Contact management software, but not overbuilt

September 2, 2020 4:54 PM

Looking for a simple contact manager that has fewer bells and whistles than CRM software.

My workplace (small non-profit) uses a terrible, messy, enormous Excel spreadsheet to manage about 8,000 contacts. We really need to migrate to something better. But I don't think we need CRM software - it seems way overbuilt. We just want to keep a nice neat list of contacts with plenty of tags we can create ourselves, and the ability to sort by those tags or other parameters (like city). I don't need to create pipelines or produce charts, or create a workflow. I am concerned about ensuring that whatever we do use doesn't retain or sell the contact information we store. What do you recommend? MANY thanks!

posted by sonofsnark to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Have you taken a look at Airtable? It's a cloud-based spreadsheet tool that adds a lot of powerful usability features like tags that make it a really, really good middle ground between a "classic" spreadsheet and a database for many purposes.
posted by Tomorrowful at 5:24 PM on September 2, 2020

Not sure Airtable would answer the mail here, since it's fundamentally just an online spreadsheet.

A CRM should probably be using some sort of real-er CRM solution for this, because that opens the door to things like contact tracking, etc. There are lighter-weight CRM tools that are specifically geared towards nonprofits. I've been out of that world for a long time but it'd be worth pursuing a web search in those terms.
posted by uberchet at 7:21 AM on September 3, 2020