Need a new digital strategy? 3 signs you're ready to upgrade

Your digital strategy is essential to your nonprofit’s outreach and continued operations. Determine whether it is time for an update with these three signs.

Staying up to date with ongoing fundraising trends is essential for standing out and securing the support your mission needs. Before starting a new fundraiser, consider your current approach and determine if there is anything you need to upgrade.

Many nonprofits host the same annual campaigns and events year-after-year and may not be sure if they need to make a change. Changing your approach also requires extra time and resources, but it can be necessary to stay up-to-date with the rest of your industry.

To check whether your nonprofit is in need of an updated digital strategy, consider these three signs.

1. Your current technology isn’t scaling with your needs.

Your technology shapes your operations, and your digital tools should serve your nonprofit. If you find that your staff routinely work around your software instead of within it, it is likely time for an upgrade. Organisations often become used to their current processes. As your organisation grows, update your strategies to be useful and grow with it.

Common signs that your technology is no longer meeting your needs include having:

• Several diverse, unconnected tools. Nonprofits can highly benefit from using robust, comprehensive solutions that provide all of the features they need in one location. However, many growing nonprofits often purchase individual pieces of software as their needs grow and change, leading to a technology stack that consists of several tools disconnected from one another. Disconnected platforms can lead to data silos as information collected by one platform will not flow to another unless your team performs a manual data migration, which can be time consuming. Another potential solution is to seek out platforms with existing integrations, such as Raisers Edge NXT and Raisely. These integrations offer increased automation, allowing team members to focus their energies elsewhere.
  
• Capped record creation. Software solutions for small and new nonprofits often have a capped number of records that can be created, data stored, or users added. However, as these organisations grow, they will need tools with more expansive features, such as allowing unlimited users to access the software at once or create an unlimited number of records.
  
• Limited customisation. Enterprise-level nonprofits predominately have custom-built platforms to meet their specific needs. For example, the Blackbaud CRM is popular among large nonprofits for this exact reason. The platform is designed with the intention of having a developer provide custom applications specifically for each organisation, such as a unique membership platform, self-service tools, and fundraising features.
  

The solution to many of these problems is investing in a new CRM. Keep in mind that changing CRMs is a resource-intensive process that can span several months at minimum. While a timely endeavour, it can be a worthwhile investment for nonprofits looking to switch to a highly integrated, customised system.

2. Supporters are asking for new ways to engage.

How do your supporters currently engage with your nonprofit online? Compare the options you offer supporters to how other similar nonprofits engage with their community. Additionally, pay attention to your supporters’ feedback, and consider requests they might make for new engagement and online features.

While each nonprofit’s audience is different, supporters commonly ask the organisations they support to provide:

• Up-to-date apps. Ensure your organisation is running the latest version of any app your supporters interact with. This will improve your overall security and provide supporters with a modern, user-friendly experience. Nonprofits using a flexible CRM with a wide developer network will have more options to continually update their supporters’ experience.
  
• New content. Supporters need to have more ways to engage besides donating to become invested in your nonprofit. Ensure you are routinely providing them with new online content as part of your digital strategy. This could consist of investigative articles, educational reports, and video stories from your beneficiaries, volunteers, and staff.
  
• Robust mobile support. Mobile support is now considered standard for all organisations’ online strategies, including nonprofits. Keep in mind that mobile-friendliness consists of more than just design optimisations. Ensure your forms are optimised for mobile with multiple choice questions and large buttons. Check how your emails format on mobile devices to allow supporters to stay up to date with your messages even while away from their computers.
  

While you may not be able to implement all of your supporters’ feedback, continue to survey supporters and track common questions to identify overall trends in your audience’s wants and needs. For example, if only a handful of supporters would prefer your nonprofit expands to a new social media platform, doing so may be worth considering but won’t be a priority. By contrast, if you receive persistent requests to make mobile giving easier, the issue is likely worth investigating.

3. Your online presence appears out of date.

Modern audiences expect all organisations they interact with online to have professionally designed websites. However, what is considered up-to-date and professional has and will continue to change. As such, you should evaluate your website by benchmarking it against similar organisations’ websites to ensure you are keeping up with standards in your industry.

If you are ready to update your website, the new design you choose is important, but be aware of other additional factors to consider, such as:

• Content migration. Upon redesigning or creating a new website, you’ll need to determine what content to keep and what can be removed or consolidated. DNL OmniMedia’s nonprofit website design guide advises organising and tagging content ahead of time to streamline the content migration process. This can be especially helpful for nonprofits who have a significant number of historical blog posts, some of which may now be outdated.
  
• Continued maintenance. If your nonprofit chooses to hire a website developer to redesign your website, ensure your team will be able to continue maintenance after your partnership with the developer ends. This includes knowing how to update content, make new pages, and perform general maintenance. When working with your developer, discuss the importance of a user-friendly backend interface, as well as long-term technical support and potential staff training sessions.
  
• SEO. Launching a new website can be necessary, but it means you will need to rebuild your SEO presence. At first, pages you move over from your previous website may fall in ranking as Google will need to discover and learn about your new website. You can set your pages up to regain their positions by ensuring your website has strong, updated content with natural links to other pages that are both hosted on your website and on other reputable websites.
  

This advice applies to the rest of your online presence as well. Social media platforms rise in prominence and can become obsolete in the span of a few years. You can reach multiple audiences and reduce the risk that a significant number of marketing messages will stop circulating by keeping active presences on multiple platforms.

To understand how the digital landscape is changing, consider looking into freely available resources, such as professional nonprofit podcasts, webinars, and newsletters. Use this information to assess your current digital strategy and determine whether your technology and practices need to be upgraded to support a growing, engaging organisation.