Industry Success: The Nonprofit Sector

Collaboration technology can have a real impact on nonprofits. For many charities and nonprofits that conduct business or provide services for the benefit of the general public, investing in IT platforms and tools beyond basic requirements has traditionally been a low priority. Instead, their focus and investment tends to be on business operations and personnel. However, many nonprofit organizations are beginning to recognize that collaboration can help them streamline processes and drive down operational costs.

Nonprofits come in many shapes and sizes, including local community organizations, museums, campaign organizations, and charitable foundations. Some examples that you may recognize include the United Way, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Within the US economy, Nonprofits account for 12.3 million jobs, which is 10.2 percent of private sector employment (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016).

Collaboration technology helps Nonprofits and registered charities by offering a secure and seamless environment that centralizes governance and administration, helping reduce the costs of infrastructure hosting and ongoing operational costs. Size of an organization does not necessarily convey the complexity of its collaboration needs. Nonprofits may need to securely communicate and collaborate with part-time volunteers, executives, trustees, government entities, donors, and service providers within the normal course of business.

Even organizations with very limited office space or limited full-time personnel can benefit from an extranet that allows team members to collaborate, share documents, schedule events, and assign tasks with vendors and stakeholders. An extranet is a secure environment that allows you to distribute information and collaborate far more efficiently than through traditional means, such as email, video conferencing, or face-to-face meetings. Extranets can be a critical tool for Nonprofits by providing permission-based "hubs" through which they can securely share information assets asynchronously and in real-time, helping to link employees across satellite locations, streamline business processes, and increase overall knowledge sharing

Internal and external collaboration is important to Nonprofits who need to work closely with external entities, partners, and other stakeholders. Specifically, Nonprofit organizations need:

• To quickly scale to add thousands of users, sponsors, and partners
• Centralized security and administration, with multi-factor authentication and robust compliance controls and reporting
• Self-registration of extranet users, and the ability to delegate management of the onboarding process to business owners

If you are a member of a Nonprofit or registered charity and are looking for ways to further streamline your business processes and reduce operational costs, Extranet User Manager has extensive experience in this sector and we're confident that our solution can provide immediate value. Take a look at the in-depth case studies and additional industry resources on the EUM Nonprofit Industry Success site or test drive our solution today.