So far we’ve covered how to identify opportunities for automation in non profit and we’ve talked about some tools that you might already use that can assist with the opportunities you identify. We in the non-profit industry face unique challenges in delivering on our mission and vision with limited resources. Tools like Microsoft PowerApps and the Power Automate platform offer very low-cost and low-code ways to streamline operations, automate workflows, and enhance productivity within any given organization. So, what are some strategies for implementing these technologies in your organization? let’s dive in.
There are three main strategies organizations can implore:
- IT-Led Approach
- Employee-Led Approach
- Hybrid Approach
IT-Led Approach
With this approach, your IT team creates centralized control and governance, ensuring consistency and security across your organization. This strategy may not be feasible for nonprofits that don’t have an internal IT team. An IT-led approach works well for large nonprofits with complex data management and compliance requirements.
Key Components:
- Establish a Center of Excellence (CoE) within the IT department – This will allow you to develop and maintain organizational standards and best practices.
- Define clear governance policies and security measures – This will help your organization mitigate risks associated with data breaches and non-compliance
- Develop standardized templates for common use cases within your organization – This can accelerate the app and automation development process
This approach allows for better control over the application lifecycle, reducing overall total ownership cost as usage scale. This also allows for oversight necessary for enterprise-scale implementations.
Employee-Led Approach
This is by far my favourite approach for implementing this kind of technology and automation approach. This strategy relies on empowering employees to create their own solutions, thus fostering innovation and rapid problem-solving. This approach works very well since employees usually know what problems they need to solve. By empowering them to do this, nonprofits can innovate and adapt to changing needs much faster.
Key Components:
- Provide training and resources to staff so that they can learn how to use the tools. This could be in the form of providing access to self-service resources that help employees understand best practices specific to your organization, providing tutorials on how to create apps and automation
- Create a community of practice for knowledge sharing between employees and departments
- Implement license auto claim for efficient resource allocation. This means that you should have rules in place that provision licenses to employees when they need access to premium features
This strategy is ideal for smaller nonprofits, however, mid-size and larger nonprofits can also implement this strategy effectively. This strategy works very well, especially with tech-savvy staff members. It encourages grassroots innovation and can lead to the development of tailored solutions for your organization.
Hybrid Approach
This strategy tries to balance centralized control with employee empowerment. Offering flexibility while maintaining governance and security.
Key Components:
- Establish Managed Environments for visibility and control – this will allow IT Admins to manage Power Platform (or any other tool you use) at scale with more control and more insights
- Establish a review process for employee-created apps – This will allow your organization to maintain quality and security standards while still encouraging innovation
- Leverage Microsoft Dataverse – This will allow your organization to create more sophisticated apps with a very robust data back end.
This approach can work very well for mid-sized nonprofits with diverse sets of programs and tech-savvy staff members or just staff members who are willing to learn something new and apply it to their work right away.
How
All these approaches do come with drawbacks which we will get into during a later edition of the newsletter. Before ending this, here are some other implementation considerations:
- Start Small: Start with a pilot project to test and refine your processes before expanding and scaling
- Focus on impact: Prioritize solutions that directly support your mission and program delivery or solutions that make your internal processes much more efficient
- Leverage integrations: Take advantage of integrations with other tools you use, whether they be other Microsoft tools or not. Most tools nowadays have an API that you can use to integrate.
- Ensure accessibility: Investigate designing applications that work across devices and can support field operations if that’s something important to your organization
