Smaller NGO? Three digital-led areas that will help you punch above you weight.

The NGO space is congested, competitive and can seem like it favours those with the biggest budgets and most resources. But, there are three digitally-led business factors that with attention, can level the playing field for smaller NGO’s.

Let’s start with your Audience.

Who are your audience? Well, everyone that you come into contact with as an NGO. Donors (of all size), the public, other NGO’s, Governments, charities — the list goes on.

Do you know them? Sure, you may have a CRM system and connect via social media or create a social campaign to raise awareness in an issue. But do you really know them?

What motivates them as an individual or group of individuals? What other interests do they have or support do they provide? How do they truly react when you contact them?

You may send surveys and questionnaires. But how often do you see them and actually speak with them?

Don’t think you have the resources to do that? You do — you have Skype, Google Hangouts and smartphones. You have people in your organisation who are there because they want to be and you have a willing audience. Go to them, see the way they react to your questions, see what gets them engaged and what turns them off. Not thousands of people — studies suggest that engaging with no more than eight people gives you 90% of your audience intent.

That leads us onto Technology.

We all use technology every hour (if not minute) of our waking (and sleeping) days. It is everywhere — it comes to us, remember the days when you had to ‘go to’ the computer to access the internet? Now it comes into our ears, pockets and onto our wrists. So, as a smaller NGO use technology to its full potential. Whilst large NGO’s are running through large scale procurement processes — think differently.

Use existing technology to support not just your engagement with your audience but with each other. Use social media and messenger to connect and freely available systems (hosted in the cloud) to share documentation . Finally, where existing business systems are in place — look at the API’s (application provided integrators) — to connect.

When a process isn’t working or a marketing campaign hasn’t quite hit the required spot — take a look at the way technology was used. Did you over-rely on it instead of defining a proper series of objectives and goals?

Finally, one aspect of where effective and well considered technology can make its mark is data visualisation.

As a NGO you have data thrown at you from all angles and not just that which you create yourselves. Academic research, commercially driven findings, government stats, trends — the list goes on. Sometimes it can feel a never ending flow of data, threatening to overwhelm you.

But apply attention on turning raw data into engaging visuals to share findings, trends or messages with your audience. This includes your internal teams. Doing this provides increased opportunity for audience engagement and faster decision making. It also delivers a foundation for a more immediate impact of your support and services. This needn’t be expensive or time consuming. You will have the raw materials — analytics, social media, email marketing and CRM systems all have the ability to present data visually.

In summary, to continue the delivery of your mission you need to ensure that you fully understand your audience. That you extract the most from your technology and that you are able to visualise what you have achieved and what you are planning to deliver.

Focus on and understand these three areas, will allow you to set a solid foundation for progress on and offline.