Nonprofit technology is a huge asset for any organization looking to make an impact in their community. How does your organization use your technology? Is it used for client intake, program attendance, services delivered, etc.?
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Whatever technology you employ, it’s important that your organization uses it to collect and report on client data to provide services and prove impact. The technology you use should be advancing your mission and delivering more services to your constituents.
But, is your current technology doing enough to maximize your impact?
Software Criteria Checklist
There are five base criteria for what your nonprofit technology should be doing for your organization.
Nonprofit software should:
- Increase the amount of time you spend on mission
- Increase the quality of time you spend on our mission
- Decrease the cost to provide your mission
- Increase the revenue and funding for your mission
- Increase your ability to deliver your mission and promise
Does your current technology check every one of these boxes? If you’ve noticed your technology does not fit into your operations, it may be time to reevaluate your functionality and reporting needs.
Functionality
Experiencing small hiccups with your technology can cause large roadblocks with how your nonprofit delivers services. When problems do occur, they can be the difference between someone having a bed to sleep in, a warm meal, or any other mission-critical deliverable your organization supports. If you start experiencing pain points that should have been solved by the technology you invested in, it may be time to re-evaluate.
If you are using manual processes to collect and report on your nonprofit data, you may be spending a lot of man-hours collecting and assessing data, which could cause your organization’s service delivery to drop. If you have been experiencing hurdles with your manual processes, you may need to consider investing in an alternative nonprofit technology solution to help your organization’s operations.
Software can be used to organize, maintain, and assess your important nonprofit data. Software solutions are one of the quickest and easiest ways to increase nonprofit capacity and effectiveness, as well as enhance performance-related investment—all while dramatically decreasing administrative cost. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Case management software can do so much for nonprofit. So much, in fact, that organizations often only need the one solution.
Have you ever found that you rely on another program to pick up the slack for functionality that’s not covered in your software? If your software isn’t fulfilling this critical need, it may be time to consider making a change.
Reporting
Being able to report on and track what matters is essential for nonprofit organizations when trying to grow. It’s important for organizations to have one system to manage important client, volunteer and funder information to prove their impact on their community.
Data and reports from your nonprofit technology should give you the chance to view your organization from a new, enlightened perspective. Your organization will be able to make informed, evidence-based decisions about where you should allocate resources for future programs and best practices for increasing donations in the future.
Reporting with your technology should be fast, easy, and accessible for a variety of audiences. For many organizations, however, this is not the case. Reporting on data, particularly for organizations using manual processes, can be a long and arduous task. It takes countless hours, a lot of manpower, and often produces results that won’t fully display their impact.
Even when reporting with nonprofit software, it’s not guaranteed that your impact will be fully demonstrated. Not every solution is created equal. While having case management software is a huge step towards maximum delivery, having the right case management software can give your organization the extra push it needs to grow to the next level. If your software doesn’t have a robust reporting system, your team, clients, volunteers, and funders will not have the full picture of your organization and its ability to help your community.
New technology can enable you to fully see your organization’s impact. With functionality and robust reporting at your fingertips, a software solution could alleviate your pain points, meet you where your organization is, and scale with you as your operations grow.
If your nonprofit technology is only partially serving your organization, or worse, hurting instead of helping, it’s time to think about a change. Be open-minded to how new technology can improve organizational performance, productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness and how yours might not be making the cut.
