Monday.com

CRM (customer relationship management), including contacts, organizations, emails (including bulk email ability and collecting emails sent to a client). Ideally all our external communication would go through Monday.com, so that we can preserve the communications visible to our whole team.
program/project management including task management
conferences management

Our License

We have a nonprofit license (10 free users).

Here is what we have:

Unlimited boards
Up to 25,000 automation and integration actions
Sharable forms
Private boards and docs
Unlimited guest access
Combine up to 10 boards
10 Free users
Bulk emailing

Managing our Team

https://navigationgames-company.monday.com/admin/my-team/my-team

The above link is for managing users. We have 10 total.

Contact Management

Wix is valuable for collecting addresses from multiple routes (events, contact-us, newsletter signup), tracking when people unsubscribe (super important!), and automatic notification of blog posts. We send announcements and newsletters from Wix. Marketing communications are through Wix.

Monday.com is valuable for integration with gmail, contacting leads, and communicating with our clients/volunteers/collaborators. Program communications are through Monday.com. Monday.com can track emails sent to a person, and also makes it easy to send bulk emails.

We record donations in Donorbox.com, which can track donations over years and send out acknowledgement emails that are important for donors' tax filings.

The Contacts Board in Monday.com

We keep track of contacts in the Contacts board.

Several automations are set up to run from Contacts:

When an activity/email is created in Emails & Activities, set Last Contact to today.
When incoming email received from Email, set Last Contact to today
When new email is sent to this Email, set Last Contact to today
When an item is created in this board, connect (Accounts column) the item where Account Name (column in this board) matches Name (column) in Accounts (board) by overwriting new matched item (i.e., Accounts).
When Any is created in Emails & Activities in current board, create an item in Activities and connect boards with column. This creates an item in the Activities board that points back to this item.

Creating a New Contact

If they are with an organization, create the organization first in Accounts.
Fill in the fields, taking note of whether it is free-form text, or a choice. Do try to fill in the following fields, in addition to the obvious ones:
1. NG Relationship - can have multiple answers here; eg "Conference Attendee" or "Conference Speaker"
2. Source: how we first learned of this person. If at a conference, put the name and year of the conference.
3. Email, phone, state
4. Type
Do not put anything for "Account Name" (that triggers matching to an Account of the same name and you'll do that manually with Accounts.

Importing Conference Attendees using a Spreadsheet

With our new online form for conference attendees, you should be able to obtain the spreadsheet from the google form results; you may need to copy it into a new spreadsheet and make edits as well as adding the people who filled out the paper version of the waiver and sign-in form.

Fill out a spreadsheet with columns Name, Type, Staff Details, Role, Title (free form), Phone, Email, Comments, Source, State and Country. You can start from this spreadsheet.
Export it as csv. (Ideally you avoid commas in the entries in the spreadsheet, to avoid confusion)
In Monday.com go to the Contacts board, then import (go to the ... three dots in the top right; choose More Actions > import to Contacts). Upload the csv file that you exported. Check that the columns are correctly matched.
After it uploads, it creates a separate group in the Contacts board. This is convenient, as you can fix some things, often by selecting all the items and then making a change for one will change it for all selected.
1. Type will be "Client or Partner"
2. NG Relationship will be "Conference Attendee"
3. The Account is determined automatically from the domain in the email address. You'll need to edit the Account so that it is correct.
Use Monday.com's bulk email capability to send the follow-up email to attendees.
Once you're done, you can merge the contacts into the main group of contacts by selecting every contact in the group (with one click at the top) and then choosing to Move to a different group.

Importing from Wix, Donorbox.com and elsewhere

The Contacts table in Monday.com is the best place for us to keep our full list of contacts, along with information about how they have interacted with Navigation Games. Therefore, we need to import contacts from elsewhere into Monday.com

People who sign up for our newsletters or events on our Wix website are stored in Wix; they are sent emails when we post a blog post. We do not currently automatically connect them into Monday.com. We can export and pull into Monday.com.
12/28/24: importing from Donorbox: some are already in Monday.com and some are not.
- Identifying those already in Monday.com: Identify these outside of Monday.com (by exporting and doing vlookup, and you can even filter by those who are not already identified as donors). Then import only the ones already in Monday.com into a new board, and do our hacky vlookup (see below) to eventually annotate them as donors. If there are few, you can just do it manually.
- Those that are new to Monday.com: Identify these outside of Monday.com, and then import them. Generally, they will be "Community" type and have "Donor" as NG relationship.

Example use cases for Monday.com contacts

Send bulk email to all active volunteers about upcoming volunteering opportunities
Get a list of all donors.

Volunteer and paid staff tracking

All staff (paid or volunteer) should be items in the Contacts board with Type "Staff" and the relevant "Staff Details".

Use the Staff view in the Contacts board to see our staff.

Currently we are keeping track of our staff certifications and so on elsewhere, but a future project could move onboarding information into a new board or boards linked to contacts, with automations to warn when certifications are out of date for current staff.

Contacts Clean-up 1/20/25

In settings for Site Members, I changed to "Only people I manuall approve" and asked everyone to confirm their email. We aren't really using Site Members right now anyway.
In Site Members, we have 160. I am removing folks who have weird names and email addresses, including sivegi1107@wireps.com, discdeflimpsitviepil@yahoo.co.jp, jahyxas at mailinator.com. Removing barrahrozmunday (email bounced).

Conference Management in Monday.com

We are tracking conferences in the Conferences board, and speakers in the Speakers board.

The Speakers board is a list of people, and arguably that info could have been included right in Contacts, but it would have been unwieldy. Instead, we link the Speakers and Contacts boards through shared columns.

To add a new speaker:

Check whether they are already in Contacts board; if not, add them.
Add "Conference Speaker" to the NG Relationship column choices.
Add them in the Speakers board.

Lead tracking

Under construction

Goals

Add a new person or organization that we have reached out to or contacted.
Keep track of our interaction with them, and have a process where we follow up as needed.
Active leads should be contacted every couple of weeks; when they go cold, we can archive them.
Statuses could include: Ready for Outreach, Contacted (Waiting to Hear Back), Responded (Need to Reply), Conversation Scheduled, Negotiating Contract, Won, Lost, Abandoned.
Another label could have priority and another could have type.

Last Activity Date

The last activity date can be updated manually, but also responds to email activity. However, the automations do not seem to work for email sent outside of Monday.com (from gmail app for instance).

I added automations to Contacts:

I went to Automation center > Templates > Emails & Activities
Then I made these 3 automations:
- When new email is sent to {email column} set Last Contact to today
- When incoming email received from Email set Last Contact to today
- When an activity/email is created in Emails & Activities, set Last Contact to today
- When

This contact date will be useful in deciding whether to contact someone again, or abandon a lead.

How to use Monday.com for CRM / Outreach

Leads are people at an organization that we could work with. Note that leads are not organizations - they are people!

Contacts are people who we've made contact with, or who are otherwise high priority. Not all Leads are Contacts, but we can convert Leads to Contacts. Not all Contacts are/were Leads.

Accounts are organizations. The primary grouping is by (1) Active contacts vs Leads vs Archive, and (2) within Leads, organizing by Tier according to type of organization and how close they are to us. We want to focus currently on outreach to schools, so we are organized that way fo rnow.

Email integration

Setting up email integration

In Contacts, click on Integrations and add gmail integration.
In Monday.com settings,
1. Allow everyone to view emails. For more on privacy and visibility, see this article.
2. Choose to log only the emails you send from your gmail inbox that are bcc'd to navigationgames-company@crm.monday.com
View emails related to a contact by clicking on the contact item and looking at the "Emails & Activities" section of the pop-up.
Generally, if you send emails from within Monday.com, it is definitely logged. If you send emails from your connected gmail account, it only logs emails if you set it up to do so.

How to add the gmail integration

Go to the board you want to create an Integration on (Contacts); click on Integrate button in upper right. Then you will see template automations. I don't think you need to select any of these to log email traffic.

One person, multiple email accounts

Each of us uses multiple Navigation Games email accounts and groups. For example, programs@navigationgames.org is a group email address, and outreach@navigationgames.org is a single-user email address that forwards to admin@navigationgames.org (a group email address).

Sharing access to linked email accounts

In Monday.com, I went to my picture (top right) and clicked on "email settings". Then under My accounts, for outreach@navigationgames.org, I shared access by adding Maija, Mikayla and Jackson, and giving them Read & write access. Then I went to "Everyone else on Navigationgames", and they can all view and write email activities.

To do: When Jackson logs in, can he send mass email from outreach@navigationgames.org?

What emails get logged?

Outgoing emails can be logged; you have a choice of automatically logging all outgoing emails or only those that are BCCed to navigationgames-company@crm.monday.com. You don't necessarily want all your emails logged, so it may make sense to use the BCC solution.

Logging emails related to an item: This depends on how the emails are sent, and use the Email column(s) of the item for matching.

Created in an item's Emails & Activities composer: this will be logged in the item, even if the contact isn't included in the item's email column.
Sent/received from the item's contact: this will be logged only if it includes both (1) the Email column address, and (2) the email address that you connected to Emails & Activities (you can have more than one). These email addresses can be sender, recipient or CC/BCC. Important exceptions: emails from an item's email address that is used as an active email connection in Emails & Activities will NOT be logged. (You log those in a different way.)
Sent to/from the contact on a connected item: outgoing and incoming emails are logged.
Part of an ongoing thread: logged.

Allowing other team members to see your emails

We won't be able to see the emails that have been logged by someone else unless they change their settings so that any team member can view the emails. To do that: from home page, go to Settings (upper right), then "Account setup & privacy" under Emails and Activities. Under "My accounts", use the three dots to the right of each account to select View only.

Remaining questions

What if more than one person adds the gmail integration? Do emails get double logged, or is it smart?

Useful Videos

Create contacts automatically

You have this option: Barb has set up her president@navigationgames.org account in Monday.com settings to create contacts automatically when she sends an email to someone new. It is created in the Contacts board, and uses the Email column.

Project and program management

Use the Projects board to track projects and programs.

To add a task related to a program or task, fill in the "Task Name", "Task Owner", "Task Due" fields, and then click "Add Task". This runs an automation to add the task to the Task board and link it back to the right Project.

View your tasks in the Task board.

Go to the CRM workspace. (This is used for both outreach and project management.)

Once we have a deal to work with a client, or have a "deal" with ourselves to do a self-funded project, an item is created in the "Projects" board.

Tasks are connected to projects, and can be created in the Projects board by filling in 3 columns (Task Name, Task Owner, Task Due) and then clicking the "Add Task" button. This will create a new Task in the Tasks board and fill it in with the information you have provided, and connect it to the project.

In our project team meetings,

IT question: can we more directly connect the new task to the project? currently have to do this via the project name, which could change.

Information about Monday.com

Notes from when we first started.

Purpose: reduce time spent manually updating spreadsheets; see communications in one place; collect contacts
- Videos: Intro to CRM (14:44); Overview (4:37)
- Process
  - Leads -> Deals -> Programs. Capture contacts along the way
- Communication
  - All client communication could happen / be tracked via Monday.com, so that the team can see the history easily
  - Activity e.g. phone call, set up a meeting - assign person / deadline
  - Bulk email is super easy to send
- Automation - e.g.
  - Set up a program as soon as a deal is closed
  - With additional tools & cost
    - When you make a new program, automatically create a google drive folder and planning document from template
    - When you engage a potential customer on a deal, create a contract from a template
    - Connect to Wix
- Fields - general
  - Timeline; status (& any other dropdown); connect to other tables; owner (& other user)
- Stages
  - Leads: New, Qualified (meet all the criteria), Unqualified (don’t meet our criteria), Attempted to contact, Contacted
  - Deals: New, Discovery, Proposal, Negotiation, Won, Lost
  - Programs: Design, Design Review, Prep, Delivery, Follow-up, Done
- License
  - Have non-profit license - includes 10 free user licenses, 25,000 automations. If > 10 users, could use generic emails (e.g. Prog worker #1 or for stages).
- Next steps
  - Barb / Jackson - Populate Monday
    - Active prospects (=deals)
    - Current programs (=programs)
    - On hold: Organizations / contacts, MSYEP research project contacts
  - Team - Watch videos
- Things to think about
  - Naming conventions — eg program numbers. Eg cambridge camping - did a program in April and then again in July. Estabrook separate as well. Need to think about client name - is there a separate name?
  - Can you have parent account for an account

Monday.com "How To"

Views

You can have different views for the main table. To hide a column from the view, Go to the three dots up near the top of the table, just under the tab names. Click on Hide, then make the adjustments you want.

Copy and Paste Column

Yeah, this isn't easy. Man, Monday.com is not enjoyable right now.

VLookup

Unfortunately, there is no native solution, I think, to linking boards based on two matched columns. There are third-party solutions, some of which have a price. It might be possible to export a board, make the changes externally, then import - but that would break existing connections.

Here is how I do it - using as an example doing a VLookup into a new (temporary) imported board of contacts ("VLOOKUP CONTACTS") into Contacts board

Create Temp column (empty, type Text) in Contacts
Create a column in Contacts of type Connect, and connect to VLOOKUP CONTACTS board (the new temp one)
Use automation "When Temp changes, connect the item where Email matches Email in <other board> by adding new matched item". Then can sort by mirror column and do what you want with the matches - you can also have a mirror column to bring in information from the other board.

Create "Item Card" view of each item in a board

Click on "Open Item"
Top right: Click on "..." then "Edit layout & content"
A "+" appears on the top left, to the right of "More". Click on it.
Choose Item Card
On the "Item Card" tab, on the right click the three dots (hover to see them) then "Set as board default" to make it what you see for every item.

Connect to Email and Slack

Slack workspace is navigationgamesgroup.slack.com

Notifications

To change, click the bell icon then "..." top right, then "change notification settings".
Slack notifications are only available on some items, such as Mentions and Assignments.
For email, I recommend limiting notifications. I'm only seeing emails for invitations, requests for access, and team member sign-ups.
I get notifications for most things in Monday.com itself.

Link a board and add a mirror column

Create a button that makes a new item in a different board

Build a form for items in a board

In
Note that to add some questions such as Person, you need to restrict the form to those who are in the organization (look for the "Restrict" button when you are editing the form)

Add a new item in a different board with values pre-filled from the first board

I did not find a way to make a form pop up with pre-filled values, without going to a (probably paid) 3rd party tool.

I also did not find a way to copy a Person field as the initial value for another field.

Instead, I have columns in the first board (such as Projects) that can be filled out and then there is a button form that takes those values in creating an item in a second board (such as Tasks). To link the two boards, I use the Project name from the first board in a text field in the new Task item, and then have an automation that sets the linked column. Finally, there is an automation to clear the task name. I left the task owner uncleared because it might be the same task owner.

Automations:

On Projects board: "When Add Task (button) clicked create an item in Tasks and clear Task Name". Click on the item in the automation builder to pre-fill values from the Projects board, including from the columns that are for the new task. Click on "Create automation" or "Update automation" to save any changes.
On Tasks board: "When an item is created in this board, connect the item where Client Project Name matches Name in Client Projects by overwriting new matched item." Click on "Create automation" or "Update automation" to save any changes.

Example Automation

Click on "Automate/3" (or whatever number) top right.

Click on "+ Add automation"

Click on "When this happens."

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