Founded in 1998, Fractured Atlas is an arts service organization with the mission “to empower artists, arts organizations, and other cultural sector stakeholders by eliminating practical barriers to artistic expression, so as to foster a more agile and resilient cultural ecosystem.” Its CRM system, Artful.ly, is a clear extension of this goal. Characterized by a philosophy of “community driven development” Artful.ly is free to all users, with the exception of credit card fees and a ticket surcharge. It is also cloud hosted, quick to set up, and able to import data simply from existing Excel spreadsheets. Artful.ly provides a vehicle for arts organizations of all sizes to leverage the power of data-informed decision-making. We’ve covered this up and coming system twice in the past year, as part of our larger effort to assess the numerous CRM options available to arts organizations, and we are very excited to see how it has grown in that short timeframe.

This week, I spoke with Selena Juneau-Vogel, Artful.ly’s Program Director, who has been with the project almost since the beginning. Our wide-ranging conversation covered everything from past names of the project, such as ATHENA (don’t ask her what it stands for, nobody could remember), to the future of CRM, which Selena feels will involve “social CRM”—the integration of social media into patron records. Listen to the whole piece below to hear more about how:

· Artful.ly will soon be unveiling a ticket scanning app for phones. Organizations of any size will have access to scannable tickets simply by downloading an app.

· Memberships, a hotly anticipated feature, are nearly ready for primetime.

· Merchandise sales are a major new planned feature, allowing everything from concessions to t-shirt sales to be processed and tracked by the system.

What would your dream CRM feature? What else do you want to know about Fractured Atlas? Tell us in the comments below!