The effective use of technology can help organisations in all sectors to enhance productivity, improve transparency, and deliver better results.
The nonprofit sector is no exception; technology allows nonprofits to work smarter by using their resources more efficiently, making more informed plans for the future, and expanding the reach of their products and/or services.
The Covid pandemic meant that many nonprofits faced the risk of losing their voluntary income or were forced to cut back their services and staff despite growing demand. It was therefore crucial to optimize and maximise donations through the use of innovative solutions.
Below are two examples of how nonprofits can use technology to their advantage by exploring new channels of outreach.
1. Boosting fundraising through new online solutions — Altruisto and 10Clouds
Altruisto is a community interest company (CIC) designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. When a client buys a product online from a store that is a partner of Altruisto, approximately 2-6% of its cost is automatically donated to charity. To date the platform is partnered with more than a thousand shops including eBay, booking.com, Microsoft, Aliexpress, Etsy, and Barnes & Noble.
10Clouds is a software house which works with clients across the world, bringing digital ideas to life. Their mission is to change the world through technology. They were set up for remote-first work even before the pandemic, which supported business continuity over the past 18 months and helped the company to grow by around 20%.
Altruisto wanted to improve their ecosystem of apps, products, and services to improve the user experience and drive donations. The company was concerned about the relatively low take-up rates of both its website plug-in and mobile app. It was apparent that the existing homepage wasn’t performing to its full potential when it came to both driving traffic and converting users into donors. The team turned to 10Clouds for support in finding a solution to these problems .
10Clouds conducted a discovery process to explore the most promising solutions for increasing the number of users. The goal was to determine Altruisto’s target audience, and to analyze their behaviours while shopping online. The analysis showed that the best solution would be the creation of a new landing page. This was designed and developed by the 10Clouds’ team over a period of 12 weeks in close cooperation with Altruisto’s internal representatives.
The project significantly increased the number of product users and boosted the overall conversion rate by 22%, as compared to the previous website (read full case study). The internal team was confident that it would lead to further expansion and product growth.
2. Improving outcomes through effective data management — Anima International and Stratoflow
Anima International (Otwarte Klatki), represented by Agnieszka Olczak, is a high-impact animal rights organisation fighting to better the future for animals. It is known for the wide-ranging effects of its work.
Stratoflow is a Salesforce consulting company, certified as a Salesforce partner. Their mission is to help organisations extend their Salesforce knowledge, tools, system platform, and to expand the complexity of their data management.
Agnieszka Olszak, Head of IT and Project Manager at Anima International (Otwarte Klatki), initially joined the organisation as a fundraiser a few years ago, when it was still at an early stage of development.
Over time, a charity which started with a few Excel spreadsheets has transformed into one of the most innovative in its sector. When the organisation reached a point where Excel was no longer sufficient, they contacted TTTR to find an alternative solution for data storage. Stratoflow provided an answer that turned out to be a perfect fit. Agnieszka spoke about the introduction of recurring payments and Blink transactions with great success during a webinar organized by Tech to the Rescue. She shared her experience from creating a basic spreadsheet to register income and outgoings, to developing the first crowdfunding campaigns, hiring a manager, and creating a WordPress website to scale-up their campaigns and make volunteer work more efficient.
If you are interested in learning more about digital solutions for nonprofit challenges, listen to the full webinar where you will find out:
- how to define your goals and set up an effective partnership with a technology company.
- why Excel might be useful for initial data storage but is not the best tool when you’re looking to scale.
- why it’s important to keep your data ‘clean.’
- how technology can help to rediscover your organisation’s potential.
As Tech to the Rescue we are a pro-bono organisation that matches tech companies and nonprofits to solve the world’s most pressing problems. By matching tech companies with nonprofits we facilitate knowledge sharing, co-creating solutions and projects.
