Interview with Tami Andrew, manager of the Vegan Pledge Program
The story of how one non-profit has more time to focus on its mission by using Kommo CRM for community management
Background
Founded in 2010, Peace Advocacy Network (PAN) is a nonprofit organization that promotes a peaceful existence through veganism, social justice, and respect for the Earth’s inhabitants and resources. It also strives to eliminate violence in the lives of people and animals by eliminating oppression and inequality.
PAN’s largest and most successful program is known as the Vegan Pledge Program, a 30-day challenge to go vegan together and see that it’s not so hard but fun.
The challenge, which takes place throughout the year in various locations across the US, includes:
- Weekly meetings with cooking demonstrations.
- Speakers who address environmental, health and ethical topics.
- Personal mentoring and social events.
- Visiting restaurants and grocery shopping together.
? Peace Advocacy Network (PAN): promotes a peaceful existence through veganism, social justice, and respect for the Earth’s inhabitants and resources. Find out more about PAN >
Today, we spoke to Tami Andrew — PAN’s Vegan Pledge Program manager. She has been a devoted animal activist since going vegan many years ago. Tami says, “We’re really all about being peaceful and just helping people incorporate plants into their lives because we believe that it’s the best way to save the environment.”
“We’re really all about being peaceful and just helping people incorporate plants into their life because we believe that it’s the best way to save the environment.”
The challenge
Since PAN is based on bringing people together, Tami explains that getting a CRM for community management was extremely important: “We had been in the organization for 10 years, and we had no way to keep track of our community.”
“We had been in the organization for 10 years, and we had no way to keep track of our community.”
They were relying on spreadsheets and physical paper to manage members — a solution that made it difficult to understand if members had stuck with veganism or asked for volunteers.“So much of what we do is based on building the community,” explains Tami, “Helping people go vegan, and then telling them that they still have us and that they're now part of our community. How can we reach out to them without actually being able to keep track of them in any way? “For this reason, Tami asserts, “Our goal with a CRM for community management was to have a place where we could keep track of all our friends and supporters.”
“Our goal with a CRM for community management was to have a place where we could keep track of all our friends and supporters.”
Using Kommo for community management
🥒Feature favorite #1: Contacts Tami loves contacts for tracking community members and volunteers. “I use contacts the most,” she says, “Just searching and pulling from there. Keep them there. Oh, my God. It has saved my life.”
🥜Feature favorite #2: Merging duplicates When you’re juggling members, new sign-ups, and volunteers, your contact lists can get out of control fast. Tami says detecting and merging duplicates has been invaluable. She explains, “We were having just lists on top of lists that were getting complicated to keep track of people, things, and sign-ups. You know, everything was all over the place, and we found a lot of doubles. We would have lists where the same person was in the same place five times, and it would be impossible to tell. So detecting duplicates just sort of saved our lives.”
“We would have lists where the same person was in the same place five times, and it would be impossible to tell. So detecting duplicates just sort of saved our lives.”
🍅Feature favorite #3: Email integration Once all your contacts are organized in a single app, the next logical step is to get your communication plan all sorted out. That’s why Tami also highlights email integration as one of her top-used features.
She explains that she needs to utilize both phone and email in her work for different reasons: “We found that via the phone, people are scared to say no.
So, calls are better for donations.”But when it comes to keeping it real, email is the better place to get honest answers.
She says: “To find out whether they liked the program, or they want to get involved again, or what we can do to keep them following a vegan lifestyle.” We found that email has just been where people are willing to source their guts a little bit more,” she explains.
The result
Before they had a CRM for community management, Tami says it was almost impossible to tell how successful they were. With Kommo, they can now reach out to their previous participants, check in with them, and remind them that they still care.“We’re able to bring people back into the fold and build our community, which is what we were looking for the whole time,” Tami says.
“We’re able to bring people back into the fold and build our community, which is what we were looking for the whole time.”
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