New Report on Nonprofit Trends Offers Organizations a Way to Better Serve Donors

The nonprofit sector evolves year after year. In order for nonprofits to better understand how to succeed in the space, they have to learn and stay up to date with the latest nonprofit trends, strategies and innovations. Technology has been a tremendous game-changer and has opened up new doors to bigger opportunities for donor acquisition, engagement and retention. Because there has been so much change taking place in our sector, it can be extremely overwhelming. To help relieve this stress, Salesforce released its “Nonprofit Trends Report,” which retrieved insights from over 450 nonprofit leaders on the trends that are shaping our sector.

Salesforce conducted this report because they wanted to understand what was top of mind for nonprofit leaders and what was driving their decisions regarding technology, Josue Estrada, SVP of Industry Solutions at Salesforce.org, said in an interview with NonProfit PRO.

“We wanted to see where they felt they were doing well and technology was supporting their needs, and where there was still room for improvement. Nonprofits are so diverse—from their mission to their size to their operations to their maturity—so we were looking for common factors and trends,” he said.

Additionally, beyond marketing automation technology, there is an abundance of fundraising solutions out there; so the team at Salesforce wanted to dig a little deeper and find out how well these solutions are addressing nonprofit needs and how much opportunity there is.

Here are they key takeaways:

• Balance the demands of all constituents. Nonprofits currently stand at a crossroads between a demand for services and a desire to help. If strategies are old-fashioned and/or outdated, they are underserving their causes, as well as alienating donors and volunteers.
• Wrangle your data. By understanding donor’s giving motives, nonprofits are given the opportunity to organize, analyze and unite information to drive new levels of engagement and impact.
• Go omni-channel. With this new two-way communication strategy, nonprofits have the opportunity to engage with the right audiences at the right time and on the right platform.
• Transform the role of technology in your organization. Technology is most effective and has the most impact when it’s “ingrained in processes and viewed as indispensible” by those involved in the organization—staff, donors, volunteers, beneficiaries.

According to Josue, the most important takeaway from this report is that there is a need and opportunity for nonprofits to use technology to address their greatest challenge: the increase in demands for goods and services.

“In order to address this need, they need to create awareness of their mission and have better data on their constituents, so they can engage in a way that's going to help them raise the funds that will power their ability to deliver on their mission. Unfortunately, budget is derailing their ability to take advantage of the opportunity technology provides, but they are able to still find some quick wins in areas of marketing automation and engage with their constituents through social media,” he said.

To learn more about this year’s nonprofit trends, download your copy of the report here.