How can digital transformation boost nonprofit efficiency?

Nonprofit Mission + Digital Transformation (DT)= Max Efficiency with limited resources. In Nonprofits, relationships and trust are our currency, connecting staff/members/donors/volunteers to make a meaningful impact. DT is a strategic journey to building this currency while optimizing resources - money & staff/volunteer time. BUT... 70% of DT projects fail (McKinsey, 2021) Not so efficient, eh? Why? "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" - my dad Like any successful journey, it begins with a desired destination and a roadmap. A digital roadmap has allowed our nonprofit clients to understand their current status, define scope, assess effort levels, and prioritize...ensuring success and yielding maximum impact. DM me 'DT' for more.

Lets start with small steps first. First comes Digitisation then digitalisation and then digital transformation. Digitisation is converting what you do manually to digital. Think written receipts lying in books to logging them into excel. Then comes digitalisation which is then developing e-payment and receipts. Then finally digital transformation which means making your nonprofit digital ready to conduct its work and engage digitally and also means automating a number of processes that adds value to your mission. Example would be automating information dissemination , engagement and renewals for your members so that you can focus on what truly matters.

Digital transformation can significantly enhance nonprofit efficiency by streamlining data management, improving communication with stakeholders, reducing operational costs, and opening new fundraising avenues. It also facilitates better program delivery, supports remote work, and increases organizational sustainability and scalability. Additionally, leveraging digital tools can boost transparency and accountability, essential for building trust with donors and stakeholders.

This is simple: the world in which we exist; where our customers/stakeholders are; where the marketplace exists - it's overwhelmingly (and ever more increasingly) digital. Nonprofits ignore the digital revolution at our own peril. And here's the upside: investing in digital tools, strategies, and capabilities can, when wisely managed and executed, create even more value and drive even stronger impact through the lens of our missions.

Digital transformation is like giving a power boost to nonprofits. It helps them do things faster, communicate better, and keep track of their impact easily. Just like upgrading from a regular bike to a super-fast one, digital tools make nonprofits stronger and more effective in making a positive difference.

To initiate the digital transformation journey, must assess your current situation to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats in your vision, mission and goals. By designing and developing a digital transformation planning map is key for prioritising and planning actions to help achieve objectives. With this digital map as a evaluation/assessment journey you can identify needs for your goals and visions more specifically in a structured organised way to digest information more accurately and thoroughly through assessment and evaluation and thorough analysis. You need to be able to monitor your digital transformation initiatives by executing tests while measuring and communicating results for added credibility.

So start with digitalisation first before you attemp digital transformation. Start with identifying a process that you want to automate. Something that consumes alot of time which doesnt add much value to your mission but has to be done nonetheless. Try to define the problem narrowly and work with an expert to digitalise the process. Then repeat this for a few more processes. Once you have gotten a taste for efficiency you can then look at digital transformation more holistically.

How to start? Assess your needs and opportunities! I'd advise pulling together a cross-functional, cross-stakeholder advisory group to ID the opportunities and needs across the enterprise, and to conduct some quantitative and qualitative assessments across functional departments to understand obstacles to achieving goals. Then, this advisory group can recommend solutions, and can ensure the enterprise is appropriately resourced to test solutions, then to appropriately scale those proven to be most impactful.

Digital transformation can make nonprofits work better and help them achieve more. It means using technology in smart ways to improve how things are done. To start your digital transformation journey, first, figure out what you want to achieve – do you want to connect better with your community, raise more funds, or organize your work more efficiently? Once you know your goal, pick the right tools, like using social media, websites, or specialized software. Train your team on how to use these tools and make sure everyone is on board. As you go along, keep learning and adapting to new technologies. Digital transformation is like a journey – take one step at a time and enjoy the benefits it brings to your nonprofit.

Research right partnerships in technology fields Build a digital culture mind sight. Ensure data security and privacy. Leadership must be involved in the digital transformation vision and strategy, providing adequate resources and guidance. Additionally, staff must be equipped with the resources, skills and tools they need to succeed in the digital era. Make sure they fit within the criteria of your budget plans and meet the needs to integrate with existing systems whilst protecting your data privacy laws from cyber attacks and breaches. You can implement strong data protection act laws in your digital transformation process by creating memorable passwords, number codes, passcodes to protect information as well to save time and money.

Learning from other non profit organisations from digital transformation experiences and personal case studies and anecdotes from their journeys and how they have successfully implemented digital transformation in fields and sectors i.e. their mission and goals of achievements for volunteers to earn badges or incentives online for example Global Citizen online platform gold silver bronze level points. Lastly, sharing and learning from digital solutions by sharing your digital solutions with other nonprofits as well as learning from their digital solutions and experiences is essential to add more value and credibility to the best practices for digital transformations for education purposes too for public engagement and for social cohesion.

It's so important to have key stakeholders deeply involved in all phases of this digital transformation: from assessment to piloting solutions to measuring and communicating impact. In my experience, identifying and assigning key stakeholders as key ENDORSERS of this transformation is so important - measuring and communicating impact must be owned and operationalized by many departments to ensure enterprise-wide buy-in and success.

1 common pitfall to avoid is attempting to digitalise whatever happens in the real world into the digital world. Meaning you need to avoid just adding a digital layer. It is important to ask hard questions when attempting digitalisation/digital transformation..... processes should be reengineered for efficiency. There should be no sacred cows as the saying goes. In this regard having an external expert come in as a consultant helps to draw a roadmap. Avoid jumping straight into solutioning.