Doing less, better: why restraint is the most underrated CRM skill in hospices

CRM restraint is the discipline of choosing not to build everything your system makes possible. It's focusing effort on what genuinely strengthens your supporter relationships and long-term income, rather than activating every available feature.

For hospices, this means asking whether each automation, journey, or communication genuinely serves supporters and your strategic priorities, or whether it's just technically possible to build if you wanted to.

Why "we could do that" can be the wrong question

Your CRM sits closer to supporters than almost any other system in your hospice. It determines what they receive, when they hear from you, and whether your communications feel personal or automated.

When your CRM becomes overactive, supporters can notice. Messages blur together. Personalisation feels algorithmic. You contact them slightly too often about things that aren't quite relevant enough.

None of these things will necessarily trigger an immediate cancellation. But, together, they can change how the relationship feels. And feelings compound - especially in hospice fundraising, where supporters are emotionally invested due to deeply personal experiences with end-of-life care.

The challenge for CRM professionals is balancing what delivers results today with what protects trust tomorrow.

"Your fundraising database can be the greatest tool in your arsenal. But only if you know what you’re trying to achieve. You can capture huge amounts of data nowadays, but unless you know why you’re recording it, and what you want to use it for, then it’s just noise."

- Duncan Hook, Senior Customer Success Manager, Donorfy

1. Supporter attention (because trust is an income stream)

Strong hospice fundraising is built on people who open your emails because experience has taught them it'll be worth their time. Not because your subject line was clever, but because you've earned their attention over months and years.

Restraint means fewer, better communications that favour relevance over volume.

How do successful hospices protect supporter attention in their CRM?

Longfield Hospice provides a clear example. Rather than bombarding supporters with generic appeals, they focused their 2023 Summer Meadow Appeal on thoughtful segmentation and personalised messaging. Campaign ROI soared from 2.8 to 27 - almost 10 times more successful than previous years, funding over 1,000 hours of Hospice at Home care.

This wasn't achieved by sending more emails. It was achieved by sending the right ones to the right people - supported by their CRM being set up exactly how they needed it.

2. Staff sanity (because overbuilt systems can quietly burn people out)

CRMs that try to do everything can actually create operational chaos. Fields nobody trusts. Reports that need manual sense-checking. Automations only one person understands.

People adapt ... they keep parallel spreadsheets, store context in their heads, develop workarounds. But this adaptation has a real cost: cognitive load that's particularly taxing in hospices, where teams already work in emotionally demanding environments. The fragmentation of stored data, too.

A CRM needing constant mental translation isn't just inefficient - it's exhausting. When systems are understandable, data quality improves, reporting becomes trustworthy, and decision-making gets faster.

Sobell House Hospice experienced this firsthand after migrating to Donorfy. As Lindsey from their team explained:

"We love the product. It's much friendlier to use and it saves a lot of time processing gifts." 

The difference? A CRM designed around clarity, rather than complexity.

3. Strategic focus (because you can't optimise everything at once)

Most hospices have no shortage of income opportunities: individual giving, regular giving, in-memory, legacies, community fundraising, events, corporate, digital acquisition. All legitimate. All potentially valuable. But very few can meaningfully optimise all of them simultaneously.

Restraint is choosing which income streams matter most right now, and aligning CRM effort behind those priorities.

The wonderful Acorns Children's Hospice focused on two strategic priorities: smart segmentation for appeals and a robust regular giving journey. Their November newsletter brought in 109% more income than projected through tailored ask amounts based on giving history. For lapsed donors, they asked for 50% of past giving rather than generic amounts.

Do they have a lot of automation triggers? Absolutely, but each have a purpose and have built over time. The 49 email automation triggers running in Donorfy (including a warm welcome journey for regular givers), ensure new supporters feel valued from day one.

As CRM Manager Carisa Coley explains:

"Donorfy helps us what we do better. Our team is incredible at building strong, respectful relationships with the people who support us."

This way they use Donorfy is intentional - and connects to patterns in hospice income data: resilience correlates with strong individual giving, good retention, and healthy regular giving programmes.

None of these rely on novelty - they rely on consistency, clarity, and solid execution enabled by trusted data and clear systems.

Restraint shows up in small, disciplined decisions that prevent future mess. Before adding anything new to your CRM - a field, journey, segment, or automation - ask:

• Who does this help? (And "it would be nice to have" doesn't count.)
• What problem does it solve? (Be specific. "Better data" is not a problem.)
• Which priority income stream does it support? 
• What will we stop doing as a result? (If nothing, you're just adding weight.)

If those answers feel fuzzy, pause. That pause can prevent months of untangling later.

Hospices that grow sustainably build foundations first, get core reporting right, improve one journey at a time, then layer carefully.

Thames Hospice demonstrates this approach - their Sunflower Walk raised over £101,000 (300%+ higher than the previous year) through thoughtful CRM integration with Eventbrite and personalised supporter journeys, not complexity.

There's a persistent idea that mature CRMs are sophisticated CRMs. That if your system diagram doesn't look like the London Underground, you're doing it wrong.

Yet, the most effective uses of Donorfy our team supports are intentional - with clear data standards, simple structures, and automation tied to specific outcomes. They're not necessarily elaborate, but they're understandable.

What should hospices look for in a CRM that supports restraint?

Look for systems that make the fundamentals straightforward:

• Clear donor data structures that make sense from day one
• Out-of-the-box reporting that answers real questions
• Automation that's transparent and explainable
• Integrations that reduce manual work without adding complexity

The courage to push back on the wrong priorities

Short-term targets are loud. Long-term damage is often quiet.

You're under pressure to raise more, always. You might consider sending more emails, running one more campaign, adding another journey. The business case will focus on the upside: more touches, more opportunities, more data.

But always consider: does it potentially damage trust? Are there certain supporters you shouldn't include? and why? 

It's hard to come back from the moment a loyal supporter starts mentally filing your emails under "probably not important."

How do you push back on CRM requests that don't serve supporters?

Strong CRM managers know when to say "not yet," "not this way," or "let's fix what we have before adding something new." They recognise that being closest to the supporter experience means being responsible for protecting it.
It takes nerve, especially in organisations where being helpful is cultural. But defending the supporter experience isn't blocking progress—it's protecting the long-term sustainability of your income.

Hospice fundraising doesn't suffer from a lack of ideas. What's scarcer is clarity about which ideas actually matter for your organisation right now, given your context.

CRM restraint creates that clarity. It turns good intentions into sustainable practice and prevents your system becoming a graveyard of half-finished projects.

Ultimately, it protects what matters most: the relationship itself. Your supporters aren't data points. They're people who've trusted you during the most difficult moments of their lives. Restraint is how you honour that trust.

Doing less, better. On purpose.

We help teams build systems that are powerful enough to grow with you, whilst being simple enough that people actually want to use them. Explore for yourself with a completely free trial.