In the past weeks, a lot of businesses have been forced into the ring of delivering their services virtually. While this has been a convenient and profitable contingency plan for some businesses, the not-for- profit organisations that deliver ‘person to person’ or door to door services have been largely disadvantaged.
In January, I joined a team of skilled digital tech volunteers that help charity organisations in Scotland deliver on their technology enabled products, and I began to gain more insights into some of the challenges non- profit organisations face as well as the possible solutions to these problems.
Trailing the changes currently staring us in the face as we fight covid-19 to a standstill, I cannot help but conclude that only those who have been around business circles long enough, will fully understand how to milk the ripple effects of the changes in our world. As my team’s recent focus has now become helping these non-profit organisations sustain their operations remotely, I am penning down my thoughts on how they should innovate to navigate the interesting times the world has started to experience.
Convert all manual tasks to digitally operated ones – The right question to help put things in perspective is: “how can technology ENABLE our process?” What this means is taking a critical (or have an expert) look at your processes and identifying those strings of activities that are paper reliant, largely dependent on physical (person to person) movement and are time consuming. Doing a business process audit will definitely show you what parts to automate, saving you some long-term significant operational cost.
Human Capital – A major change that cannot be ignored is how remote work teams are about to become more popular than they have ever been. With a spike in the number of people who have lost their jobs, took pay cuts and businesses that have folded up, Economists are speaking about a global recession. Again, there is an opportunity here for the non-profits to engage highly skilled personnel that were once beyond their reach for budget reasons. Best part is, this does not have to be limited to a specific region. Go across borders!
Tone down the Traditional Marketing and Scale your Digital Marketing Activities- This is the perfect time to consider and start executing online fundraising events. The growth of remote work teams will mean people spend more time in front of their mobile screens. As a result, traditional marketing should decrease while digital marketing activities increase. A good digital transformation plan for this period should include promoting your company’s digital channels. Using engaging content and video messaging to reach the target audience group that billboards were once made for.
Accessing Funds from Corporate Bodies – When I am not “doing digital things”, I help charities and social enterprise organisations write grant application. Almost as a response to the effect of COVID-19, there has been an immediate change to the funding criteria – there is a call for social enterprise ideas that can be supported using technology. I seriously doubt this would change. It would be a great idea to have your grant writing officer take up trainings or be part of groups that are focused on digital transformation.
Fundraising: Time to go “retail” – This is the perfect time to get your website integrated into e- payment channels, in order to receive donations by a click of the “Donate Now” button conspicuously displayed on the home page.
One thing is for sure, things are definitely not going to be the same. It’s gonna be a a whole new world and surviving as a business would be determined by how it pivoted.
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