The past year has been particularly hard for the charity and nonprofit sector, which lost millions in donations as a result of the ban on in-person fundraising activities. Meanwhile, demand for services from charities increased as vulnerable communities were disproportionately affected by the global pandemic. This has forced many charities to need to rethink their fundraising streams, and the role that digital plays in helping them continue their vital work.
“Covid-19 was a perfect storm for the nonprofit sector,” says Jonny Elliot, strategic adviser for Salesforce.org, the social impact centre of global technology company Salesforce. “Giving from individuals and corporates dropped, larger charities lost retail income [from closed charity shops], and charities that received funding from institutional donors faced concerns over their ability to meet contracted funder requirements because in-person services were put on hold or massively reduced.”
Charities were forced to adapt to survive and support their communities in crisis. “While fundraising became the number one priority for nonprofits, a charity’s ability to innovate became the second most important priority,” says Elliot. “The focus shifted to launching new fundraising approaches online, and delivering services in new ways. Nonprofits that were already doing digital marketing campaigns and digital service delivery were able to move fast and re-engage supporters and clients online to drive donations and ensure the needs of service users were met.”
Among those that adapted was Guide Dogs. The charity runs a service called CustomEyes, which sells large print tailor-made books for children living with visual impairment. “Previously, our members had to print a PDF order form and send it to us by post every time they placed an order,” says Jane Huntington, head of applications development and support at Guide Dogs.
With many people unable to leave their homes, the team decided to create an online bookstore, using Salesforce Experience Cloud, to deliver a vital service to families and create a new income stream for the organisation. Launched in November, members can easily search the thousands of titles available, choose and customise books according to the needs of the reader and order and pay for their books all in one place.
“We’ve gone from 31 orders a month to 107 a month, which is a huge increase, and turnaround time has improved because orders are instantly available to our team.” Additional donations have increased too, with one in three users now adding a donation to their book order.
“Offering visually impaired children more choices through services like CustomEyes may seem a small thing, but to a child learning to read, it’s everything,” says Huntington.
For those charities that successfully engaged with supporters and clients online this past year, being adaptable and taking advantage of technology has been key. “It helped that we already had digital capabilities that we could build on when Covid struck,” says Huntington. “We were able to pivot easily, whereas reacting quickly if you’re not already in the digital space is harder.”
According to Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Trends Report, nonprofits that were already using digital tools fared better during the crisis than those that didn’t, with 56% accelerating their move online.
Olivia Barker White, chief executive of the UK charity Kids Club Kampala, agrees: “We were already active online but we had to ramp things up to boost the coffers when stripped of important face-to-face fundraising opportunities,” she says. “We developed new digital campaigns, organised regular virtual events to update our supporters, and moved our annual ball online. Doing so meant we could welcome people from farther afield, and raised a record amount.”
For many small charities, Covid resulted in the loss of critical funding streams. The Paul Hodges Trust is a charity that supports women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa. “The pandemic forced us to approach fundraising with a more innovative and entrepreneurial lens,” says trustee Jenny Carlen.
The charity was already training female tailors in Ghana, Uganda, and Sierra Leone, and began to sell ethical, handmade face masks in vibrant, locally sourced fabrics. “Throughout the year we raised more than £5,000 to reinvest into our community projects, as well as creating employment for 25 women. That exposed us to a new audience of young, fashionable, ethical accessory buyers and vegan/sustainable bloggers, rather than our previous smaller audience of people interested in women’s opportunities in Africa.”
Taking advantage of digital approaches has not just been a means of survival for nonprofits during the pandemic, says Elliot, but it is a crucial strategy if the sector is to reach the greatest number of people as we come out of it. “Looking ahead, nonprofits must balance investment in both in-person and online engagement activities so that the people they work with can choose how they want to engage. Not everyone will emerge from the pandemic at the same time, and this last year has also changed many people’s preferences for how they want charities to work with them.”
A hybrid approach will not only enable charities to reach the biggest audience possible, says Elliot, but it will also “enable charities to track their work, evidence their results and measure their impact better – capabilities that will help the sector to not just survive but thrive in the years ahead”.
Learn more about Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Cloud
