Dedicated to making the world a better place, non-profits come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Each charitable organisation has its own distinct goals, and various processes and workflows to help teams reach their lofty targets. However, while many the non-profits worldwide may be different in many ways, they also share some consistent similarities: the need for solid communication.
Whether providing fresh water to the masses or saving animals, non-profits need to ensure their team members are constantly aligned and informed, often in various environments. This means accessing a flexible communication system offering security, agility, and innovation.
Unified Communications could be one of the most potent tools for non-profits looking to connect with their sponsors, align their teams, and accomplish incredible things. However, with such a limited budget, it can be difficult to justify the introduction of a new technology stack.
Here’s how you can build the business case for your transformation in the non-profit sector.
Step 1: Focus on Empowering Your Team
While internal employees and team members are crucial for any organization, they’re essential for a non-profit. Your people, often distributed across various environments, are responsible for planning events, connecting with sponsors, and ultimately keeping your charitable company’s head above water.
For years, non-profit institutions have often struggled to keep the flow of information running smoothly between all staff members, as several employees in these environments often spend much time in the field. Unified Communications can help to re-align your team members, whether in the office, working remotely, or travelling to events.
A UC environment in the cloud provides end-to-end connections to the same flow of information, ideas, and inspiration required to keep a non-profit operating in even the most trying times. Your teams can use video meetings to connect on a human level with people providing donations and chat with their colleagues over instant messenger.
A more aligned workforce often means better creativity and opportunities within an evolving non-profit organisation.
Step 2: Look at the Potential Cost Savings
Cost savings are possibly one of the biggest concerns a non-profit needs to consider regularly. Charitable companies have limited budgets to work with regularly, as most of the money they receive from sponsors is dedicated to achieving specific world-changing goals.
With this in mind, every investment made in the organisation should be made with a focus on long-term ROI and potential financial savings. Switching to a UC ecosystem can significantly reduce the amount of money a non-profit needs to spend in various ways.
Aligning a range of communication tools into a single environment means dealing with fewer bills from fewer providers and also improves your chances of accessing specialist deals. At the same time, with cloud-based UC solutions, you can reduce the costs involved with investing in initial hardware and maintaining that hardware over time.
Cloud-based solutions can even reduce overhead spending on real estate and physical offices to bring your teams together, as staff can work just as effectively from anywhere. Although the initial switch to UC might seem expensive, the long-term savings are well worth the original expense.
Step 3: Prioritise Supporter Experience
The right UC solution doesn’t just make life easier for your staff members and align your team on a deeper level; it can also ensure you’re capable of delivering more meaningful experiences to your supporters and donors. Specific UC environments will allow you to reach out to your supporters through various channels, from SMS to email, to rally recruitment and generate engagement.
Your tools can allow you to build virtual fundraising events for your supporters and ensure they can keep up-to-date with what’s happening in your organisation. When it’s not always possible for donors to travel to a specific location to hear about what their money is doing to make the world a better place, UC can help you keep your people informed.
A shared environment for crucial connections with donors and supporters can also improve your chances of gathering helpful information about your audience. The data you collect about your donor’s journey and what they need to encourage regular investments can help to guide decisions about future fundraising events and opportunities.
Step 4: Introduce Opportunities for Innovation
Just because non-profits don’t have much money to invest in innovative new experiences and tools doesn’t mean they don’t need to be pioneering. More often than not, non-profits need to be more agile and intuitive than most, finding new and improved ways to align their teams and connect with their sponsors. After all, if these groups don’t stay ahead of the curve, they could lose the crucial funding they need to keep progressing towards their goals.
With support from a UC vendor offering flexible new UCaaS and collaboration tools, businesses in the charitable world can access a host of new innovative features at the touch of a button. Teams can implement chatbots to keep their sponsors up-to-date about how their money is being used or answer important questions for people thinking of donating.
It could even be possible to save money, reduce environmental footprint, and improve the customer experience simultaneously with the use of virtual and immersive online events for sponsors. With many UC vendors offering special deals for non-profit institutions, it’s much easier to focus on building a modern, forward-thinking company for the new age of digital interaction.
Step 5: Remember Security and Compliance
Finally, it’s worth remembering that non-profits also have strict rules and regulations for keeping donation data secure. Managing conversations between team members and clients across various environments can lead to more security issues than most brands would want to deal with.
Alternatively, moving into a UC environment makes it possible to align all data and discussions in one place, making tracking easier for compliance purposes. UC solutions can allow team leaders to protect better the information they collect about their audience, leveraging this information without risking their reputation or safety.
A UC environment doesn’t just make your non-profit more productive and innovative, it can also help you to tap into the future while providing you with the right level of security too.
