Every NGO Needs To Use These Digital Tools and Services to Engage Key Stakeholders
By: Ashley Pettifer, Director of Client Experience and Operations, Ryelle Strategy Group
Digital transformation does not happen overnight. It’s like walking on a tightrope—one small, steady step at a time. Building digital capacity necessitates starting with the basics and scaling up with sustained momentum.
As we explore what tools and platforms NGOs can benefit from most, it is important to choose platforms and subscriptions based on the value and opportunity they generate in organizational capacity and efficiency, stakeholder/donor/client/patient management, and profile development and recognition.
With the right digital tools, the possibilities for meaningful change are endless. Start with these three platforms that can empower NGOs to deliver on their mission and impact the communities they seek to reach:
1. Online Donation Platforms
While corporate donations are administered through corporate social responsibility partnerships, and government grants through specific funding applications, online fundraising is becoming a growing frontier for individual donor engagement – whether they are donors who have been with your organization for years or those who may have just recently come across your work.
While Kickstarter and GoFundMe campaigns have served individuals and start-ups in fulfilling time-sensitive fundraising goals, charitable giving requires sustained momentum. Long-term donors need a platform where they can sign up for one-time or recurring gifts. Embedding a donation platform in an NGO’s website can capture donor information securely for future engagement. It can also deliver immediate impact for the donor by featuring stories, statistics, videos and engaging imagery.
2. CRM Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is an excellent tool for cultivating relationships with a variety of stakeholders with the intention of driving engagement and impact. Although most commonly used in NGOs for current and prospective donor management, a CRM can—and should—also be leveraged to track engagement and touchpoints with government partners, community members and organizational partners. Building a database of information and interactions enables an organization to successfully cultivate and steward key donors, partners and prospects and is critical to an organization’s success. That being said, the data is only as good as what is entered into the system.
NGOs can customize their CRM software to track monetary donations, in-kind contributions, interactions, key dates such as birthdays and anniversaries, set important reminders and even integrate with your email marketing software. Tracking these interactions allows NGOs to manage engagement with all stakeholders systematically. And when it comes to the donor cycle, it can assist in cultivating recurring gifts and long-term relationships. Essentially, a CRM strategy provides data-driven insights on existing and future stakeholder engagement.
3. Analytics
A data-driven approach to digital management generates actionable insights. Some important data-producing touchpoints are an NGO’s website, its social media channels and SEO performance. While CRM software tracks specific donor and stakeholder engagement activities and touchpoints, and informs stewardship and cultivation strategies, analytics provide a fuller digital view of how an NGO can convert website, social media and SEO engagement into both hard and soft conversions, which ultimately provides the capability of raising organizational profile and driving revenue generation.
Hard conversions are measured in the traditional sense, most notably in donation dollars. Soft conversions—contact form submissions, volunteer sign-ups, multiple pageviews, recurring visits, content re-shares—can indirectly amplify an NGO’s profile and reach. Monitoring website, social media and SEO performance and traffic can help guide informed decisions on how to maximize digital engagement.
Next Steps
Do you have the right platforms to capture valuable stakeholder data and insights? Ryelle Strategy Group can help you explore how to choose the right digital platforms to cultivate stakeholder relationships and community involvement.
