Nonprofits Need To Go Digital
When it comes to technology, one sector still lags behind: nonprofits. While nearly three-quarters of nonprofits see digital transformation as essential, only 12% have truly embraced it. Elsewhere, organizations and people are embracing technology to streamline processes and save money. How can your nonprofit unlock the full benefits of going digital?
Let’s explore.
The Current State of Nonprofits and Technology
According to Computer Resources of America, many nonprofits still rely on outdated technology. This includes using local servers for shared drives, emails, and websites, manually documenting everything, and even transferring phone calls by hand to remote employees. The mentality behind the lag is a combination of being understaffed for change and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The truth, however, is that digital transformation is very much necessary for nonprofit success.
Emerging technologies achieve market share by prociding incremental or even 10x improvements to existing problems. That means that technologies with market share in nonprofit issues are often 10x improvements to the absence of using outdated or even no technology. This extends to areas such as cost inefficiencies, critical vulnerabilities to cyberattacks, and of course to scaling the reach and impact of how you serve your community.
Let’s take a look at donor relationship management as one example where digital transformation can help scale your work.
Donor Relationship Management
Donors have come to expect personalized communication and engagement that is hard to achieve at scale without digital solutions. Creating sequences on social media, experiences, and email is what keeps your core patrons thrilled to be a part of your mission while steadily moving admirers down the funnel into becoming supporters. Automating these sequences also does not eliminate the personal touch of donor outreach, quite the opposite. With the extra time your employees may now have on their hands, key patrons can be invited to events, receive more personalized attention, or receive more frequent impact updates.
Automating repetitive tasks such as the bulk of donor outreach may also reduce the employee burnout associated with these roles. Freeing up your team to focus away from such tasks not only saves their time, but it also allows them to achieve more impact, which keeps them engaged and fulfilled in the mission. Specifically, by having the core processes of communication simplified through technology, employees can focus on the strategic elements of how to keep donors happy, achieve the mission, and convert new patrons. This work is often seen as more fulfilling, and contributes less to burnout.
P.S. Technology may also allow you to engage with existing and potential donors in new ways. For example, with Usorum we host bottom-up brainstorms that engage communities deeply in strategic and policy questions for nonprofits. The result is increased membership and community support. Reach out to learn more.
Challenges and Hesitations
Of course, digital transformation is change, and change comes with challenges. To address employee discomfort with new tech, lack of know-how, or past failures, here are some of the best 3 tips we found from Forbes’s Nonprofit Council. These can help to ensure a smooth transition and create a tech-friendly workforce for your nonprofit.
Gain an Understanding of Organizational Needs: Identify the tech that meets your nonprofit's specific needs and incorporate only the technology that truly enhances your organization. You don’t need every gadget out there—just the right ones.
Provide Education and Training: Any employee unfamiliar or uncomfortable with technology will remain that way if not provided with the proper tools to learn. Whether it's through tutorials, training, or an open line for questions, it's crucial that your team has access to training that will make tools as simple as possible.
Highlight the Potential Impact: Even with all of the training in the world, your team might still be hesitant to try new technology if they do not understand why it is being implemented. Explain why the transformation is occurring and how it will make things better.
Case Study
TechSoup, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the digital divide for other nonprofits, faced many of the same challenges we’ve discussed: outdated technology, limited reach, and engagement struggles. By embracing a digital transformation with TAPP, they moved their operations to cloud-based platforms, automated routine tasks, revamped their online platform, and leveraged data analytics. These changes led to significant cost savings, improved engagement, and better scalability. As a result, TechSoup now supports more nonprofits worldwide with greater efficiency and higher satisfaction levels. Their journey highlights how embracing technology can allow for impactful improvements for nonprofits, just like yours can.
Conclusion
The journey towards digital transformation might seem daunting for many nonprofits, but the benefits far outweigh the challenges. From cost savings and increased efficiency, to improved engagement and higher satisfaction levels for both employees and patrons, embracing technology can scale the way that you serve your community. Our recommendation: every five years, take a quarter to research all the tech options out there and another quarter to implement the critical ones.
As always, thank you for your part in saving the world,
Usorum
We’re Usorum. We create peer-to-peer and bottom-up conversations for nonprofit communities. We do this by hosting 'brainstorms' for nonprofit organizations, where they can ask their community to engage digitally around a common topic. For those nonprofits who want to, the brainstorm can also serve as a fundraising and a volunteer recruitment tool. Our second offer is an ongoing digital forum for the communities serviced across nonprofits, with a culture of people directly supporting each other and providing their techniques on adversity into a shared lived experience library. If you believe in community engagement, check us out at Usorum.com
