Nonprofit Technology Needs

Have you ever wanted to take your computer and throw it across the room because the technology was failing to meet your needs? We’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve had a website crash, your nonprofit technology helpdesk was overwhelmed, and you reached your wit’s end trying to recover everything. Perhaps you’ve experienced an old laptop’s battery suddenly dying at inconvenient times (like during an important donor meeting), but there was no room left in the budget for new equipment that year. Or maybe your nonprofit hasn’t even brushed the tip of the tech iceberg yet, and you regularly experience frustrations you don’t realize could be solved by technology. 

Good technology practices can significantly help an organization with its mission, especially after a global pandemic transitioned us to a more virtual lifestyle. Thankfully, even during the hard times, we continue to see technology go above and beyond our expectations with the solutions it provides.

To understand nonprofit technology needs specifically, you must first identify the needs of your nonprofit, and then find appropriate tech solutions to meet those needs. Let’s take a look at what nonprofits have to gain from using technology and the pain points it can easily solve. 

What Do Nonprofits Need the Most Out of Their Technology? 

Nonprofits, like most organizations, need consistent resources to make a difference. Fortunately, the perfect tools for managing nonprofit needs lie in technological processes and innovations. Below we will examine some of the most pressing nonprofit needs and how a high-quality nonprofit technology strategy can help meet those needs. 

Steady Funding

We know money isn’t everything, but it certainly is a contributing factor to successful nonprofits. A recent nonprofit study found $1-5 million was the most common range for nonprofit budgets, which seems like a lot, but when you consider everything a nonprofit must budget for, it’s really not. A common nonprofit budget may include:

• Staff salaries
• Training fees
• Travel 
• Benefits
• Consultants and specialists
• Conference expenses
• Office supplies
• Printing and copying costs
• Equipment
• Insurance
• Project supplies
• Overhead
• Accounting services
• Telephone lines
• Rent and utilities

The list goes on. Fortunately, overall giving did grow 4.1% over the past year (the 6th consecutive year of growth), and a decent portion of those funds are coming from online giving. This means technology has a high chance of boosting donations if used in the right ways.

How can technology be used for fundraising? Technology can give you actionable insights to better your fundraising capabilities, which can lead to:

• An easier donation process with a few clicks of a button
• Analytics that can determine realistic goals and guide future campaigns 
• Fruitful engagement with donors via channels like social media, texting, and email
• Reaching global audiences rather than just immediate communities
• Improved and personalized staff, volunteer, and donor interactions

After creating more opportunities for interaction, nonprofits must next look at how they can maintain donor relationships. 

Loyal Donor Relationships

Donors—especially repeat givers—are vital to the daily operations of a nonprofit organization. However, gifts of all frequency and sizes should be acknowledged and valued. While nonprofits are mission-driven, it’s important to remember the people who made the mission possible. 

A recent report entitled Study of Philanthropy: Charitable Giving by Affluent Households examined giving, priorities, patterns, and attitudes of affluent U.S. households. When households were asked about reasons they would not give or stop giving to charity, some of their responses were as follows:

• 30.9% said their family’s needs came first
• 21.9% feel lack of connection with an organization
• 20.8% simply don’t want to give to charity
• 10.5% plan to do all their giving at the end of their life
• 9.9% said the request timing was not optimal 
• 8.9% weren’t sure which causes to give to
• 7.6% believed that their gift would not have made a difference
• 2.3% felt the giving process was too complicated

Knowing what stops the flow of donations is key to improving donor satisfaction and continual giving. One tech solution for improving donor relationships is a donor management system, which can allow your organization to track basic and detailed information to enhance donor communications. You can also send out digital surveys to all of your donors to determine their preferences and what motivates them to continue donating. Collecting donor data, properly analyzing it, and implementing changes based on that data adds efficiency to donor relationship maintenance and can lead to higher donor retention rates. 

Change Management

Going with the flow has never been more important in the nonprofit industry as it is today. The world is recovering from a pandemic, cryptocurrency is emerging in charitable giving, community and donor needs are constantly changing…needless to say, you can’t control it all. 

Nonprofits of all shapes and sizes won’t always find themselves immune to unpredictable situations, which is why thinking ahead and trend awareness is essential to successfully navigating these challenges. At Computers in Ministry (CIM), we have found many technology strategies to be successful when nonprofits are faced with changes, including:

• Start small. Change one part of your process or technology services, evaluate how successful the change is, implement necessary modifications, and then move on to the next part. Our CIM team specifically likes to create Technology Roadmaps, so we have a clear vision of this change process. 
• Embrace feedback. 54% of organizations said they would be willing to change technology products or solutions based on feedback by staff members. Companies see the value of employee feedback, as they know their staff members are usually the most familiar with the needs of an organization. One easy way to gather this feedback is by setting up an anonymous digital survey for employees to fill out. 
• Build bridges. A well-integrated nonprofit ecosystem, from donors to volunteers, will promote information flow that reveals inadequacies and points to insightful solutions. Technology is an easy way to bring all your teams together to promote this collaboration. An excellent starting point is selecting proper software to meet everyone’s needs and ensuring project management tools are accessible by all relevant personnel.
• Implement nonprofit tech security. Did you hear about the hackers that stole $650,000 from One Treasure Island? One Treasure Island is a nonprofit focused on redeveloping its namesake island in San Francisco Bay as a haven for low-income and formerly homeless people. With advancements in technology come advancements in hacking techniques. Nonprofits should have a strong technology security system in place to prevent these attacks before falling victim to them. At CIM, one of our specialities is security and risk management, so our clients know they are safe from these kinds of threats. 

By using technology to manage changes, nonprofits can improve their work environment, stay safe, and find new ways to grow and drive their mission. 

Nonprofit Website Design

Can you remember the last time you went to look up a business or organization online and you couldn’t find a website or at least a social media page? For the handful of times you couldn’t find anything, you may have wondered if the business was legitimate. The purpose of a nonprofit website is ultimately to promote its mission, but nowadays it also validates the nonprofit’s existence. 

If your nonprofit already has a website, great! Now we recommend asking, “Are there ways we can improve our website design to make the experience better for users?” Some of our favorite nonprofit website best practices here at CIM include:

• Writing captivating content for your nonprofit website that reinforces your mission and persuades community members to support your cause.
• Creating website navigation paths that are easy to traverse and user-friendly.
• Simplifying the donation process down to a couple of clicks and making donation pages easy to find. 
• Producing websites accessible to include all users, even those with disabilities, by doing things like adding captions to videos and ensuring images have descriptive alt text. 
• Designing websites to look amazing across all devices (smartphones, tablets, desktops) and browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.). 

The intricacies of these common needs will certainly change as the nonprofit world evolves, and technology will most likely change to meet any emerging needs as it has done in the past. Nonprofits must also seek to adapt and utilize these changes in technology to strengthen their mission and purpose. An easy way to keep up with technology shifts is by hiring an IT consultant, like CIM, who will already be in the know on the most recent tech news. 

Technology for Nonprofits: 10 Trends to Know

Our CIM team loves reading about the latest technological advancements, as it allows us to best serve our clients. We’ve recently been discussing the latest Managing Nonprofit Tech Change Report from the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN), as it reviews the realities and challenges for nonprofits. Here are our 10 takeaways for you to keep in mind when considering your nonprofit’s technology needs:

1. Budget Availability: Over two-thirds of nonprofits stated that budget availability was a barrier to technology change.
2. Lack of Staff Time: 82% of nonprofits agree that lack of staff time was the number one hurdle for adapting to technology changes.
3. Systems and Processes Need to Change: When asked about the changes nonprofits need, 37% replied that systems and processes needed to change, with human resources coming in at a close second at 25% of the responses. 
4. Staff Members Guiding Change: 54% of respondents said their organization would be willing to change technology products or solutions based on feedback by staff members, which was the number one response. Second was program participants at 34%, followed by board members at 30%. 
5. Evaluating ROI: As far as evaluating return on investment (ROI) of technology products and services, 46% of nonprofits said they rarely or never evaluate ROI. 
6. Regular Technology Needs Assessment: Around 54% of nonprofits are annually or more frequently assessing program participant technology needs. Staff technology needs came in second at 42%. Other groups, such as donors, volunteers, and boards were assessed much less frequently or not at all. 
7. Collecting Feedback: The number one way nonprofits are collecting feedback about technology challenges for nonprofits is via individual interviews with staff members. Runner-ups were via a nonprofit technology committee, a staff focus group, and an optional staff survey. 
8. Contract Lengths: 35% of nonprofits have technology product or service contracts that run one to three years, which is the majority. In second, 32% have annual contracts, and the rest have a mix, weren’t sure, or had contracts running longer than three years. 
9. Technology Decision Making: For who gets included in the technology decision-making process, 72% of nonprofits said leadership staff. 66% include an executive director/CEO and 56% include an IT director or equivalent. Staff gets to be involved with 24% of organizations and volunteers with only 5%. 
10. Annual Budgets: Annual budgets for organizations (for everything, not just technology) ranged from nothing to more than $10 million. The most common range was $1-5 million, with 33% of respondents stating this was their budget. 

Monitoring the latest technology trends can be an intimidating task, but it’s one of the best ways to find innovative solutions for your nonprofit’s technology needs.

What Do Nonprofit Organizations Need? A Technology Partner like CIM

Our founder created Computers in Ministry in 1996 as a way to bridge the gap for organizations that could not afford the high cost of commercial technology services. We seek to align cost-effective technology solutions with the mission and vision of our partners. With our many years of experience, we can conquer almost any technology need, from software evaluation and selection to IT security monitoring. 

After a thorough consultation, we work with our partners to develop and deliver an effective Technology Roadmap. Each roadmap is specifically tailored to that organization, as we understand every nonprofit will have unique traits and demands. Once the roadmap is implemented, we continue to provide support and improvement, as we know the nonprofit world never sleeps. 
Eager to hear about technology solutions and resulting growth initiatives we can design for your organization? Discover and solve your nonprofit technology needs by contacting us today!