A powerful new software tool can improve productivity across your workforce, ensure the integrity of your brand, and boost your organization’s bottom line. How do you know when it’s the right time to invest in new tech? If these statements resonate with you, it might be the right time to bring on a new tech solution.
If you’re wondering when is the right time for your team or institution to invest in new tech, then you’re asking the right question! Investing in new technology is just that – an investment. It takes resources (time, money, brainpower) to ensure the biggest ROI for a new tech solution, making thoughtful consideration essential.
We’ve talked with thousands of fundraising teams of all shapes and sizes around the world about their pain points and whether or not a tech suite addition could help them move the mark.
Here are five of the most common indicators that a team is ready to make an investment in new technology. These statements suggest that the environment is ripe and ready for the help of new technology – to build out and retain teams, reach lofty fundraising goals, and keep their fundraisers mobile, modern, and marketable.
1. “We’re short-staffed.”
This is probably one of the most common cries for help that we hear from our advancement and nonprofit friends, and it’s one that we feel confident in answering. At EverTrue, we speak from experience when we say that tech tools can help to relieve the burdens of a team that is stretched too thin.
(And many fundraising teams are.)
Let it be stated that fundraising is just about the most human industry out there – and a tech tool will never replace a living, breathing human capable of building trusting, mutually beneficial relationships.
But, it sure can help. Whether you’re a small-but-mighty fundraising team and you wear 10 hats, or if you’re part of a big shop that could work more efficiently with some automations, there are tech tools that can help your team to do more with less.
Here are a few examples of how good tech can fill in the gaps for an under-staffed team:
- By unearthing and highlighting new prospects to gift officers
- By prompting fundraisers with a daily list of tasks
- By using AI to suggest personalized donor touchpoints based on recent wealth, social media, or giving insights
- By cutting down the finance team’s time spent in spreadsheets, and allowing less room for error
2. “Turnover is high.”
Unfortunately, high turnover is a problem for most fundraising teams. The average tenure for a gift officer is less than 18 months, and it costs upwards of $125K to replace a gift officer.
In a conversation with John Morris, SVP of Advancement at Texas A&M, he highlighted a few key elements that the modern fundraiser is looking for in an MGO role, amidst today’s competitive hiring market:
- Good pay
- Benefits
- Work-Life balance
- Innovation
- Growth
- Purpose
Arming fundraisers with a top-tier tech stack is a move towards providing them most of the items on this list.
Great technology helps fundraisers get more done, more efficiently – avoiding burnout and overworking. It keeps their skillset modern and marketable. It puts them at the cutting edge of the industry, where they can serve as coaches, thought leaders, and speakers at conferences. And it lets them stay focused on what they do best: building relationships.
Investing in new technology is, in itself, an investment in the team.
3. “We have HUGE goals this year.”
New fiscal years mean new individual and team goals. And for lots of folks, their goals are bigger than ever.
Staring down lofty dollars and donor goals can feel totally overwhelming ––we get it! This is where tech tools can help you work smarter, not harder. (We are Team Work-Life Balance over here at EverTrue.)
The magic of technology is that it allows you to scale. This means that you can keep doing the awesome things you’re doing, weave in the use of a new tech tool, and get way more done – with just about the same amount of effort.
Here’s how an investment in new technology can help you crush your goals without burning out:
- By using AI to make a mass email feel like a 1:1 message for your donors
- By stewarding donors in real time with ease utilizing personalized videos
- By utilizing smart segmentation for direct mail appeals to increase each piece’s ROI
- By assigning a donor rating based on behavior to trigger gift officer outreach
4. “We just hired a new leader.”
We host advancement VPs all the time on the RAISE Podcast, and we love to host leaders who are just getting their footing in a new VP position. Their insights are fascinating. (You can tune in here).
On a recent episode featuring David Lively, the SVP of Advancement at Northwestern University, David shared how new VPs have a short-lived chance to shakeup bad habits and replace them with efficiency: by “looking to the data.”
Data is dispassionate – meaning it can’t bend the truth about the strengths and weaknesses of an advancement operation. By looking to the numbers, a new leader can determine where the MGO team needs the most help (Booking more meetings? Entering good contact reports? Making asks? Following up on meetings?), and then implementing a tech tool to fire up this new focus.
Here are a few ways that a new leader can address performance gaps by rolling out a new tech tool:
- By implementing monthly digital portfolio reviews to ensure prospects are moving throughout cultivation stages
- By introducing a review of all outstanding proposals to wrap up outdated asks
- By launching a multi-touchpoint cadence plan for gift officers to practice polite persistence with top prospects
5. “We’ve got a tech champ on our team.”
After over 10 years of working with advancement teams to onboard new tech tools, we can tell you with 100% certainty that the most successful implementations, and the teams that later see the highest ROI, and the ones that are led by a dedicated champion.
You know the tech champion on your team. Maybe there are multiple champs. Maybe YOU’RE the champ!
Tech champions are those teammates who are natural innovators, always champing at the bit to test out new ways of doing things. They’re not afraid to iterate, analyze, recalibrate, and repeat.
At EverTrue, we help leaders identify their tech champions by asking them to think of folks on their team that have a “start-up mindset.” Those tech champions are valuable players.
Give your tech champion(s) the reigns to research, implement, and onboard a new tech tool. It capitalizes on their natural tech-savviness and innovative tendencies AND fuels their need for new inspo. Everyone wins.
Here are a few ways that a tech champion can help ensure that a new tech investment will be worth the squeeze:
- By coordinating an investment pitch to leadership and ROI goals for the new tech tool
- By serving as the point-person during tech implementation
- By demonstrating ROI and coaching other teammates to use the tool.
If you read this article and thought “This is ME! This is MY team!” then the moment might be right for you to invest in new technology. At EverTrue, we offer tech solutions that include scalable donor videos, easy direct mail, fundraiser performance dashboards, and full-suite donor intelligence for advancement teams. Chatting about your tech suite is just about our favorite thing to do. Schedule time with a member of our EverCrew here!