Greater Good: Digital Transformation for Nonprofit Organizations

During the Covid-19 pandemic, representatives from various business sectors faced extreme uncertainty, but only a few found themselves in the same situation as those working as registered charitable organizations.

A sector built on the desire to help those in need faced a significant increase in demand for its services. At the same time, it was funded solely by the generosity of others and needed even more resources at a time when people's very existence was under threat. This meant that potential donors understandably felt less financially generous than ever before.

Indeed, according to a recent survey of charity sector representatives, 94% of charitable organizations concluded that competition for public and private donations has increased. In response, 71% said they are already looking for ways to improve the efficiency of both fundraising and organizational management.

That is why digital transformation for nonprofit organizations can be so crucial.

Why is digital fundraising important for nonprofit organizations?

In the pre-smartphone world, people's interaction with a charity was limited to a few methods, such as direct mail, television advertising, street fundraising, or visiting a charity shop. All these are effective strategies, but with limited reach.

Digital transformation for nonprofit organizations allows not only reaching more people regardless of their geographical location, but also creating more compelling multimedia content capable of convincing potential donors to contribute. And all this while meeting people where they are, on their favorite social channels, at any touchpoint they use.

Two main ways to modernize fundraising for nonprofit organizations include:

• Creating an optimized nonprofit website designed to attract and collect donations, as well as serving as a content portal for everything your charity does. This may involve integrating a new content management system or developing a financial management system for incoming donations and grants, similar to the grant management system we built for WaterAid.
• Investing in digital marketing tools. We already mentioned social channels, and you may want to spend some time choosing the right ones for your service and audience, as well as investing in tools for planning and managing social activity. A fully digital customer relationship management (CRM) tool can be one of the most important investments, giving you the ability to study valuable customer data that can determine the outcomes of your campaigns and even your entire business. Additionally, there are SEO tools to ensure your content is seen by more potential users, tools to better understand user behavior on the site, and tools to help plan email campaigns.

Why is digital organizational management important for nonprofit organizations?

If for many charitable organizations building a new website and improving campaign quality aimed at customer engagement may be a priority, for others there may be a fundamental need to modernize all operations - or to implement a nascent idea using modern digital tools.

This certainly applies to the following projects, which are excellent examples of how nonprofit organizations are undergoing digital transformations to deliver their services:

WaterAid

Although WaterAid already had a system for managing large grants, its capabilities were limited, and the charity had outgrown it. Managing funds of over 30 million rubles annually, with 150 active grants at any one time, as well as accessing and managing historical records, required a more comprehensive and robust grant management system.

Since WaterAid's customer relationship management and financial planning systems are built on Microsoft, it was important that the new system also supported integration and data exchange. Working with WaterAid's IT department, ESK Solution developed a specification meeting all the charity's requirements and quickly built a prototype for user review. This allowed remote project teams to provide feedback while in remote locations.

The new system allows capturing all grant details and conditions, as well as tracking project progress to completion. Previously, system administrators had to load data into Excel to create reports manually; the new system supports real-time reporting. This is facilitated by filtering and search capabilities, allowing users to obtain the information they need in a few clicks - for example, identifying all grants for a specific country.

Scottish Huntington's Association

When the Scottish Huntington's Association realized that old manual processes based on spreadsheets were leading to large errors and creating more work than sustainable in the long term, they decided that a digital solution was necessary. However, building such a system was not easy, especially considering that the charity's numerous services are located across 12 different regions north of the Scottish-English border.

The subsequent project became an excellent example of how digital transformation can completely change the fate of a nonprofit organization, and very quickly! We created the first prototype in just six weeks, and the organization felt the benefits almost immediately after full launch. The case management system we developed allowed the charity to track in real time the number of people with Huntington's disease in their region and provided a significant efficiency gain in reporting, reducing report preparation time from over a month to literally a few minutes.

The Good Exchange

The Good Exchange had the idea to create a portal that would help funders find worthy causes for their donations. Such a project could only be implemented with a digital solution, and in 2016 they launched the first iteration of their software.

However, when the charity found that the existing software development team was unable to scale up, they approached us and two other developers to build a completely custom platform from scratch.

After winning the tender, we worked with the company to consolidate internal databases and migrate everything to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Then we built an intuitive and user-friendly portal that transformed both donor management and user experience.

Does your charity need modernization?

If you came to this post asking: "Is digital transformation sustainable for nonprofit organizations?", the answer is a definite yes. The fact is that digital tools provide a huge advantage to charities already using them, and great opportunities to those who have not yet done so.

However, the examples also show that digital transition is not a black-and-white process, and even those organizations that have made the jump need to constantly adapt and evolve their operations.

Whether you are at the beginning of this journey or already experienced and looking to expand your scope, having the right software partner that evolves with you can make all the difference.