By Attila Ambrus, COO of Lowcono Inc.

Non-profit organizations are mission-driven business entities, their focus is program development and fund raising for these programs. These activities are very labor-intensive, they require volunteers and staffing, which are big parts of their operating expenses. According to the Better Business Bureau, an efficient non-profit spends up to 35% of their budget on operations.

With constant budget constraints, choosing the right technology is where these organizations could reduce operational cost – if the right technology is chosen and implemented correctly. Non-profits are typically not run by technologists, though – technology is not their main area of focus, and a non-profit very rarely is a carrier choice for people with technology expertise, so even choosing between vendor-provided solutions is a difficult task. Technology is often considered the “necessary evil” and given a lower priority, which can create ripple effects in business processes, slowing down operations and increasing cost.

Why it makes sense to adapt a single-platform low-code solution for non-profits

Although businesses may find it challenging to correctly account for technology upgrades in their budgets, this is an easy process when they consider the benefits that result from this type of investment. A few easily quantifiable benefits are:

Increased productivity

Investing in technology improves efficiency significantly in multiple ways. The cost of labor over time is always higher than the cost of technology. Everything that employees execute repeatedly can be and should be automated. Minimizing the amount of manual tasks saves cost and time, and ensures the quality of the information flow.
Non-profits still heavily rely on spreadsheets in Excel or in the cloud, still use a lot of individual applications in their ecosystem. The communication and data flow between these business applications are inefficient, the connections are fragile, all resulting in incomplete information transfers or even data loss. If corrupt data points given to the leadership in an organization, the tainted data undermines the quality of their critical business decisions, possibly steering the company in an unwanted direction.

A single, enterprise-grade business application platform, handling all business processes company-wide, is the only future-proof solution for these problems. Low-code tools are cost efficient to create custom business applications, and they are simple to maintain, even by non-technical users, after introduced in the business ecosystem, saving money on the running cost of the business.

Employees who believe their company uses modern technology are more innovative, more engaged, and more productive if the technology is simple to use for everyone including non-technical staff.

Reduced cost of development

Every business is unique, with their unique needs which require their own solutions.
There are a lot of vendors delivering fantastic speeches about how their products will solve the customer’s unique needs. Most of the time these solutions are rigid, and existing business processes of the customer will have to be changed to the needs of the actual solution. Customers end up with large and unexpected fees, to be paid upfront, for implementing features that they did not really need. Once it’s done, they end up with an expensive solution that is even more costly to maintain, and for which they will be paying license fees, but only a fraction of the features they will end up using.

Low-code platforms are inherently faster and cheaper to use for development, they are highly customizable, and cheaper to maintain.

Increased client satisfaction

The technical skills of the average consumer is getting higher and higher every day. The more sophisticated the client the higher the expectations they will have when they shop for solutions. Basic client management tasks, like client onboarding, document sharing and signing, reminders to employees and clients, signatures, task allocation need to be flawless, error-free, and very easy, convenient processes – these tasks can all be handled automatically by a single-platform solution.

Better security

It took a long time for organizations to accept that security in the cloud could be, in fact, better than it was previously, handled by their in-house IT staff locally – simply put, COVID-19 changed everything. The pandemic forced everyone to quickly rethink how to make sure employees can reach the organization’s infrastructure from anywhere. The first wave was the various remote access solutions, to provide direct access to traditional in-house infrastructure, then came the realization they do not need to maintain such a large physical footprint, rent offices just to run their legacy infrastructure, upgrade their internet connection etc., they can instead move everything to the cloud and save a lot of costs on reducing their physical presence. Security now starts primarily in the cloud where the first line of defense is already in place by the service providers. Properly designed and implemented security protocols will protect customer data against attempts of unauthorized access.

Learn more about low-code solutions here!


What kind of problems low code can solve for non-profits

Beyond small-to-medium-scale business process solutions, like eliminating databases without a relational connection, also known as spreadsheets, providing client relationship management or enterprise resource planning and management tools, HR or marketing and sales applications, just to name a few, low code platforms are built to solve much bigger, mission-critical issues for non-profits.

I picked three interesting examples from a recent “Low-Code for Good” hackathon to illustrate what kind of solutions low-code platforms can provide for non-profit organizations.

New Hope Community Services is a non-profit in Singapore helping the homeless community, they are looking for low code solutions to help providing shelter, food, health services, and clothing for the homeless.

Project Alianza is a non-profit creating tools leveraging technology to provide better education tools for rural school-age children and woman Central America. They are looking for low-code solutions to make education more accessible.

The Welcome App is a tool that helps people start new lives in a new country. It provides resources and connects users with companies, service providers, municipalities, local individuals to facilitate easier integration. They are looking for low-code solutions to improve the quality of their services.

Conclusion

Technology is always faster than the capacity of any company to realize their shortcomings and try to catch up on their own, simply by learning what they need to do. The flow of new and exciting new technology tools never stops. Avoid investing in technology just for the sake of doing it. Focusing on core values and existing in-house expertise, focusing on the mission is what a non-profit should stick with, and finding existing technology to support that mission should be done by outside help. Hire experts, who already know what technologies you need to use, and who can execute solutions for the organization.

Problems exist at a different scale at each non-profit organization. The smartest first investments are smaller, manageable projects, and moving gradually to bigger, mission critical initiatives is the way to go. If an organization chooses to invest in customized application development, small or big, they can ensure constant expansion, they can provide better customer satisfaction and outperform their competitors.

Do you work at a non-profit that needs technological help? Reach out at Contact Us – Lowcono