Is your nonprofit organisation following a strategic and proactive approach to engaging members while keeping track of donors? If not, it’s time you do! This is simply because a smooth and steady flow of well-targeted outreach to members via a series of channels is an excellent method to attract new donors and nurture existing relationships.
According to Charities Aid Foundation America (CAF America), all charities have seen a reduction in donations during COVID-19. It was also disclosed that as much as 76 percent of nonprofit organisations are looking for advice or support on finding new ways to fundraise through digital technology.
Benefits Of Digital Maturity For Nonprofits
Higher engagement among volunteers and donors
Increased donor retention rates
Increased efficiency in goal achievements
Enhanced communication with donors
Better decision-making supported by facts and not just intuition
Thankfully, Digital Maturity may be the solution your nonprofit organisation is looking for.
What is digital maturity?
Digital maturity refers to the ability of an organisation to create and maintain value through technology. However, it's important to remember that digital maturity is not something you achieved one day and then move on from. It is an ongoing commitment as technology is constantly evolving.
For charities and nonprofits, digital maturity can be thought of as leveraging software to streamline a range of processes, including but not limited to communicating with donors, forecasting fundraising income, reaching out to new audiences, and scheduling volunteers.
How to strive for digital maturity?
Ideally, undergoing a digital transformation for a nonprofit would be as simple and quick as installing new software. However, it is actually much more evolutionary and comprehensive in nature.
Audit your current processes: Unless you have a clear understanding of how things currently work at your nonprofit, you will find it difficult to envision a fully transformed future. To get started, you first need to detail the technologies your nonprofit is using and how it assist (or hinder) things. For this, you will need to bring in program directors and campaign managers to ascertain what tools the teams are using, how they’re connected to other software or departments within the organisation, and the process employees follow while using tools.
Here are some quick questions to get started:
What are the challenges your teams face with the existing tools?
Are there any offline processes that you need to digitise?
What features would your nonprofit consider as nice-to-haves and must-haves in new tools?
Do you feel making software changes could enhance your organisation's operational efficiency?
Determine what data you need to track: The old adage "Knowlege is power" still holds true and rightly so. Collecting more and better data and leveraging it to make more informed decisions is one of the biggest benefits of digitisation. For instance, a nonprofit organisation can leverage data to prioritise the most meaningful tasks, stay on track towards goals, pinpoint future opportunities, and quantify the impact of your work.
Data collection, reporting, and analytics should be your top priorities when planning your future software ecosystem. For this, you'll need to first identify the most profitable data to track and then make that data easily available to anyone in your organisation.
Get started on your journey by finding answers to the following questions:
Which metrics would be beneficial to forecast fundraising income?
How you can leverage data to better track your progress and budget towards funding goals?
What information can be included in grant applications to help your nonprofit secure funding?
Which forms of data visualisations can help your nonprofit solicit more donations from donors?
Find the right tools: Choose a trusted CRM software like Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM to track your relationships with donors and other constituents. It can also help you create better outreach strategies ad record basic donor data as well as past interactions. CRM can also be leveraged to improve donor retention, nurture in-person or online fundraising, and establish omnichannel communication. Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM can also help you set timelines, track budgets, plan projects, and manage resources while leveraging collaboration and reporting features as well.
Discover how Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM can help your nonprofit organisation achieve and maintain digital maturity. Call or email us now.