Why your nonprofit needs comprehensive communications

Nonprofit organizations play a noble role in our modern global society. When communities lack what they need to thrive, nonprofit organizations are quick to step up and enact change that will transform the lives of the people in those communities. However, nonprofits know all too well that making that change isn’t easy – it requires plenty of collaboration and communication both inside and outside of the organization.

While strategic communications play a prominent role in the modern nonprofit organization, many unfortunately do not have a mature communications strategy. And since employees, donors, and clients can be scattered around the globe, an incomplete or outdated communications strategy can be a major weakness for a nonprofit.

To patch this weakness, organizations need a mature approach to Unified Communications (UC) that accounts for how communication and collaboration help them achieve success. This could range from following up with top donors to brainstorming branding ideas with hard-to-reach colleagues that are halfway across the world.

Let’s take a look at the benefits a mature Unified Communications strategy can offer and outline how nonprofits can enact one.

The benefits of Unified Communications

If you’re still using legacy PBX-connected devices to conduct most of your affairs, you can stand to gain many benefits from a comprehensive UC strategy. Modern communications technology isn’t only designed for talking with colleagues – it also makes it easy to organize and complete tasks as a team.

Here’s a brief summary of the benefits you’ll enjoy with a mature unified communications strategy:

• Increased flexibility and productivity – With web-based or application-based communications, employees will be able to collaborate anywhere, any time. Just because someone’s on the road doesn’t mean you can’t reach them easily from your home office!
• Effective collaboration – With a good Unified Communications strategy, you’ll be able to access an assortment of technology that makes collaboration easy. For instance, in Microsoft Teams you can share a document with a colleague and work alongside them while you video chat.
• Improved organization – When your employees adopt all the technology in your UC strategy, there will be no more sifting through a disorganized inbox for one piece of information. Everything that broadly benefits the workforce can be stored in a central, well-organized location.
• Reduced costs – Through the benefits above, nonprofits will enjoy lower labor costs as their workforce becomes more productive. Additionally, smaller nonprofits will be able to access new Communication as a Service providers that allow them to lease the newest communication technology for less.

Think of it this way – in 2019, market analysts predicted the unified communications market could grow to over $167.1 billion by 2025 – that’s a compound annual growth rate of over 16 percent! With factors like the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the need for effective virtual communication, that impressive value could be reached even earlier than anticipated.

How Welthungerhilfe enacted a UC strategy

If you’re familiar with the European nonprofit sector, you’ve likely heard of Welthungerhilfe. This organization was founded in 1962 with the goal of ending world hunger – an ambition they’d like to accomplish before 2030. However, managing complex communications for more than 8,900 overseas projects scattered across 70 countries was challenging.

Welthungerhilfe came to SoftwareOne to help devise a central strategy for communications and find the most effective solutions. To satisfy their organizational needs, they required a new strategy and new technologies, the dismantling of old technologies, and an adoption initiative to ensure employees could work as effectively as possible.

After a discussion with Welthungerhilfe, it was determined that a combination of Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams would meet their communication and collaboration needs for the right price. From there, SoftwareOne gave them advisory and helped deliver the solutions to new customers, and is now providing ongoing management of the UC technology. By implementing an effective unified communications strategy using modern technology, Welthungerhilfe was able to create a more responsive workplace – and when people need help, a fast response can make all the difference.

Getting started at your nonprofit

A unified communications strategy can transform the way your organization communicates and collaborates, creating an environment where your workers thrive and deliver enhanced value to donors and beneficiaries alike. SoftwareOne fully understands how crucial this is to leading nonprofits – so they’ve assembled a team of nonprofit specialists to help your organization meet their technological goals.

By partnering with our ONEImpact team, you’ll get everything you need to transform your communications strategy. We’ll begin with a comprehensive roadmap that assesses both your existing and desired capabilities and then work with your organization to find the right technology and devices to improve your communicative capabilities. Once your team agrees on the strategy, we’ll do all the heavy lifting, from automating business processes to encouraging adoption among your team.