Communications Technology: Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on building strong connections with affiliates, supporters, volunteers, and donors. Essentially—their stakeholders. Maintaining and growing these relationships is crucial to their success. Already, these groups are financially fragile, with a sole focus on helping those who are less fortunate or disadvantaged. Above all, these organizations doing good in their communities need all the help they can get. Can you imagine charities and nonprofits’ difficulties since the pandemic due to a lack of in-person fundraising events?
Just last week, Neil Darling, Founder, and CEO of RingLeader, Inc., had the opportunity to engage directly with nonprofit industry leaders in an event titled—The Communications Technology Roundtable. This candid discussion included a panel of nonprofit leaders representing viewpoints from organizations like Keep America Beautiful, Dancing Classrooms NYC, STOMP Out Bullying, ASAE, and many others. The focus of the discussion was how Covid-19 and other recent world events have impacted nonprofit fundraising, advocacy, outreach, and political action. And as a result of this impact, it’s essential to understand how technology is used to keep nonprofits connected to their audience, both internally and externally.
Like many businesses worldwide, nonprofit organizations have also had to pivot their strategies to stay afloat and connected, despite the distance. By using innovative communication technologies, they must find ways to stay connected to their audience, supporters, staff, and donors. In an open roundtable format, this engaging roundtable discussion allowed the panel of industry leaders to share how they navigate in a post-pandemic world. They shared their challenges, newfound opportunities, technology tools, and more. Here are a few of the talking points that were raised during the Communications Technology Roundtable:
Challenges Facing Charities and Nonprofits
Communications Technology for Nonprofit Organizations
Fundraising
Fundraising is a unique challenge due to the lessened amount of physical turn-out and in-person events. Getting the message out and resonating locally is difficult without in-person events. This is a critical component of getting donations. So, naturally, this has been a recent challenge. People who can connect with a charity or nonprofit can spread the voice or the message about the organization and how it does good in the community. The news reaches donors, and fundraising happens. However, getting the message out is critical; this has been difficult in recent years.
Getting the Message Out
The inner circle of a nonprofit is those folks who are the board members, family, friends, as well as volunteers, grassroots coordinators, and other supporters. The goal is to get them to interact positively with the charity or organization and tell others about it. So, keeping them connected and abreast of information and messaging is crucial. This organically helps get the message out to external people and the general public. And getting the message out broadens the ring of supporters and has never been so important.
Community Engagement—Internal and External
Keeping the brand and the message in the constituents’ minds has always been challenging. Still, now more than ever, nonprofits must pivot their marketing strategies. For example, nonprofit organizations began during 9/11/2001 to help those who lost loved ones during the attacks. These organizations are still around and going strong for over 20 years because of the need. The same goes for organizations that help Afghanistan refugees. The challenge is that donors tend to fund what’s happening in the news, like the war in Ukraine. Even though every crisis requires organizations to fundraise and provide assistance, long-standing organizations must keep communicating with their supporters.
Consider that each nonprofit has its internal ring of supporters who are its internal customers. This could include their board members, family, friends, volunteers, grassroots coordinators, and other supporters. Keeping this internal team connected is crucial to getting the brand messaging out to the masses. Overall, the roundtable discussion brought up the need to work cohesively and build solid messaging internally and externally about the nonprofit’s values.
How can Technology Communication Help Nonprofits Succeed?
Already with limited resources, nonprofits need to make intelligent choices with where they choose to spend their funds. Stretching their donor dollars is essential. RingLeader’s CrowdVoice focuses on centralizing an organization’s internal and external communication in a single platform.
RingLeader’s CrowdVoice App allows internal and external stakeholders to communicate more effectively on an organization’s behalf. It’s an innovative, low-cost way to mobilize communications. For example, when nonprofits have team members in many different locations, RingLeader’s CrowdVoice can provide secure voice, messaging, conferencing, and faxing in one place. Getting the message out quickly and simply has never been easier or secure.
CrowdVoice is scalable to meet the nonprofit’s demands as they occur. New phone numbers can be added on-the-fly. This is the beauty of cloud-based communications. Doing more business in the cloud means less hardware to invest in. This is especially great news for nonprofits and charity organizations because the hardware is costly and limited. A cost-effective, scalable solution can mean everything for their bottom line.
Download the CrowdVoice App today on GooglePlay or the App Store.
