Strategic Online Communications for Nonprofits

New technologies are revolutionizing the way nonprofits do business.  Constituent relationship management systems, interactive websites, mass email applications, online giving forms and many other tools are helping nonprofits become more efficient and reach more people.

A good example of this is Acceso Hispano, an initiative of the nonprofit Self Reliance Foundation.  For years Acceso Hispano had been relying on a Microsoft Access database to store service provider contact information and field calls to its toll-free bilingual information and referral services.  Email lists were kept separately to maintain communication with key constituencies, and the project was producing a regular printed newsletter.

Acceso Hispano’s Director, Maite Arce, wanted to better engage constituent communities, expand the database of Hispanic-serving providers, and create networks to directly reach Latino communities across the country.  But her budget was limited and her small team was already overloaded trying to respond to a high volume of calls to the toll-free bilingual hotline.

Maite enlisted Upleaf to come up with a cost-effective strategy that would help Acceso Hispano reach more people without requiring additional staff.

Upleaf’s response was to:

1) Build an educational online platform (http://www.accesohispano.org) to inform and engage (a) Acceso Hispano’s target population; (b) stakeholders; (c) service providers; and (d) community-based promoters.  The interactive website shares news, resources, community stories and testimonies, and drives exchange with communities through a discussion forum, text messaging capacity, and social media mashups.

2) Create a user-friendly searchable online community service directory (http://recursos.accesohispano.org) so that people in need across the country can locate nearby Hispanic-serving providers.  The scalable community service directory lets providers to create their own listings by filling out a simple, standardized online form, thereby significantly reducing the amount of staff time required to maintain the directory.

3) Customize a constituent relationship management (CRM) system (Salesforce nonprofit edition) to administer all of Acceso Hispano’s projects, campaigns, newsletters and contracts.  The CRM helps organize, automate, track and evaluate interactions with service providers, partners, donors, media, and the Hispanic community.  All calls to the toll-free hotline are now documented through the system, which captures caller information, tracks referrals, and generates automatic follow-up emails.  The CRM system also streamlines project management by helping coordinate and supervise tasks across the team.

These three tools have boosted Acceso Hispano’s capacity to serve the public and enabled the small team to engage more community service providers and other partners. Individuals and organizations are now reaching out from across the country to collaborate with Acceso Hispano. The directory of service providers is growing by itself, and the volume of people served per week has increased.

All of this was made possible by using new open source technologies and by taking advantage of an array of discounts and in-kind donations of software licenses and services available to 501c3 organizations. Thanks to these the total implementation cost was less than that of an administrative assistant’s salary.  Better yet, these technologies are designed to accommodate growth and will require little to no new investments as Acceso Hispano continues to expand.