Reality check: Can CiviCRM be implemented by a nondeveloper with limited time?
Good question.

In broad terms I'd agree with the answer from William, with some reservations. To answer your question: "Can CiviCRM be implemented by a nondeveloper with limited time?" I would say yes, and to do so will take some learning and a good deal of trial and error, so if time is limited, don't expect to be able to get up and running in a few hours.

I'd say that your skill set is really helpful, but you would need to plan to build on that.

You have a number of challenges there: not least getting the data you need out of your old system and into a new one. 

You current hosting with GoDaddy is unlikely to be friendly to CiviCRM, so you need to plan to move to a better specified hosting platform that will give you fewer (and ideally no) issues.

And of course you'll need to get CiviCRM suitably configured and customised to meet the specific needs of your organisation.

Realistically, unless you are willing and able to put in a good chunk of time above and beyond what you have available, to learn  how to do all this and then do it for real, you are not going to get a result.

Your board president needs to get real - a project like this in any context demands substantial dedicated time and resources, and it sounds from what you've written that they have not considered this.

My advice would be to get some expertise in to do the following tasks:


Assess whether CiviCRM is the right product given your organisation's needs.
Assuming that it is, to sort out suitable hosting and get Civi installed.
Work with you to configure and customise Civi so that it works for your organisation.
Ensure that you, and ideally at least one other person within the organisation, know how to use CiviCRM, so that you can cascade that learning to others.


These are one-off tasks that it makes sense to outsource unless you've got a pile of time on your hands (which you don't). If your organisation doesn't have the resources to fund this work, then it needs to find those resources, otherwise I would say you have a recipe for disaster.

Hope this helps.