---
title: Build What You Need. Learn What Comes Next.
description: Give Merit's Salesforce implementation treated go-live as the start, not the finish line. A lesson for any nonprofit CRM implementation.
image: https://ascendably.com/hubfs/Build%20What%20You%20Need%2c%20Go%20Live_square.png
---

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Blog post

# Build What You Need. Learn What Comes Next.

 Matt Henry • Oct 7, 2026, 3:29:59 AM

![](https://ascendably.com/hubfs/Build%20What%20You%20Need%2c%20Go%20Live_square.png)

```
Give Merit needed a CRM. The way Ascendably implemented it made the difference.
```

For most, "go-live" is supposed to be the finish line.

*For Give Merit, it was closer to the start.*

Ascendably led Give Merit's Salesforce implementation, but not in the traditional way, where the goal is to build everything an organization might ever need before anyone has logged in. The plan was to get Give Merit into the system first. Then keep improving it.

 

## Start with the minimum

The implementation ran from roughly January through June 2024.

Ascendably kept it as close to out-of-the-box as possible, on purpose. The work covered the essentials: mapping Give Merit's processes, showing where those processes fit inside the CRM, and moving its data over. A steady rhythm held it together, with strategic meetings once a month and project meetings every week.

The goal was a system Give Merit could work in. Not a finished one.

 

## What nobody knows before go-live

People can describe what they want from a CRM long before they have one. Needs, wants, a wish list.

But most of it is conceptual. They haven't seen their own data in the system or run their actual processes through it. They don't know yet what works and what doesn't, or which parts of the wish list they never needed.

Matt Henry, founder of Ascendably, is candid about it. Before people have spent time in a system, what they think they need is "all just guess work." They "don't have the information they need" to see it clearly.

*So Ascendably gave Give Merit that experience first.*

 

## After go-live

Once Give Merit went live, its staff could, in Matt's words, "see their data in their system and start using their process in their system."

*That changed the conversation.*

Requests now came from real use. Give Merit's team understood the CRM well enough to "be better thought partners" in deciding what it needed to do, and Ascendably was not building from assumptions but from what Give Merit had learned by using it.

What followed was continuous improvement instead of one large attempt to get everything right upfront.

 

## Where the project was supposed to end

Ascendably planned all along to move Give Merit into Managed Success once it went live, so the six months of implementation were never meant to do it all.

They were meant to get Give Merit moving.

And that kept the project focused. Instead of chasing requirements, *the team could concentrate on getting the foundation right and let Give Merit's experience decide what came next.*

 

## What the lesson isn't

The lesson for any nonprofit CRM implementation is not that organizations should build less because they need less. It is that they often learn what they need by using the system.

Give Merit needed a CRM. That much was clear from day one. What nobody could know yet was all the work that CRM would need to do.

*The implementation was not the finish line.*

It was the starting line.

 

---

### Where is your organization starting from?

Every nonprofit comes to a CRM with its own history and its own wish list. Give Merit's story shows that the list doesn't need to be complete before the work begins. It gets clearer once people are using the system.

Whether you're planning an implementation or living with one that tried to build everything at once, Matt would like to hear where you're starting from, talk through what you need now, and what you might learn next.

[Chat with Matt →](https://ascendably.com/contact?hsLang=en)

You don't need to know everything your CRM should do. That part comes later. Start with a conversation.

 

 

 **Related Reading** 

- [When Give Merit Stopped Buying Software and Started Buying Success](https://ascendably.com/blog/when-give-merit-stopped-buying-software-and-started-buying-success)
- [Something Felt Unaligned](https://ascendably.com/blog/something-felt-unaligned)
- [***The Give Merit Case Study***](https://ascendably.com/give-merit-case-study-managed-success-ascendably-the-human-stack)

 

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