Demystifying Automation: 3 Ways to Streamline Operations for Nonprofits

Do you have endless ideas about the things you can do to help people, or for easier access to healthcare services, or to improve indigenous peoples’ wellbeing? But you can only do so much, right?

If only you had an extra pair of hands or more funds, maybe you can do more. Well, there is this thing called automation. It can help you accomplish more, attract more donors, help more people, and even decrease costs.

What Your Non-profit Can Automate

Nonprofits don’t have to get left behind. Here are three effective ways (each broken down into several action points) you can use automation.

Raise More Funds Using Fundraising Automation

You can always do better with more resources. So, here’s what can you automate in the fundraising process:

• Make donating to a cause easy.
  • Utilise a donation tool where a donor has the option to give automatically on a regular basis, within a given period.
  • For one-time or non-regular contributions, use a platform where donor information can be saved. Later, when they want to give again, it can automatically fill in the form after their name is typed in.
  • Send automated thank-you notes to every donor, so you don’t miss anyone. This shows your appreciation and helps build relationships with them.
  • Update donors about the impact of their donations, where they were applied, and who were helped. This will motivate them to continue giving.
  • Make it easy to share your news and updates with a one-click share button on your web and social media content. This can increase awareness and inspire others to give as well.
• Attract more donors. How can you reach more prospects? How can you better promote your advocacy?
  • Use automation to segment your audience based on their interests, demographics, and other factors. This will enable you to send more relevant and personalised messages, raising your engagement and conversion rates.
  • Create an automated email marketing campaign to nurture leads, promote your advocacy, and keep your donors engaged. For example, send welcome emails to new donors, then succeeding emails to share more about your cause. You can also regularly email a newsletter to your supporters to update them about your programs and project outcomes.
  • Automate your social media marketing. Schedule your social media posts, track their performance, and keep your followers engaged. This saves you time that you can use for other tasks.
  • Enhance donor management by automating the gathering, analysis, and getting insights from donor data. Use this to identify trends, preferences, and potential major donors.

Automate Communications & Nurture Relationships

Communication covers a broad area of your operations, and automation can be used in most of them. Here are some ideas (aside from those already mentioned above):

• Set up chatbots on your website and social media to provide instant response to inquiries. Provide basic information on various topics and processes, as prompted.
• Automatically email news, updates, impact stories, and progress reports through drip campaigns, to keep donors engaged.
• Fundraising event processes can also be automated, including registration, sending tickets, event details and reminders, RSVP confirmations, and post-event follow-ups. Keep them happily well-informed.
• Send automated reminders to previous donors who have stopped giving for any reason, encouraging them to contribute again.

Enlist More Volunteers with Automated Signups

A survey found that most volunteers become involved in causes to help others or the community (73%) and to do something worthwhile and satisfying (67%). They could be just waiting for an easy way to sign up so they can jump in to help with your organisation.

• Automate your social media posts about volunteer events, to encourage more signups.
• The signup process can be automated to make it easy for volunteers. Use a signup form or tool that will save you time and effort. Link this form to your volunteer posts on social media.
• Set up a welcome email to be sent upon volunteer registration. Then send automated email reminders to volunteers about the details of their shift, to ensure that they actually show up.
• Chase down via automated email volunteers with incomplete application forms. Provide helpful information about how fast and easy it is to complete.
• Use a volunteer management system that can help you track signups, manage schedules, and send automated communications. Use a platform with dashboards that are easy for volunteers to use.

More Automation Opportunities for Your Non-profit

Fundraising, communications, and volunteer management are just three of the big ways that automation can help your nonprofit. Other areas where you can automate are:

• Reporting
• Cyber security
• Payroll and other human resources tasks/processes
• Financial management

How to Get Started with Automation

Artificial intelligence and other emerging tech innovations are changing the non-profit landscape. Automation presents you with new opportunities to boost efficiency, productivity, and impact. Here are the quick steps to get you started:

1. Assess your operations. Identify tasks or processes you can potentially automate.
2. Choose the right automation tools and software for each task or process.
3. Implement automation. (Note down your pre-automation data.)
4. Track your progress by comparing resulting KPIs with previous/baseline data. Make adjustments as needed.

If you’re unsure how to do all these, having an IT consultant can help. You may enquire with ONGC today about how we can help improve your operations so you can do more with less.