The All-in-One Movement: Innovation the Nonprofit Sector Needs
This year, the Pew Research Center announced that Millennials, not Baby Boomers, are now America’s largest generation, which means that Millennials will soon be the majority of nonprofits’ donor bases. This generation is a group of Americans that have seen technology advance at a miraculous rate throughout their entire lives. So it’s no wonder that, 60% of American Millennials say they prefer to make donations via their mobile device. Is the nonprofit sector equipped and ready to keep up with these upcoming donors that don’t even bother to write checks anymore?
Enough with the status quo
As someone who has worked in the nonprofit sector for twenty-five years, I’ve seen great organizations trying to utilize innovations of our digital age like email, social media, crowdfunding, and other online tools to make a difference in their communities. But traditional online fundraising steals a lot of time that could be spent on focusing on the actual work these fundraisers are supposed to support because none of these digital applications communicate with each other.
It’s frustrating and utterly exhausting to set up a PayPal account to link to a GoFundMe fundraising page, to then get the word out via MailChimp to each donor, board member, and volunteer, and then manually input the data from GoFundMe and PayPal into the CRM and making sure everyone gets thanked...and don’t even get me started on tech support when one of those things stops working.
It shouldn’t have to be this way. The latest technology makes operating a business much easier, yet the nonprofit sector is behind on this kind of innovation that could potentially revolutionize the way we fundraise, advocate, and gather support.
The dream
Have you ever noticed that when you’re on Facebook, you never have to leave Facebook.com? Facebook has everything you need in one place: notifications, events, news, pictures, and updates about your friends and family. It’s so easy to stay in touch with people you care about and to know what they’re up to without leaving the site. Nonprofits should function that way too.
Imagine the level of engagement that can be cultivated if constituents didn’t have to leave a nonprofit’s website when they want to make a donation or sign up as a volunteer. How convenient would it be if directors instantly got a notification on their phone when someone registers for their event? Running an organization would be so much easier if the website automatically recorded online donations into the donor database so that no one has to waste time with manual data entry.
It’s very possible to make this all-in-one operation happen, and I believe the nonprofit sector should not have to miss out on revolutionary technology like this. Settling for archaic, expensive, frustrating nonprofit technology and random apps only plateau fundraising efforts and will eventually weaken the way organizations serve our communities as the rest of the world keeps moving forward.
All of our lives are impacted by the efforts of nonprofits (whether you realize it or not). It would be a shame if those efforts dwindled due to technological deficiencies. If you want to grow, advance, and succeed in your mission, you’ll want to join my movement.
The movement
By creating Arreva, I’ve started an All-in-One movement to deliver an easy-to-use, fully integrated, automated software exclusively for nonprofits. It has everything you could ever want in one single system, which is exactly what will propel the nonprofit sector into the same innovative motion that the rest of the world is experiencing.
I encourage everyone in the nonprofit sector to continue to dream big, explore what’s out there, be open to new ideas and make their dreams a reality like I did. The results are so rewarding and your community will thank you for it.
