How Nonprofits Can Grow Impact, Scale, and Relationships

Maintaining excellent relationships is mission-critical for nonprofits. But in the wake of the pandemic, limited face-to-face interactions meant organizations needed to reinvent the ways they serve their constituents, empower their employees, and connect with donors. What they discovered is that nonprofits can nourish all of those relationships with technology and data. 

Here are three ways nonprofits are delivering better outcomes for the communities they serve.

1. Data-Driven Insights Surface the Most Effective Programs

For impact-driven organizations like Boys & Girls Clubs of America, an organization devoted to helping young people achieve their full potential, close community connections mean they are facing society’s biggest challenges head-on. At the same time they deal with problems ranging from food insecurity to natural disasters, they also need to ensure their members are engaged in local Boys & Girls Club offerings and achieve successful outcomes.

When the pandemic hit, Boys & Girls Clubs of America quickly realized they needed to rethink their entire service delivery model to continue making an impact. That started with using technology to connect data between some 4,900 locations so national leaders could gain a real-time view into the needs and preferences of their members.

“With MyClubHubs, local Clubs will have access to real-time data at their fingertips to show how Club members are participating,” said Lorraine Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Boys & Girls Clubs of America. “With a quick glance at a dashboard, they’ll know how many kids are in their Club at any given time, what programs these young people are participating in, and the achievement in those programs.”

Using insights from this data enabled Boys & Girls Clubs of America to scale their most successful programs. 

“On a national level, it allows Boys & Girls Clubs of America to compare data with our annual youth outcomes data to identify gaps and to determine which programs are leading to the greatest outcomes for our members. That allows us to determine what we can replicate and what activities we need to enhance our scale.”
– Lorraine Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Boys & Girls Clubs of America

2. Technology Keeps Employees Focused on the Right Tasks

Outdated operations force employees to spend more time on simple tasks and less time achieving the organizational mission. But when empowered with the right technology, nonprofits can streamline operations and help their employees stay focused on what’s most important.

“It will streamline their efforts. Club staff and leaders can channel and focus their time on driving real impact and engagement with the young people who need them the most.” 
– Lorraine Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Boys & Girls Clubs of America 

Kirsten Morrison — the Director of Communications at Mary’s Meals, an international organization providing life-changing meals to over two million of the world’s poorest children every day as they attend school — agrees with that. 

“Technology is critical to achieving that scale [and] is absolutely essential to our strategy,” Morrison said. “Our school feeding officers, who are monitoring distribution and how much food is left, [send] that data back via app into Salesforce. [That] informs us what we need to do logistically. We can also use that information to get more insight into the way we work.”

3. Personalized Outreach Builds Strong Donor Relationships

Strong donor relationships are the fuel that drive impact. Building those connections in a digital age requires personalized outreach, according to Leah Swindon, Chief Growth Officer at Mary’s Meals. 

“When we interact with our donors it needs to be authentic and genuine. We need to be able to match their behaviors with how we communicate with them.”
-Leah Swindon, Chief  Growth Officer, Mary’s Meals

To do this, organizations are leaning into their data to deliver personalized messaging that drives engagement — like how sending a project status update to a one-time donor opens the door to future giving. The right technology enables this kind of messaging and gives nonprofits the opportunity to deepen supporter relationships.

“When you think about it from a donor’s perspective, MyClubHub with Salesforce can track gifts, but also steward and cultivate investors like never before,” said Orr. “Organizations can track restricted gifts and provide donors with key outcome data that drives impact.” 

Take the Next Step with Salesforce

Innovative nonprofits are using data-driven insights to deliver more impactful programs, streamline operations for scale, and build stronger relationships with donors. And for the organizations that embraced digital transformation after the pandemic, the future is an exciting place to be. 

“We’ve known for a while that our digital infrastructure had to grow. The last two years have shown us how critical it was to fast forward these enhancements,” said Orr. “This empowered our teams to pivot to Club needs faster and more efficiently.”

Watch Nonprofit Summit session recordings on demand to learn more about Mary’s Meals and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. And see how Boys & Girls Clubs of America are Powering Tomorrow’s Leaders.

David Slater
VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce.org

David Slater is the VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce.org, where he leads a team of industry leaders working to deliver global solutions for organizations of all shapes and sizes. At Salesforce, his core function is to seek examples of exemplary social change and share the details of how these transformations succeed. He has worked and volunteered in the education and nonprofit industry for more than 25 years with a passion for learning how the social sector can scale new approaches to drive impact.