COVID-19 has disrupted the economy, and our lives. Some of us are privileged enough to have jobs, especially those of us who can work from home. We have salaries coming in regularly. We have homes to live in and work from. With a few clicks, we can even get groceries, medicines, and meals delivered to our doorstep. All that while following social distancing protocols.
This privilege does not extend to everyone. A number of industries, big and small, are having to lay off or furlough employees. Similarly, because of the lockdown, social distancing, and shelter-in-place, a number of businesses have had to close down, like restaurants, laundromats, movie theaters, malls, small shops. These business owners have no other source of income. Even amongst these, there are disparities.
In such a situation, how can we help at the local or global level? You can support them by donating funds. You can also donate to nonprofit organizations that you support.
If you are a nonprofit organization, you need to streamline your operations now more than ever. Some of the things that you may be doing are accepting donations, volunteers, gifts, etc.
In order to make operations easier and provide the help where it’s needed the most, you need to use a custom portal. Let’s look at what this portal can do for you:
Cause campaigns and crowdfunding campaigns:
As a non-profit organization, you can create a Cause in Salesforce or a page in WordPress and that link or page can be added to the portal, and volunteers assigned to the cause will have access to the portal for their activity updates and donors can also come to the portal to donate.
You can manage the various brands/people you have tied up with via this portal. The volunteers who are working on these campaigns will be able to update the records from the portal. Another way that this can work is that you may have tied up with a brand (let’s call it XYZ for now). When someone buys the assigned products from XYZ, those proceeds will go to your NGO, and then you can add them to your fight against COVID-19. In this case, while the funds will reflect in the campaign analytics, the donor data may not.
Similarly, when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns, you can create it in salesforce. From there you display it on your website. Any actions performed on it, like someone making a donation, will be registered in the portal.
Volunteer Management
One of the ways that people are helping right now is by volunteering. However, simply having volunteers does not solve the problem. You need to manage who does what work based on their skills and your requirements. Potential volunteers can apply via portal, and put in their skillset as well as their available timings. This creates a useful database for you. Now you can accept their applications, and allot them work based on predefined areas. Since they have put in their hours and days, it will be easier for you to schedule work for them without any overlaps. This means that if someone has volunteered as an at-home nurse, you are less likely to assign them grocery delivery. This way the right resources will go for the right causes. The portal not only makes this task easier, but also eliminates potential errors and automates some of the workflow.
Gifts management
Salesforce has a module called Gifts, wherein, if enabled on the website/Portal, people can make contributions from there. The details of that contribution are then stored securely in the CRM. You can manage these gifts and perform actions on them like assigning amounts to specific areas like medical equipment, volunteer reimbursement, medicines, etc.
Social Media marketing
Nonprofit organizations can also take advantage of social media marketing. By putting links of sign ups and landing pages, you can get the attention of people and bring them to your cause. It can help spread the word about your organization and your cause, effectively, and widely.
Salesforce has a special version of their CRM for nonprofits called NPSP, and we can build a custom portal for it if you need one for your organization. Contact us here for even more details on how this can positively impact your operations.
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