The nonprofit organization improves business processes and enhances fundraising management with Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit

In the 21st century, the issue of environmental problems has become most acute. Development of world technical progress, population growth, and irrational use of land resources has led to an environmental catastrophe that requires an immediate solution from local and international levels. The ecological situation affects not only our country but the whole planet. It doesn't depend on the life of an individual city but on humanity. Many ecological organizations have been created to solve environmental problems, both international and local.

Environmental initiatives in Ukraine

Ecoaction is a civil society organization that unites the efforts of experts and activists in a joint struggle to protect the environment. The organization advocates for energy efficiency, renewable energy, countering climate change, clean air for all, and sustainable development of transport and agriculture in Ukraine.

The organization advocates a community of people concerned about environmental issues and willing to solve them and forms a culture of participation in the protection and preservation of the environment through volunteering, environmental activism, and financial well-being.

Ecoaction supports communities in their struggle for their own rights to a clean environment, helping them to unite to solve local problems. The organization trains local activists in the tools of public pressure, advises on environmental issues and risks in certain problem areas, and provides media support.

The role of technology to support eco-initiatives

Not all organizations aim to earn a profit—some work selflessly to help people or communities that are in dire need. However, nonprofits often lack adequate resources to cover operational and IT costs. They have a limited budget to maintain staff, buy devices/equipment, and install and upgrade software.

Like some nonprofit organizations, Ecoaction is faced with an insufficient technical level of software for full system operation.

There was a need to:

• organizing the process of attracting and managing donors and volunteers, setting up a single space for managing business processes and data of the organization;
• optimizing and improving all processes for attracting and retaining volunteers;
• organizing effective accounting of financial revenues from donors;
• increasing funding for the organization.

Microsoft for Nonprofit program

Microsoft offers many donated and discounted products for nonprofits like Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, etc. through the Microsoft for Nonprofit program. Each eligible nonprofit can request free software and cloud resources to use the latest technologies for good.

Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit connects intelligent and integrated cloud capabilities of the Microsoft stack to the most common nonprofit organizational scenarios including constituent and supporter management, award management, fundraising, volunteer management, program design and delivery, operations, and data management. By unifying once disparate data from across the organization, nonprofit organizations benefit from recommendations and insights critical to accelerating mission outcomes.

It harnesses the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, and LinkedIn, all brought together by the Nonprofit Common Data Model and built on a platform providing best-in-class security and compliance. It provides nonprofit organizations with a holistic, connected platform, empowering staff and volunteers to focus on the work that matters most in delivering their mission.

As a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, DevRain supports nonprofits as a software license provider and technical partner, which enabled Ecoaction to get access to all Microsoft for Nonprofit program benefits.

Dynamics 365 Fundraising & Engagement

Dynamics 365 Fundraising & Engagement is part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit and powered by Dynamics 365 Sales. It's a relationship management platform to help you modernize constituent engagement so you can increase mission impact. With Fundraising and Engagement, you can:

• develop donor and supporter bases. Get a comprehensive view of constituents so that you can connect more effectively through personalized engagement. Increase donor loyalty and lifetime giving by understanding and addressing their priorities;
• drive fundraising efficiency and reduce costs by automating key business processes. These business processes include donation, opportunity, campaign, and event management;
• get an overall view of fundraising and financial outcomes. Eliminate the need for complex fundraising and financial reconciliation through end-to-end donation, revenue, and transaction management.

This solution relies on Azure services for features such as recurring gift processing and automated financial summaries. You can integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Dynamics 365 with Fundraising and Engagement. This integration helps you enhance donor and prospect research with tailored approaches that leverage LinkedIn networks and interactions.

Fundraising and Engagement organizes your efforts into Development, Fundraising, Gifts, Events, Reports, and Configuration areas. Areas influence the navigation pane options you see to make it easier to work on closely related tasks. And it's easy to switch between areas, so you can work the way that works best for you.

This comprehensive solution was deployed for Ecoaction to manage customer relationships, which helped to modernize the interaction with donors and clients to improve mission impact.
This decision opened the following opportunities:

• managing and engaging with contacts (donors, organizations...);
• creation of fundraising campaigns and tracking major goals; - managing and assigning memberships to contacts;
• accounting for donor transactions;
• managing organization events.

Dynamics 365 Volunteer Management

Dynamics 365 Volunteer Management is a solution that allows nonprofit employees to manage the day-to-day processes associated with hiring, adding, and retaining current volunteers. It is built on Microsoft Power Apps, with the Nonprofit Common Data Model as its foundation.

Key capabilities of Volunteer Management include:

• publish engagement opportunities: design the opportunity and define qualifications, skills, and shifts needed;
• approve volunteers: Review volunteer profiles and qualifications, and then approve individuals to participate in engagement opportunities;
• track volunteer onboarding: Quickly and easily understand what stage of the onboarding process the volunteer is in;
• manage day-off activities: Track attendance and balance shift volumes when an activity is happening;
• communicate with ease: Define automated messaging to ensure your volunteers receive timely logistics, training, and gratitude for their time;
• gain volunteer insights: Understand who is registering for, failing to show up to, and repeatedly contributing time to your organization.

With Dynamics 365 Volunteer Management Ecoaction was able to keep track of volunteers and improve communication with them, search for opportunities to involve volunteers and donors, have an overall picture of involvement, and be able to track volunteer activities and profile changes; can set up Automated Learning / Logistics Letters for Volunteers, can create events that require volunteers and verify and approve volunteer requests.

All these solutions are an integral part of the technical support of nonprofit organizations. Thanks to these implementations, more like-minded people will join the Ecoaction, which can make this world a better place.

Deploy Microsoft solutions for your nonprofit organization

Our goal is to provide nonprofits with technology solutions that they can use to deliver services efficiently and have the greatest impact on the organization's mission.

Microsoft's solutions give us the opportunity to help transform our nonprofit customers globally. This opens the door for us to personalize opportunities for organizations of different activities. DevRain's implementation solution can meet common needs, enabling us to focus on working with Microsoft to address the value of nonprofits.