Non-Profit organisations face some of the toughest challenges of any venture when it comes to ensuring long-term growth and sustainability. With limited funding and restricted budgets, non-profit groups work hard to achieve ambitious goals. These are the entities responsible for protecting people and animals, defending the planet, and making the world a better place.
In a non-profit environment, success depends on the ability of people throughout the organisation to connect and communicate effectively. Members of the group need to be able to collaborate with other team members on unique ideas for fundraising and growth. At the same time, they also need to ensure they have a reliable way of reaching sponsors.
With Unified Communications solutions, Non-Profits could access more of the critical support they need to positively impact our planet. Here are just some of the use cases of UC non-profits can consider.
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Powering Digital Transformation
The world is becoming increasingly digitised, with more people online than ever before (4.95 billion as of January 2022). Unfortunately, many non-profits have struggled to keep up with the shift to the digital landscape simply due to a lack of funding and dedicated support.
Since the pandemic hit, and digital transformation has accelerated forward by a number of years, there’s no longer an option for non-profits to sit on the side lines of the digital revolution. Fortunately, Unified Communications could help. With a host of UC solutions available specifically for non-profits, groups can take advantage of special deals and solutions to help drive them into new channels.
Additionally, the unified nature of UC means non-profit ventures won’t need to dedicate as many personnel or as much time to managing different parts of the communication strategy.
Teams can have conversations with colleagues and track connections with sponsors and supporters in the same place. Your teams can create and host HD video meetings where they chat about ways to boost fundraising, and send SMS messages and email updates to sponsors in the same place.
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Ensuring Agility and Continuity
Like most companies, non-profit groups have become increasingly aware of how important it is to ensure business continuity in the last couple of years. When disaster strikes, an inability to continue connecting with sponsors and aligning teams could spell the end for a non-profit organisation.
With UC in the cloud (UCaaS), it’s possible for non-profits to ensure their team members can always stay active, regardless of where they are. At the same time, this flexible environment ensures team members anywhere in the organisation can stay on the same page. This is crucial in an environment where non-profits usually have teams distributed in the field, working from home, and in the office.
With a UCaaS strategy, many non-profits could even shift more of their strategy into the remote and cloud-based environment. Doing this helps to reduce the costs associated with running a traditional office or space, allowing teams to save crucial budget for other investments. All the while, shifting into the cloud does beneficial things for the environment, reducing the carbon footprint of teams who spend less time travelling.
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Improve supporter experience
With very little funding available from governments and other entities, non-profits are almost entirely reliant on the continued support of their sponsors to survive. As such, these groups need to ensure they’re providing their donors with the best possible experience.
With a UC strategy, non-profit groups can improve the supporter experience in a number of ways, starting by ensuring they can reach out to these crucial individuals on their preferred channel, from chat, to SMS, and email. Because conversations with donors and fundraising strategies are all monitored and shared in the same place, it’s also easier to track crucial information.
Collecting data over time allows non profit ventures to deliver a more personalised experience to their supporters. This could even include setting up an automated strategy for keeping sponsors up-to-date on how their investments are helping the cause.
What’s more, with all of your team members connected in one shared environment, you can ensure non-profit innovators can work more collaboratively together, coming up with better ideas on how to support, guide, and inspire your sponsors.
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Improved Team Performance
Productivity is something all non-profits can benefit from. The more empowered team members are to do their best work, the more likely it is they’ll come up with better ideas on how to help the organisation grow. UC solutions can have a powerful impact on productivity at multiple levels.
First, by providing an all-in-one environment for communication and collaboration, UC systems can streamline the day-to-day activities of non-profit groups, allowing them to spend more time on crucial work, and less time searching for information or moving between apps.
UC solutions can also make it easier for non-profit organisations to reach out to other people outside of the organisation and collect insights and feedback, without spending a fortune on travel.
With a shared environment for team knowledge and valuable documentation, it’s easier for staff to find the guidance they need in a UC system at speed. What’s more, some UC solutions even come with built-in virtual assistants and AI tools to make finding this information even easier. With custom integrations and APIs, users can even build their perfect communication environment from scratch.
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Stronger Privacy and Compliance
Non-profit organisations still need to convince their sponsors, and the people they work with, that their data is kept secure and protected at all times in today’s digital world. Fortunately, Unified Communications can help with this. The right UC tools will allow you to align more of your tools and conversations in the right place, so it’s easy to track incoming and outgoing data.
Non-profit organisations can set up stringent policies about how data should move throughout the business, and where that information should be stored. It’s even possible to set up automated backup and contingency strategies to ensure the organisation doesn’t come grinding to a halt following a cyber security attack.
UC solutions can allow team leaders more control over who should have access to what date in a non-profit environment, and how team members should be able to access crucial tools. There are even advanced solutions available like anti-fraud systems infused with AI, and multi-factor authentication.
With so many opportunities to innovate and transform while keeping costs low, there are plenty of reasons for non-profits to consider shifting into the UC landscape.
