When it comes to embracing digital trends and technologies, the nonprofit sector has historically lagged behind other industries. But that all changed in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic forced digital onto the front burner. 

Suddenly, digital transformation wasn’t just an aspirational goal; it was a mission-critical investment. Organizations needed to find new ways to deliver their services and engage their constituencies digitally. And they needed to do it right away. 

Since then, nonprofits have seen the lasting benefits of a strong digital strategy long after the hardest days of the pandemic passed. Digital solutions bolster organizational resilience, scale your impact, and offer a continuity of mission execution that today’s digital-first world requires. 

But without the urgency forced by the pandemic, it’s likely been tempting to shift your team’s energy to other priorities and rest on the laurels of the initial advances you may have made during the pandemic. 

Ask yourself: Is your organization still pushing to keep pace with the rapidly evolving digital landscape? Are you doing everything you can to take advantage of digital solutions to transform your organization—and your impact—for the better? Did you complete all your ambitious digitalization goals? Or has your digital strategy stalled out? 

A smart digital strategy is still every bit as critical to the success of your organization as it was a few years ago. But if the above questions cause you concern, don’t worry. It’s not too late. Now is the perfect time for your nonprofit to invest in true digital transformation. 

But first, what is digital transformation?

You’ve likely heard people talking about “digital transformation.” Perhaps you’re already having conversations with your team about how you can begin on the path to digital transformation. But what does digital transformation really mean, especially for nonprofits? 

Ask people across industries—and even your own organization—what this term means to them, and you’ll likely receive a wide range of answers. For some, digital transformation still means migrating paper-based processes into the digital realm. But for most organizations today, digital transformation means evolving an existing set of digital tools into a holistic, efficient, mission-supporting ecosystem.

Regardless of what steps you need to take to get there, digital transformation aids defined organizational goals and operational practices and allow for greater collaboration within your organization.

How digital transformation fits into your nonprofit’s digital strategy

Nonprofits are always challenged to use limited resources wisely, so it is vital that they consider how to strategically use technology investments. A digital strategy is crucial for making smart investments. 

Put simply, a nonprofit digital strategy is a roadmap for your organization’s digital future. It outlines where you want to go and how to get there. Your strategy should align with your overall goals, cater to your audience, and focus on the outcomes you’re aiming for. 

However, because the digital world is constantly evolving, it’s crucial to remain flexible. Your organization needs to be ready to adapt its approach when necessary to stay effective in this dynamic environment.

Digital transformation is at the heart of any digital strategy in which you are: 

• Adopting new digital tools, platforms, or technologies 
• Restructuring your digital ecosystem 
• Evolving digital processes and workflows to increase efficiency or maximize impact 
• Defining data-driven measures of success or using data in new ways to inform decision-making 

Finally, keep in mind that digital transformation—like the strategy it supports—is a marathon, not a sprint. 

7 key components of successful nonprofit digital transformation

Digital transformation looks different for every organization, but the process for getting there doesn’t. Our work has led us to recognize the key ingredients for any successful digital transformation strategy.

1. A unifying vision

The message, goals, and metrics that both define your top-line digital future and give you a means for tracking its progress. 

Successful digital transformation doesn’t isolate itself within a single department or working group; it should change how every team and branch of your organization approaches its work. To align your whole organization, you need to define the end you are working to achieve. It’s the rallying cry you use to get the entire organization working from the same playbook. 

What does this look like in practice? Consider Forum One’s work with the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Over the course of several years, we worked with CASE to achieve true digital transformation. Our early work with their leadership established a unifying vision, a  big picture strategy to increase their global membership, which we called “One CASE, My CASE.” The vision was to create a set of digital services that grow global membership and are clearly recognizable as part of a cohesive whole—One CASE—while also being tailored to the specific needs of individual members—My CASE.  This unifying vision helped leadership in every department create objectives aligned with the new direction.

2. The Digital Product Mix

A definition of the digital products—websites, apps, services—that best address audience needs and promise the greatest, most scalable impact toward your goals.

The list of services and benefits your organization currently provides to customers, stakeholders, or citizens is likely a very long one. Consider the digital components of these services—from benchmarking data reports to affinity partner discounts; from webinars to grants; from case work to fundraising; from research and policy to programs. 

Digital transformation will only be successful if your organization looks at every service currently in place and asks where digital can support or improve it. Your digital product mix should also identify where and how to eliminate duplicative, competing, or poorly performing products. The result is a digital ecosystem plan: a map of complementary digital products and services aligned with your mission goals.

3. The Creative Digital Brand Experience

The message, tone, and design direction that will unify your new ecosystem of digital products.

You don’t have to rebrand your organization to digitally transform it, but you do need to define how you want your brand to be experienced digitally as part of your digital future. 

The creative digital brand experience defines the attributes your digital products will aim to express and provides everyone at your organization with a shared vision of how digital products should look and feel. We often find that a great complement to any digital transformation strategy is a well-thought-out design system.

4. The Content Strategy

Recommendations for the content and messaging that drives your primary organizational web presence, leveraged for all the digital properties in your ecosystem. 

While structure and design make digital products easier to navigate, your content is what creates value for your audiences and drives them to engage more deeply. How your organization has communicated in the past should be evaluated against the changed environment we are working within today. 

A comprehensive digital strategy needs to address these changes—what’s produced, where and how it’s distributed, and how you shape your content’s voice, tone, and style. It’s a critical piece of creating a digital ecosystem that feels unified and offers a consistent experience across products and services. We find that even a simple editorial calendar will help you keep track of and plan for what content goes where and why.

5. The Digital Governance, Team, and Organizational Change Plan

The necessary staff and organizational structures you must institute to successfully roll out and operate your new digital product mix.

Driving adoption of new digital tools and processes will require your teams to acquire new skills, introduce new ways of working and collaborating, and likely require creating new roles and business units. 

Digital-first organizations need to move quickly. They need to have processes in place that allow them to be agile—to experiment by “launching and learning.” Your organization’s operations will need to evolve in this direction for you to really become a digital-first organization. 

Your digital governance plan should use agile organizational principles and define:

• The teams and skills you will need to execute your new digital strategy, and then to operate and continually evolve it.
• The structures of reporting and control needed to assure decision-making clarity and ongoing continual improvement. 

6. The Supporting Technology

The specific systems required for supporting the new digital product mix: CMS, CRM/AMS, marketing automation, analytics, business intelligence, customer data, cloud infrastructure—and on and on.

Many people think a digital transformation project is solely an exercise in modernizing technologies at your organization. It isn’t the only thing, but it’s the glue that holds together your digital foundation and enables your organization to execute on your digital transformation vision. 

Behind every stakeholder touchpoint and every functional area of responsibility there is usually a system in place (or planned) to support it. Your digital strategy needs to assess existing systems and ensure you are using the ones that are best suited to meet the needs of your organization’s re-imagined digital products. 

7. An Implementation Schedule and Budget Plan

A timeline for staging the release of prioritized improvements over the next three years.

No plan is really a plan without a schedule and an understanding of the financial investment needed to support it. Done right, digital transformation planning needs to address at least a three-year horizon. Of course, you’ll want to include more details for the first year’s prioritized initiatives and revisit the timeline on a regular basis as priorities shift. 

This approach provides your leadership team with the information necessary to inform and educate the board as they plan responsibly for the future. Your schedule and plan should also accommodate for ranges and key trade-offs that can be made across the new or updated digital initiatives your new digital strategy recommends.

Embracing digital transformation for the greater good

As your nonprofit adapts and changes with the times,  a well thought out digital strategy must be a part of your assessment and planning. Your mission depends upon it. Need help mapping out a mission-aligned digital transformation strategy that will equip your organization for success for years to come? Forum One can help.