Strategic Online Communications for Nonprofits

Technologies

Many large nonprofit organizations have been using powerful petition tools for years to mobilize their supporters toward action through quick sign and forward applications.  Now Change.org is shaking things up by making their tool available to anyone– including individuals or small nonprofit organizations– who previously were unable to afford such applications.

The petition tool is free, easy to use, and the directions are simple.  Change.org walks you through the process of setting up your target (elected officials, business leaders, etc), your messaging, and your promotion strategy.

The tool includes some great features to increase visibility:

• Integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter
• Embeddable widgets to promote the petition on other sites
• A ‘leaderboard’ to show how many people each reporter has recruited to sign the petition
• Visibility through Change.org, whose top petitions are sent weekly to half a million activists
• Capacity to send follow-up emails to everyone who has signed the petition
• Allows petition signers to opt in to your email list (great way to grow your list quickly!)

To get started, visit www.change.org/petition and start making changes today!

Posted by Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder

One of our greatest struggles in the nonprofit sector is how to maximize our social impact with limited resources. We’re usually gifted with a tremendous empathy for the people we serve and a passion for what we do—but few of the technology tools we need, because the funds simply aren’t available.

Several generous companies have made their world-class technologies available for free to nonprofits with 501c3 status in the U.S.  These technologies can completely transform the way we do business, and increase our impact exponentially.  They include:

1. Salesforce. Salesforce is a powerful constituent relationship management (CRM) tool that can help nonprofits organize, track and evaluate all interactions with donors, partners, media, and even project beneficiaries.  It is an excellent tool for fundraising, project management, monitoring and evaluation. The Salesforce Foundation typically donates 10 licenses per organization for an annual value of $15,000.  The application is hosted by Salesforce for free, and only requires some customization.

2. Vertical Response. One of the most popular mass email tools on the market, Vertical Response offers user-friendly templates and powerful evaluation tools to measure the impact of email messaging. Vertical Response integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, and is free for qualifying nonprofits for up to 10,000 mass emails per month.

3. Google Apps. The Google App package includes email, calendars, word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration programs, among other features.  Google Apps is designed to replace the costly Microsoft Office package and is free to nonprofits with less than 3,000 users.  Organizations can establish their own email addresses (name@organization.org) with almost unlimited storage.  It is all hosted by Google which means HUGE cost savings:  internal servers are no longer needed so you can say goodbye to server maintenance fees and email downtime caused by internal server problems.

4.  Google Ads. Google Grants is an in-kind donation program that offers free AdWords advertising to qualified 501c3 organizations. The program helps nonprofits promote websites or campaigns through advertising on Google, at a value of up to $10,000 per month.

With so many remotely hosted state-of-the-art technologies available for free, nonprofits can slash IT costs and upgrade to powerful packages that increase productivity, efficiency and visibility.

To learn more about free or affordable technologies and services available to nonprofits, contact Upleaf.

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.