah - when it's a LeaderBoard, I can sell that as a fun activity, and a reason to write an email
Not so with the CRM
Also, with the Google Sheets, they can immediately see what others have done, what others have put - and see themselves adding themselves to that board - stronger feeling of community, competition, less work
Obv, a crm gives much more useful options and data
But, imo, whatever way that data is added, if we want this to actually scale, and say, 1000 emails to be sent every month, then it needs to be:
Having an obvious incentive (other than just ideological)
e.g. joining the community, having your name in the same place as everyone, like carving names into the desk of classmates type feeling, competitiveness, seeing your number and others (but important to not be assy about this)
people will rarely do it if there is no obvious, fun, incentive, imo
Easy
if we want this to scale, it needs to be easy to do. So it's done not just by the people willing to put in medium to high effort who have nothing better to do.
Fun
this isn't the same as incentives - though may be linked. It's also linked to easiness.
making something fun is about identifying what problems are fun to solve, in what way and which ones are annoying to solve. E.g. - for
most people, waiting for things, like loading screens, isn't fun, but figuring out the right combo to get a really sick score, is fun
I do think there is a fun aspect here - persuasion - persuasion is fun - and psychoanalysis can be fun too - people take personality quizzes for fun and read hours of articles about politicians and celebrities supposed mindset for fun all the time - and often spend a lot of time debating on that too - which is another type of fun
Also, talking to people is fun too
One of the important factors I think should be taken into account for whoever's leading the email thing, apart from a level of competence, their determination, etc - are they fun to talk to?
Can they comfortably lead a group in a way that's fun?
unreal drum
Just upgraded to Airtable premium, now costs almost 100 dollars / month for 4 users.
unreal drum
@bleak osprey would you have time to have a chat with @earnest musk on CRM tooling?
bleak osprey
Yes! I'm back now and would love to dive in. I'll reach out to Chris to get something setup right away
unreal drum
@silent jasper told me: Well I've emailed a bunch of people now that I'm losing track of who I've talked to and about what. It would be useful for me to record all this.
Our current approach with Airtable only allows for posting our actions, but not seeing them. This is frustrating, obviously.
I'm not sure if / how we can give individuals access to only their lobby actions.
marble badger
<@153071309700595713> told me: Well I've emailed a bunch of people now that I'm ...
I think we can create a view so everyone can see their own actions
earnest musk
A interim solution could be to make Google Docs links for everyone, insert a CRM template for them to fill in (minor value prop), then just ask them to share it with us.
To further reduce overhead for them could be for us to hand them these documents, prefilled.
There is also a setting in Docs where you can get updates whenever the document is edited.
Probably this is also possible with sheets.
unreal drum
I think we can create a view so everyone can see their own actions
Really? How?
marble badger
Really? How?
as far as I understand, we pay only for editor accounts, but people can log in as a view-only account for free. Then we can give view access to specific parts of the database
unreal drum
as far as I understand, we pay only for editor accounts, but people can log in a...
Interesting!
marble badger
bleak osprey
<@153071309700595713> told me: Well I've emailed a bunch of people now that I'm ...
Chris Gerrby and I will be meeting again on Friday to talk about his CRM recommendations. Messaging history will definitely be part of it.
marble badger
Here is the view. Everyone who has a pauseai.info email address should have viewer access. Everyone else will see a "you do not have permission" screen https://airtable.com/appWPTGqZmUcs3NWu/shrPDzK96tZBC3IKB
silent jasper
I have viewer access, thank you for setting this up
sacred burrow
Are the emails [email protected] and [email protected] btw? So I could update https://pauseai.info/legal
silent jasper
yes
unreal drum
We discussed this countless of times during the CRM meetings, but it finally happened: we now have a #did-a-thing-🙌 channel. @marble badger will try to link this to the email submissions in airtable. We can also link it to github submissions perhaps
marble badger
unreal drum
TaskRobin is pretty interesting - a plugin that allows storing emails directly to airtable. We could use this to make the process of adding to the Actions table a lot easier. As I've mentioned a couple of times, my favorite pipedrive CRM feature is BCC email forwards - link a mail directly.
unreal drum
TaskRobin failed, doesn't work with multiple email addresses.
Idea: Add a [email protected] group to gmail. The goal is to forward emails there that may be relevant to PauseAI. It's basically a way to aggregate CRM stuff.
This hopefully feels far less bothersome than uploading to the outreach form.
At some point in the future, we may simply forward all of these mails to the real CRM!
unreal drum
@silent jasper
silent jasper
When do we predict having a way to add the emails to a CRM?
hazy ridge
TaskRobin failed, doesn't work with multiple email addresses.
Idea: Add a `bcc@...
Do it! I'm going to start bcc-ing it even while it bounces. It'll mean I can find them later.
unreal drum
Do it! I'm going to start bcc-ing it even while it bounces. It'll mean I can fin...
Hmm I now see that Google groups doesn't have export feature, which could hurt us if we migrate to a proper crm.
unreal drum
That sounds reassuring, thanks. Seems to contradict various reports on reddit
hazy ridge
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess test it sooner rather than later.
unreal drum
It's set up!
earnest musk
I wrote in #volunteers, I'll paste here as well:
**What is the current demand for a proper CRM right now? **
Where the project is so far:
unreal drum
I wrote in <#1185555491024273489>, I'll paste here as well:
**What is the curr...
Nice job! Does it support BCC Email import? From a lobbying perspective, that's feature request #1 IMO
yes it does, yay! 😄
unreal drum
I wrote in <#1185555491024273489>, I'll paste here as well:
**What is the curr...
Very happy this new CiviCRM is setup and running! AFAIK @bleak osprey or you have setup an instance at https://pauseai.civicrm.org
I currently have access there as an admin. I still have to learn how to get around using it.
unreal drum
I've been trying CiviCRM, playing around with it a bit. I'm afraid I can't say that I like it. The user experience seems far behind some of the CRM tools I've used before. Some things I noticed:
In short, I don't think this is the CRM tool we should go for. We should try some more alternatives.
hazy ridge
Noted. I've been relying on reviews from third parties, which tend positive, but the project has been somewhat quiet so I figured it's either very stable or somewhat unloved. Your report suggests the latter.
unreal drum
I'd like to consider some other options:
unreal drum
I've been toying a bit with Zoho Bigin and it works pretty well. Integrates with Gmail, allows BCC forwarding (setup [email protected], try it out!)
Some thoughts:
[email protected] for partners)role for volunteers.I've also used HubSpot, which also seems really good. Kinda similar in terms of features / usability, but it's a bit more expensive. They called me and will make an offer (they are expensive!) with a nice discount.
hazy ridge
In my conversations with Claude it thought the full Zoho CRM looked a better fit for us. Have you looked at the differences and support for migration from Bigin?
hazy ridge
I have to say modulo any fabrications I have not yet observed, after the right set up prompting re our context/requirements I'm consistently finding Claude valuable for this kind of option comparison.
E.g. https://claude.ai/chat/7e0d39a7-958e-4cb0-80ab-153c03d377b6
(Tell me if not accessible.)
unreal drum
In my conversations with Claude it thought the full Zoho CRM looked a better fit...
Wasn't even aware of Zoho CRM vs Zoho Bigin! Looks like Zoho CRM is more powerful and customizable., but also more expensive
unreal drum
Just called again with Hubspot.
I'll have a call again tomorrow
unreal drum
Another call / demo with Hubspot
hazy ridge
Elephant: would we currently have to share some account credentials to realistically fund and operate? I hope not.
earnest musk
Elephant: would we currently have to share some account credentials to realistic...
Wdym?
unreal drum
15 dollar / month per user. We could potentially share accounts per region or something similar to cut costs, but comes at a cost for integration / ease of use.
(btw I expect to get discount)
hazy ridge
Understood. It's the per-user rather than per-action cost model that can cause difficulties for a distributed volunteer movement, right? What kind of user count => cost are you thinking of for current use-cases?
If small self-service hooks into the API (bcc email included) that means some volunteer can act without being a user are possible and not frowned upon, I get how it can work.
unreal drum
Had another call with Hubspot. @earnest musk and I talked to Guus Verbeek from Cuex, who exclusive implement Hubspot because it's the fastest-growing CRM. Cuex's first customer was Sheltersuit, they use Hubspot to track donations, host the pages
volunteer table that automatically sends a welcome emailevents, so people can sign up to an event, and receive a reminder a day before the event starts. However, editing an event page (as a non-hubspot user) is tricky, as there is no native support for eidting. Or we should make a 'customer portal' for local organizers, which does support forms.
hazy ridge
This sounds very promising to me. From everything described, HubSpot as a CRM for outreach and active volunteer management for Pause AI in Guardians mode fits well. Thread for framing context: #1267546131882315952 message
If it turns out to fit our website CMS and l10n needs too, that's worth considering. We do need to build or buy something. It would be mostly a coincidence if the same stack/vendor can meet both CMS and CRM needs, but potentially a handy one.
I don't think HubSpot fits the Kids (suddenly scaling local chapters) context but glue into it to maintain an aggregation/overview of contacts and event schedules remains plausible.
unreal drum
I'd like to migrate away from the outreach form, and towards the Hubpost BCC email: [email protected]
I'll update the did-a-thing channel!
hazy ridge
Shall we backfill?
We could ask individuals to re-forward their email threads to [email protected], or we could try to automate from Airtable. Keeping original contact dates rather than date of import prominent seems important.
Main reason for asking explicitly: I suspect a mixture of the two strategies will produce a worse result re dupes etc. But maybe we can "fix it in post". Thoughts?
unreal drum
Yes we should. It also has a forward option btw.
I've sent this to william:
Hi william!
Could you help populate the Hubspot CRM so we have all our politician / lobby / partnership outreach in one place? The airtable Outreach form always was a bit of a hassle to add. We now have a different way to do this: just forward or BCC an email.
For your older e-mails, you should forward them to
`[email protected]`
For new emails (which you can BCC) use
`[email protected]`
Thanks in advance!
IMO having duplicates isn't that bad
It's a mild inconvenience in the interface
Ah bummer... It looks like this might not work
silent jasper
Do we have a work around?
unreal drum
I'm chatting with hubspot support
silent jasper
thanks
hazy ridge
(Does [email protected] in the meantime have utility, by the way?)
unreal drum
(Does [email protected] in the meantime have utility, by the way?)
Maybe we can set this email up in such a way that it auto-forwards everything to hubspot...
silent jasper
Maybe we can set this email up in such a way that it auto-forwards everything to...
yea that seems useful
unreal drum
ugh, also seems to be a dead end... Google requires verified emails for forwarding... And I can't verify the hubspot CRM mail
dull ginkgo
https://activisthandbook.org/tools/crm#crms-for-activists have you check these other alternatives?
this website is full of resources
unreal drum
WHOAH! nice find 😄
hazy ridge
I had read througha few of these lists earlier and I confess my main reaction was "Yikes, why are there so few clear leaders in this industry?"
I'm a newbie user here. I worry maybe most of us are.
Do we have any volunteer whose career has involved years of using (and ideally choosing) CRMs?
sacred burrow
@minor adder maybe?
unreal drum
I just tried some of the ones they mention / recommend:
hazy ridge
Ooh, yes,
I see there is app.twenty.com if we want hosting rather than running our own: $9/seat/month is a nice rate to play with it, and having the self-host escape route if we really need it to cover a large occasional user base would be handy.
This thing screams "I'm a developer's dream CRM".
That might be a trap, though. We need evidence of it being used at plausible scale by some normal folk.
I've popped a message on their Discord asking along those lines.
hazy ridge
I guess we should check https://www.salesforce.com/nonprofit - eligible orgs (which I think we would be) can have ten seats free. Of course, the costs get normally hefty when you want more seats than that.
hazy ridge
@unreal drum interesting response from Twenty.
Can copy here if reading cross servers is annoying, but will try:
Conversation: #1130383048173682821 message
scarlet tiger
<@211238287522791425> interesting response from Twenty.
Can copy here if readi...
Can you copy here plz if possible.
Also, Salesforce apparently now has AI inbuilt and can automate outreach to an extent?🤔
hazy ridge
Can you copy here plz if possible.
Also, Salesforce apparently now has AI inbuil...
My Twenty thread:
anthony bailey.net
""""
Hello!
TLDR: I'm after success stories with non-tech users.
I'm a crusty old developer who just joined a volunteer not-for-profit which does a lot of outreach and knows it needs a real CRM (rather than our current handcrafted Discord bot / database patchwork)
The org founder is a nerd too, so though we are both "woah, Twenty looks dreamy" I would love to hear about experiences from the real world: anyone have many seats filled by normal corporate folk who happily agree this is a good CRM?
"""
charles:
"""
Twenty is still missing many features compared to other existing CRMs (building a CRM takes ages because the surface is so wide!) but I'm 100% it's better than Discord bot, spreadsheet or a Trello board. It scales quite well with the amount of data at the moment.
What you won't have at the moment and might be an issue for your use case:
So if you are OK with all your users having an admin access on the CRM (or you are OK developing the restriction on your end) + not having automation (but you can develop your own on the side, we have a quite good API and an OK webhook system), it should be a good fit
"""
The conversation continued and Joep is also involved, but copying individual messages is a pain. If interested, perhaps join their Discord?
unreal drum
@thin gust
unreal drum
We have a hubspot instance that I know me, Chris, Diego, William baird have used / are using . But the whole CRM chapter needs work.
Some problems: