Most small non-profit organizations, which have fewer than 100 employees, face challenges in capacity development and achieving significant accomplishments due to resource shortages. These organizations have successfully overcome the obstacles they face every day, but not by hiring new employees or exerting extra effort; instead, they have leveraged technology to their advantage.

The use of technology in these emerging organizations can shift the scales; it revitalizes them and moves them from a state of instability to flexibility and smoothness. The organization's small size can turn from a barrier into an asset.

These eight tips can help non-profit organizations break traditional barriers by using technology to solve the problem of human resource shortages without resorting to increasing the number of employees.

  1. Building relationships with donors to manage their engagement:

Non-profit organizations can control how donors interact with them, their programs, and efforts through the donation record, focusing on how to use and direct the data recorded on it. The use of technology contributes to managing, categorizing, and nurturing the relationship between the organization and donors by resorting to task and communication automation.

  1. Making communication with donors personal:

Recent studies on millennials indicate that younger donors, volunteers, and followers prefer to receive special treatment different from the broad-based image-building approach that everyone else gets. This can apply to all age groups, so the organization should utilize the personal data it collects to make the emails sent to them more personal.

  1. Leveraging automation:

Employees in non-profit organizations may not have enough time to send these messages themselves. In this case, small non-profits can strengthen their relationships with those who help build their image by communicating with them continuously as soon as they take a specific action, without any additional work from the employees.

  1. Linking communication channels:

It is not enough for the organization to be present through various communication channels, such as its official website and social media; it must also connect them to establish a cohesive and unified communication strategy.

  1. Simplifying collaboration:

Why would an organization resort to using another tool or system to help employees collaborate when the same services they need are available in the means they use for fundraising and communication? Non-profit organizations can utilize integrated chat technology, project planning tools, and spreadsheets; this way, they will not have to remember passwords or learn how to work on a new platform.

  1. Empowering self-service:

Small teams need high efficiency, which is why volunteers or donors should have access to self-service tools, helping to save valuable time for other projects. These tools can be in the organization's online interface, along with various other applications that prompt a volunteer to take the next step and recruit their friends to assist in fundraising.

  1. Instant access to data:

Reports and information that appear with just one click will spare you the need to report to stakeholders, make program decisions, measure impact, and answer questions from the board that often arise about the upcoming meeting.

  1. Exploiting the features of the system you've created:

Once the organization has a multifunctional system, it can link its development, marketing, and fundraising data, and it can access data provided by programs that offer civil data to determine the potential to expand its plans, or reclassify followers based on their behaviors, or make use of artificial intelligence to find potential donors.

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Source: Top Nonprofit

Author: Jarrett O'Brien