More and more donors are finding out about nonprofit organizations online and using digital spaces to support the causes that they care about. To keep up with other modern organizations, it’s crucial that you consider a nonprofit digital transformation.
Digital transformation is a common buzzword that seems more complicated than it is. At its core, it simply describes how organizations and businesses improve their processes through technology. If your own nonprofit tech solution isn’t doing all it can to support your mission and drive you towards your goals, a digital transformation is the exact thing you need.
But where do you start? How do you know if you need one? How does one even begin the process of a nonprofit digital transformation?
As a trusted nonprofit partner, the Kanopi team has compiled some of our own insights here. This guide will walk you through the basics of what a nonprofit digital transformation is, how it can help your nonprofit, and the basic steps to get started.
Nonprofit Digital Transformation: What Is It And Why Is It Important?
Nonprofit digital transformation is the integration of technology across all areas of the organization. The result is an improvement in how the nonprofit functions and provides value. Ultimately, a successful nonprofit digital transformation should streamline internal operations and optimize supporter relationships.
How do you know if your own organization needs a digital transformation? Ask yourself the following questions:
Are you and your staff members communicating with donors manually?
Do you often find mistakes in your donor database? Misspelled names, typos, or duplicate profiles?
Do you sync your CRM and CMS manually? How often do you have to conduct large scale website maintenance?
Is it becoming harder to track fundraising engagements as your supporter base grows?
If you answered yes to any of the above, a nonprofit digital transformation should definitely be in your future. Otherwise, you’re stuck wasting valuable time and resources on processes that can quickly be automated and streamlined with the right solution.
How Digital Transformation Can Help Nonprofits
In order to better understand how exactly a digital transformation can help your nonprofit, let’s review some common challenges organizations have when it comes to their tech solutions. Then, we’ll review how a digital transformation can help resolve them.
Common Pitfalls for Nonprofits
Without a dedicated digital strategy to guide a nonprofit’s efforts and streamline operations, your organization risks falling behind and missing key opportunities with potential supporters.
Here are the common areas of digital strategy where nonprofits fall short:
Missing vital donor engagement opportunities, such as online fundraising directly on your website.
Using outdated campaign strategies, like sending generic communications to your entire supporter base rather than personalized messaging.
Lacking communication between departments and fundraising tools, leading to a fragmented understanding of your overall data.
Benefits of Nonprofit Digital Transformation
What exactly can an effective and well planned nonprofit digital transformation do for your organization? Consider the following benefits:
Empower nonprofit leaders to make data-driven decisions. Strategies and donor outreach methods are much more successful when they’re backed by concrete data and historical insight.
Automate the process of tracking and recording necessary donor engagements. Your dedicated nonprofit tech solution should be collecting all key data points as each engagement happens.
Save on manual labor time by staff members. A nonprofit digital transformation transfers many of the manual tasks that staff members undertake to an automated solution.
Streamline day-to-day tasks like sending thank you emails, updating donor profiles, etc. Having tools facilitate these day-to-day activities not only frees up time for your staff members but also ensures that these necessary tasks are done on time and accurately.
Ensure that your nonprofit tech solutions support a growing organization. As your audience and internal team expand, your donor database, nonprofit website, and other nonprofit tech should be able to support this growth.
Provide a more secure, trusted experience for supporters. Your tech is only as good as how secure it is. Nonprofit solutions help you gather and use your data more effectively, but it of course has to protect that data as well. A digital transformation can ensure that your tools do just that.
Allow for a flexible work environment by enabling team members to work from home. A nonprofit digital transformation gives you the tools and resources to streamline how your own staff members communicate and work together. Some nonprofit tech solutions can even empower your organization to work from home.
Increase your online fundraising impact. By investing in the best nonprofit tools for your unique goals and mission, you’re also better able to facilitate online fundraising efforts and increase your impact.
Offer convenient ways for others to support and give to your organization. Your online donation tool, CMS, event management solution, text fundraising platform, and more, are all ways your nonprofit can transform its digital system. These novel tools also provide more opportunities and channels for donors to support your nonprofit.
Getting Started with your Nonprofit Digital Transformation
If you’re interested in bringing your nonprofit digital solutions to the next level, you’re already on the right track by reading this article. Starting with research is always the best approach whenever you make any meaningful and long-lasting changes to your organization and how it operates. But what next actions should you take to get the ball officially rolling?
Nonprofit digital transformations are going to look different depending on where your organization currently stands, the solutions you already use, and your unique goals and mission. However, there are some general steps you’ll likely follow:
Complete a nonprofit tech audit. This reviews how your nonprofit is currently doing in the digital space. While this can be done manually, partnering with a nonprofit tech consultant or another experienced agency will be your best bet.
Identify current technology gaps and opportunities.Look to your nonprofit database and take note of any engagements that have fallen behind. Turning to your tech stack, identify processes that cause more roadblocks than solve them.
Come up with a plan for your digital transformation. This should include a roadmap of the tools you’re going to invest in as well as how you’re going to implement them. Consider the timeframe and other constraints you may have, like budget and staff time.
While tackling a nonprofit digital transformation is possible to do on your own, it’s recommended that you partner with an experienced tech consultant to ensure you’re not missing any vital opportunities and that your solution is doing all it can for your mission.
As the centralizing factor of many of your online engagements, your nonprofit website is crucial for maximizing your donor relationships and leveraging opportunities that drive you toward your mission. It’s likely also the first place potential supporters look to find out more about your organization.
Partner with us to start your nonprofit digital transformation and ensure that your CMS and website are effectively meeting your needs and helping you towards your goals. Contact us here to learn more.
From planning new fundraising campaigns to building donor relationships to promoting upcoming opportunities and events, nonprofit leaders have to juggle quite a lot.
While many can get by with the help of their passionate team members and volunteer base, often the expertise of a consultant is invaluable.
One of the largest areas of consulting that nonprofits seek is in technology. With the abundance of fundraising software, constituent relationship management (CRM) platforms, content management systems (CMS), and all of their capabilities, it can get overwhelming setting up the best solution and tech strategy for your nonprofit’s unique needs.
Nonprofit technology consultants can provide a wide range of benefits for your organization, especially if you align your goals and flesh out an actionable plan. However, if you’ve never worked with a consultant before, or you’re considering finding a new one, navigating this relationship and setting realistic expectations can be challenging.
This guide will walk you through the basic offerings of a nonprofit technology consultant, explore the process of hiring the right firm, and share how our own services at Kanopi can help your nonprofit organization.
Contact us for a helping hand with your nonprofit technology strategy and boost your web presence today.
Nonprofit Technology Consulting: The Basics
Let’s imagine you are the leader of a growing nonprofit organization. You have a basic system with an online donation tool, CRM, and CMS platform— however, these solutions are not integrated. Your online fundraising has grown in the past year, and while you’re happy about the upsurge of donors, it’s getting harder to organize and manage all of the new data you have.
While investing in the best tools can certainly make a difference, if you don’t know how to use those tools to drive your mission forward, you’re likely missing out on a couple of key opportunities.
Nonprofit technology consultants are experts in the software solutions that power an organization’s mission. They work closely with nonprofits to review their operations and develop strategic tech improvements that can boost the organization’s efforts.
Whether your current nonprofit software no longer supports your growing operations or you want to optimize your nonprofit website, turning to a tech consultant can focus your efforts and ensure that the tools you use advance your mission.
Depending on their specialty, nonprofit tech consultants can provide guidance for the following tools:
Fundraising software like online donation tools, matching gift databases, prospect research tools, and more.
Event registration software to promote fundraising opportunities, create landing pages, and regulate supporter participation.
Communication and marketing software like email tools and text messaging tools.
CRM systems to organize donor profiles, track fundraising metrics, and compile comprehensive reports.
Volunteer management software to better recruit, retain, and engage volunteers.
CMS systems to create a beautifully branded nonprofit website and effectively market upcoming opportunities.
Nonprofit Technology Consulting Services
Nonprofit tech consultants can assist with a number of different services. For example, some of the common ones are:
Technology solution building. When it comes to leading a nonprofit, there are a number of engagements and processes that need to be considered, as well as what tools will facilitate them. Nonprofit tech consultants can be a guide when it comes to building the best solution for the organization. They’ll work closely with the client to gauge the current system and then make a plan for recommendations.
Technology strategy development. Once a comprehensive and dependable tech solution is in place, consultants can come in to aid in strategy development. This is best done by working closely with the client and becoming familiar with their unique goals and needs.
Research on nonprofit’s goals, audience, and mission. The best consultant for any sector and industry will be one that truly makes the effort to align with their client’s goals, audience, and mission. This way, the suggestions and changes they implement are working towards the common goal(s).
Web design, development, and support. A nonprofit’s website is the virtual face of their organization. It’s where donors can give online, where supporters can learn about the mission, and volunteers can sign up for events. Nonprofit tech consultants can help fundraising leaders determine the best CMS for their needs, as well as assist in web design, development, and support.
Staff augmentation. Sometimes your nonprofit could use the help of extra hands, but can’t necessarily afford to hire new staff. Some nonprofit tech consultants can step in and provide the needed help with their own team, whether it’s in tech development or other support.
Choosing a Nonprofit Technology Consultant
So how do you find the best nonprofit tech consultant for your organization? You might be asking questions like, should the team be local? What type of experience should you look for? How can you find an agency that aligns with your organization’s values and goals?
Well, there’s more to it than just picking the first one on Google search.
In order to find the perfect technology consultant for your nonprofit, here are the common steps you might take:
1. Review your nonprofit needs.
What are the areas in your tech solution where you need the most help? Is it in data storage or integration?
Divide your needs into two categories, “immediate” and “long-term”. This can help you prioritize the tasks that you’d want the consultant to tackle first!
2. Meet with your nonprofit’s board and discuss guidelines.
Of course, the rest of the nonprofit leadership team should be on the same page about hiring outside help and what the help is for. This prevents any confusion or pushback later on.
Additionally, this ensures that your team understands the exact gaps that the nonprofit tech consultant is filling. This helps you and your team better advocate for the type of consulting you’ll need to drive your mission.
From there, consider guidelines for a general budget, a target start date for the consulting service, and a general timeframe for the partnership. Remember, these guidelines are just there to do just that— guide you. It’s important to remain flexible, as not everything can be predicted before the partnership even begins.
3. Compile a list of consultants you might want to work with.
It’s now time to start researching potential nonprofit technology consultants. Here are some of the methods that organizations use to find potential partners:
Recommendations from colleagues at similar nonprofit organizations
Online lists or directories of top nonprofit technology consulting firms
From here, consider what is most important to you. If you prefer to meet in-person with a team, then look for an agency that is local. If you know that you need consulting in website development and support, make sure to review the agency’s specialties to see if they align with your goals.
One of the most important things to consider in your nonprofit tech consultant is their experience. If their client history includes nonprofits and other organizations similar in size and mission to yours, that’s a good indication that they have the necessary skills to help with your own technology solution and strategy.
4. Consider putting out a request for proposal (RFP)
Oftentimes, nonprofits will create a request for proposal for a technology consultant. An RFP’s purpose is to communicate your nonprofit’s exact needs, your mission, the current context of your organization, and any relevant goals when working with a consultant. Asking for a proposal from a potential consultant partner is a great way for you to determine which candidate is best for you.
Your official RFP will be unique to your organization and dependent on a number of factors. However, there are definitely fundamental components that you should include if you want the best results. Make sure your nonprofit’s RFP has:
An overview of your organization, any relevant history, your mission, and a brief description of your donor base.
A description of your nonprofit tech needs.
The guidelines of the partnership, like the general budget and timeframe.
Expected outcomes for the partnership. You can even include a list of tangible deliverables.
Any questions or requests to the consultant team for additional information or background history.
Generally, your RFP should summarize your nonprofit’s needs in a concise way, giving the consultant the necessary information to propose a strategy to address them. The more focused your RFP is, the more effective the proposal will be!
Next, it’s time to compile a list of top candidates based on your research. Have your team rank their favorite consultants and then compare the rankings. If there are any clear frontrunners, that’s a clear indication of who might be best.
Once you’ve narrowed down your top picks and finalized your RFP, it’s time to reach out to them. This is the perfect time to introduce your organization and provide the consultant with your RFP. Make sure they know how and when to get back in touch.
6. Ask for references and follow up
Hiring a consultant is a lot like hiring staff. You need to make sure this is someone with whom you can build a relationship and work effectively with.
You and your team should review each of the proposals that you receive from your request. Consider all of the points made in the above steps when determining the best technology consultant for your nonprofit.
Don’t be afraid to also ask for references. Having a good idea of their relationship with other clients can inform you if their approach is right for you.
Once you know who you want to work with, make sure to follow up and start discussing the next steps!
Kanopi: Top Nonprofit Technology Consultant
Now more than ever, a nonprofit website is necessary to drive your online fundraising, meaningfully engage with supporters, and push you towards your mission. As a top partner for nonprofits, we at Kanopi Studios have helped develop over 150 active sites thanks to our continuous improvement team.
Website development, maintenance, and support come naturally to us. With our wide range of website services, we aim to work with you to make the most of your organization’s online presence. Even when your site is officially launched, our work is not done. We also provide a full website growth plan to ensure that your site is sustainable for as long as possible.
This website growth plans often includes:
how to increase conversions for your organization using your website;
CMS customization based on your unique situation;
a three to five-year breathing window (if operating on Drupal.)
Your own plan will be focused on your nonprofit’s unique technological needs. One of our most attractive draws is our complete approach to web design and continuous improvement. We know that small, incremental changes are more beneficial to your website’s health than large structural and system updates every couple of months.
Kanopi Nonprofit Tech Consulting Services
Our specific technology consulting services for your nonprofit include:
User-focused approach to strategy, design, and development.
Continuous improvement approach to website maintenance.
CMS development for Drupal, WordPress, or Mukurtu users with third-party integrations, key feature development, bug fixes, security patches, and more.
Extensive research to ensure that Kanopi understands the nonprofit’s goals, missions, and audience, improving your overall website UX.
Technical SEO optimization to keep your website high in the rankings for popular keywords.
Keeping up with relevant privacy laws and legislations, like whether California’s CPAA affects your organization.
User persona creation based on the research collected to map your supporters’ journeys once they visit your site. This also helps you attract site visitors and guide them to your targeted action.
Web design and content strategy development to align your website with your mission and your supporters’ needs.
User testing to ensure that all of the new features and tech strategy work together.
A full website growth plan to set your website up for success even once the partnership is over.
Staff augmentation by some of our most talented team members. We can provide extra hands when it comes to design or development tasks.
With our flexible and completely customized approach to tech consulting for your nonprofit, we go above and beyond for our clients. We don’t aim to just be consultants, but extensions of your team to ensure that your nonprofit website and CMS solution are doing all they can for your mission.
All of our team members are experts at what they do, with an average of 11 years of experience for both the Drupal and WordPress platforms. Explore our portfolio of nonprofit clients to see how we work and the great results we’ve helped create.
Contact us to see if our nonprofit technology consulting services meet your needs.
In 2019, total online nonprofit revenue grew by 10% and is predicted to only continue rising.
The online world is rich and full of information. From watching Netflix to exploring your Instagram feed to looking up dinner recipes, there seems to be no end to the internet content available.
With such a truly saturated space, your nonprofit needs a focused and comprehensive digital strategy if you want to reach supporters in meaningful ways and increase fundraising for your mission. Otherwise, your message can get buried and you risk losing sight of your goal.
The best digital nonprofit strategy likely spans multiple tools and marketing outlets. Creating this type of strategy can seem intimidating, especially if you’re not aware of how those tools and outlets support each other. This guide will dive deep into not only exactly what a digital nonprofit strategy is, but also how to best create one for your organization and some top tips to maximize those efforts.
Your nonprofit organization likely already depends on a few key tools to reach and engage your supporters. Your online donation platform facilitates gifts, your content management system (CMS) helps you create a beautifully designed website, and your marketing tools promote upcoming campaigns and engage donors.
However, it’s not enough to just have an arsenal of working tech. In fact, it takes careful planning and coordination to ensure that your tools and marketing strategies not only work together but also support each other. That’s where your digital nonprofit strategy comes in.
In simple terms, your digital nonprofit strategy is a focused plan that takes action on your fundraising and donor engagement goals through digital marketing methods.
Your overarching nonprofit goals, any budget constraints, and the technology you have all impact your digital strategy. This strategy then informs your online marketing efforts, with the two working together to maximize your nonprofit’s impact.
The common tools and marketing channels nonprofits use for their digital strategy include:
Nonprofit website – Your website is an increasingly important part of your nonprofit digital strategy. Your nonprofit site centralizes your online engagement and is likely the first place supporters will look when they want to find out more about your mission and any upcoming events or campaigns. It’s also where donors give! How you design your website and the content you add to it is crucial in your digital marketing efforts.
Online fundraising solution – This is how you accept online gifts from your supporters. It’s important that the tools you use accurately capture donor data and protect their sensitive information.
Email/text communications – Sending your supporters marketing materials, whether through email or text, is a popular way to get the word of an upcoming campaign out quickly. Use your communication tools to further relationships with donors by sending them personalized messages, donor thank you letters, and other targeted content.
Social media content – More and more, people are finding out about exciting events and nonprofit efforts through social media content. Because of its easy shareability, it’s a great way to not only reach your current supporters but also expand your audience. Encourage your followers to repost your content and thank them publicly for it on the platform!
One of the great things about your nonprofit digital strategy is that it naturally depends on tools and is generating valuable data. You can reference this data to continually refine your digital strategy and reach your target audience in more meaningful ways.
Steps To Creating A Nonprofit Digital Strategy
Your nonprofit digital strategy is unique to your organization, goals, and audience. These are some common steps that all nonprofit leaders will generally follow:
1. Determine overarching nonprofit goals
The first step to creating a successful nonprofit digital strategy is to establish your goals. This is the foundation of your entire strategy — each engagement and decision your nonprofit makes should be with your core goals in mind.
To begin brainstorming, consider these questions. Do you want to:
Raise a certain amount of money?
Increase awareness of your mission?
Grow your audience or base of supporters?
Increase a specific audience profile?
Generate new leads?
Once you have a general idea of the goals you want to accomplish, it’s time to make them actionable. Start by:
Identifying gaps in your current nonprofit digital strategy and consider how you might tackle them for your updated strategy.
Analyzing data in your database to find a quantifiable target for your overarching goals. For instance, look at past successful fundraising campaigns to gauge what a realistic goal may be this time around.
Brainstorming the technology that will play a role. What digital tools and marketing outlets will you be using?
Determining your goals is crucial to guide your nonprofit digital strategy and to provide insight into the choices you’ll make. Make sure your goals are specific and actionable, with clear targets and ways to measure success.
2. Define audience and web personas
If you want to make the most of your nonprofit digital strategy, you have to become familiar with the audience you’re trying to reach.
Start with reviewing your past data to learn more about how your existing audience engages with your nonprofit. Looking to your website, Google Analytics, CRM, and email marketing metrics can give you clues into the types of supporters that engage with you online and the content that they best respond to. For instance, if past donors heavily engaged with your Instagram posts, then that’s worth noting when creating your new digital strategy.
You can use this same data to create audience or web personas. Web personas are detailed profiles of your nonprofit’s target audience. Your organization will likely use more than one web persona to account for the different types of people who support your nonprofit. With a clearly defined target customer in mind, it’s much easier to tailor your digital content to speak directly to them.
To create web personas, you need to:
Research your audience. Some key audience details to take note of are age, location, income level, interests/activities, and donor behavior.
Document and organize information. If there are common data points, begin grouping them together to start creating a persona. This could by interests, needs, preferences, age group, corporate match eligibility, and more. How you segment your own supporters will depend on your unique organization and goals.
Bring personas to life. It’s easier to create targeted marketing content for a persona when you think of them as real people. Consider giving your audience personas a name with a visual/face that matches their general description.
When creating web personas it’s helpful to get as detailed and specific as possible. The above image is an example of how you might organize the details in a web persona and determine the best way to connect with that audience. From there you can produce website content and other digital materials catering to each persona, creating a more engaging and personalized user experience.
3. Consider any constraints
As you develop your digital nonprofit strategy and set your goals, you also have to consider any constraints. While it’s nice to think that the sky’s the limit, it’s often unrealistic and can set your strategy up for failure.
These might not all apply to you, but here are some of the common constraints to keep in mind:
Financial budgets. Consider how much you can spend when it comes to developing, implementing, and executing new digital marketing and fundraising strategies.
Technological constraints. What is the current state of your organization’s technological infrastructure?
Timing. Is the timing of the digital strategy aimed towards a certain date, such as Giving Tuesday, or an anniversary?
Staffing and labor. Is your current team enough to handle everything when it comes to your digital nonprofit strategy? Remember, you can also turn to volunteers or even a tech consultant for additional staffing.
4. Invest in the necessary tools
If you’re looking to really bring your digital nonprofit strategy to the next level, you might have to invest in a new tool or platform. The internet is always changing, with new ways to engage online popping up all the time. It’s worth it to review your current processes and make sure that it’s meeting the needs of your growing nonprofit and supporters.
Today, nonprofits see their digital engagement with supporters occur in these locations:
Nonprofit website
Online marketing campaigns
Social media activity
Email marketing campaigns
Is your current nonprofit solution doing all it can for the above channels? Consider the gaps in your toolkit or ways your tools could work better together. For example, let’s say your digital nonprofit strategy’s focus is social media and peer-to-peer engagement. Do you have all of the necessary accounts and fundraising tools you need?
Or, let’s say you’re pushing corporate giving. Does your organization have the appropriate tools in place to promote matching gifts and drive more match requests to completion? This might mean embedding an employer search tool into your donation form for donors to research their eligibility or enabling autosubmission tools to let donors automatically submit requests to employers post-donation.
Often, nonprofits seek the help of a nonprofit technology consultant at this stage. The right consultant can perform an audit of your nonprofit’s current tech solution and make suggestions. If your website no longer supports your growing organization, a consultant can help upgrade your current CMS platform or optimize it with extensions.
5. Align your messaging and content
Now that you have concrete goals and the tools to carry them out, it’s time to think about your marketing content. This is the voice of your nonprofit digital strategy and helps tell your story.
When it comes to the story you want to tell, you not only have to be true to your mission but also figure out how to tell it in easily shareable and digestible bites. Short, but emotionally investing, stories are much more likely to resonate with supporters and reach new prospects via reposting and sharing.
The content of your digital strategy should address your audience first. Remember how we defined the audience and developed personas in an earlier step? This data can now be used to personalize the messaging and content to each persona group.
For instance, consider the persona of a completely new supporter. Let’s imagine them stumbling upon your nonprofit website. To immediately connect with them through your content, consider embedding a high-quality image within your homepage of the community you help, along with some quick stats about why they are in need. This can capture the visitor’s attention and introduce them to the most immediate goals for your organization.
6. Consider the channels you use
You already know that the most important digital channels to your nonprofit digital strategy are your website, social media accounts, email campaigns, and any other online advertising.
But how do those channels work together?
Your nonprofit website is the central hub for your digital strategy. It can connect supporters to your email list, social media accounts, and is where they can give online. Your website needs to be well designed, informative, valuable, and fully integrated with your other online fundraising and CRM platforms.
Social media platforms are great for reaching wide audiences. Consider where your current supporters are most active online and focus on those few platforms to promote any upcoming campaigns, advertise blog posts, and share fun, but relevant, videos or viral challenges. Try to post content that encourages supporters to share it with their own network.
Email marketing is an essential part of your nonprofit digital strategy. Not only can you use it to reach a wide number of people at once, but you can also even create segmented email lists to cater to more of your specific audience personas. Make sure to track open and response rates to determine which email outreach tactics work best.
Online advertising and other digital marketing strategies are important for increasing visibility. This can include online ads on different websites or links back to your organization from other reputable charity organizations. This can also involve SEO techniques that help boost the visibility of your website and blog posts during organic internet searches.
7. Measure campaign’s success
The last thing you need to determine before you start employing your digital nonprofit strategy is how you’re going to measure success. This should have been outlined during the goal-setting stage, but you can take it to the next level with some key tools.
For instance, use your nonprofit tech solution to compile reports and compare metrics based on the combined data from all of your tools and marketing channels. What types of data points and metrics should you look at? Here are some of the top ones:
Completed donations
Volunteer applications
Email subscriptions
Pledge signatures
Email open rates
Email response rates
Website bounce rate
Online donation page bounce rate
Compile reports on these metrics prior to the campaign and after. This gives you a direct look into how your digital nonprofit strategy impacted and helped your organization.
5 Tips to Make The Most Of Your Nonprofit Digital Strategy
The best digital nonprofit strategy is data-based and audience-centric. While how you make the most of your own strategy is dependant on your organization and mission, here are the top tips that can help all nonprofit leaders:
Optimize for a mobile experience. Did you know that roughly 1-in-5 American adults are “smart-phone only” users? At every touchpoint in your digital nonprofit strategy, it’s crucial that you consider how this may look on a mobile device. Otherwise, you’re missing out on some key opportunities.
Use email appeals. Even as new technology and platforms arise, email is still the best way to reach your supporters online. Make sure that donors are aware of your email list and embed forms for users to opt-in on your website, social media accounts, and other relevant places. And don’t be afraid of being aggressive with your send schedule; data shows that while people may grumble about getting too much email, they still open, read, and interact with it.
Personalize messaging. Whenever you can, you should make your marketing content and messaging as personalized as possible. This is most used in email marketing, but can be implemented with text messaging and even within your website. For instance, consider creating specific landing pages for each of your audience personas to better target their needs.
Inbound marketing techniques. This involves all the ways you make it easy for supporters to find your nonprofit and is much more subtle than outright contacting them. For instance, creating educational blog posts, hosting events, implementing search engine optimization, and sharing social media posts are key inbound ways to build brand awareness. The more people see and recognize your nonprofit, the more likely they want to find out more and support your cause. Remember to always include a link to your nonprofit website and other specific landing pages so that supporters know how to take action if inspired.
Partner with a nonprofit tech consultant. Sometimes, partnering with a nonprofit tech consultant is the best method of truly optimizing your digital strategy. The right agency should work closely with your organization to become familiar with your goals, your audience, and current technology solution. Then, they can provide their expertise when it comes to optimizing that solution for your nonprofit’s needs.
If you think a nonprofit technology consultant is what you need, explore our own services to see if Kanopi is right for you.
How Kanopi Can Optimize Your Nonprofit Digital Strategy
A crucial component of any nonprofit digital strategy is the website. It’s the centralizing factor of almost all of your online engagements and where donors can make gifts. As a top partner for nonprofits, we at Kanopi Studios have helped develop over 150 active sites.
When you partner with us, we don’t just develop, maintain, and support your nonprofit website (though we are experts at it!). We like to think of ourselves as extensions of your organization. With thorough research and data analysis, we dive deep into your unique online audience and provide specific suggestions based on carefully crafted web personas.
We take a continuous improvement approach to website maintenance, as smaller and consistent fixes tend to be more beneficial to your website health than large systematic updates that only happen once a year.
Along with this, we also provide a website growth plan to help you make the most of your online presence even when our partnership is over. We don’t just set up your website and hand over the reins — you’ll get specific and customized next steps as to how to increase conversions and further expand your online platform.
User persona creation to map your supporters’ journeys once they visit your site.
Staff augmentation to provide extra help when it comes to design or development tasks.
Don’t forget SEO! We gave a webinar about it.
Ready to Boost Your Website’s Performance Without the Overwhelm? A must-attend webinar for business owners, marketers, and anyone looking to make SEO work smarter, not harder. Lauren Chervinski gave a webinar focused on SEO called “SEO Survival Kit: 5 Steps to Thrive Now and in the AI Era .” (47 minutes)
If your site is already built on Drupal, or you’re considering switching to the platform, you’ve probably thought about what type of maintenance and support you’ll need to keep it up-to-date.
Whether it’s top-of-mind already, or you’re still looking for more information, this guide will help you understand why maintenance and support is an important part of your Drupal website strategy.
After a site’s been built, it still requires upkeep to ensure it operates effectively and meets your company objectives. Many businesses still take a “set it and forget it” approach when it comes to their sites, leaving them with outdated content, version issues, and vulnerable to security threats.
Whether you’re on D7 and you’re thinking about end-of-life planning, or you’ve moved to a newer Drupal version already, it’s important to factor in Drupal maintenance and support to ensure you’re keeping your site healthy.
Keeping your website updated with current information and reflecting any time-sensitive changes
Essential Drupal Maintenance and Support Tasks
To ensure you have a website that functions optimally, you need to continuously update it. All Drupal websites are made up of a main Drupal core and various modules that require occasional updates. If you don’t run these updates and patches as they come, your website can be vulnerable to security threats and may have bugs and other malfunctions. It’s important to mention, this is not a Drupal-only requirement. All website platforms have similar needs when it comes to long-term maintenance.
Tasks that are key to a good Drupal maintenance plan include:
Consistent site backups
Drupal core updates
Up-to-date themes and modules
Optimized caching
Optimized database
Security updates
Module, theme, and library version updates
Third-party integration support
Regression testing
Bug resolution
Infrastructure maintenance
Uptime monitoring and abnormality alerts
Emergency support
Minor feature improvements
Some companies opt to take on their Drupal maintenance and support in-house, but it can be a time consuming process if your team lacks the skill set required to keep it working optimally. Even if you have the expertise internally, you may want to explore the option of outsourcing your Drupal maintenance and support to an agency to off load the work and allow your teams to focus on other priorities.
Shameless plug: We love Drupal at Kanopi! And, we love creating custom Drupal website maintenance and support plans for our clients.
Drupal maintenance tips for different sectors
Maintaining your Drupal website requires slightly different considerations depending on which sector your organization belongs to. Let’s review a few of the top industries that use Drupal and ways to maintain these websites.
Drupal Maintenance Tips by Sector
Healthcare
Healthcare websites must be accessible and usable for audiences of community members looking for accurate medical information and healthcare resources. Maintaining a healthcare website requires keeping the following considerations in mind:
Compliance with relevant legislation. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) are U.S. laws that protect private health information. To maintain compliance with these regulations, your healthcare website should leverage security measures like data encryption, strong passwords, and access controls.
Accessibility. Healthcare website users may have a variety of permanent or temporary disabilities that affect their ability to use your website. They may also be in an anxious state of mind and need a simple web experience that facilitates convenient access to information. With these considerations in mind, your healthcare website should follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to create a streamlined experience for all users. Examples of these guidelines include adding alternative text for images, captions for videos, and using clear and consistent navigation.
Content updates. Refreshing your healthcare website’s content will help show visitors that your organization is on the cutting edge of new technologies and healthcare best practices. This includes updating your user personas based on new audience information, refreshing your user journeys, and updating your blog content with new research findings or testimonials.
Here at Kanopi, our healthcare support services go beyond the basics to ensure your site is a performant platform that continues to meet your goals over time. Review our work in the healthcare industry to get a sense of how we approach ongoing Drupal maintenance and support from a holistic perspective.
Nonprofit
The nonprofit website maintenance process focuses on ensuring your site remains a valuable resource for beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, corporate partners, and other community members. When updating a nonprofit website, pay special attention to the following elements:
User experience and pathways. Has your audience undergone any major changes to their demographics, giving motivations, or donation capacity? Update your user personas based on new information. Then, ensure your website’s pathways are tailored to each persona with clear calls to action (CTAs), navigation elements, and tailored content that speaks to their interests.
Donor information and payment processing security. To maintain donor trust, your website needs to securely process and store their payment information. Do you have a secure payment processor for your online donation page that makes the most of current security technologies and best practices? If not, consider switching to a new platform that can better meet your needs.
Content and messaging updates. Does your website still accurately reflect your nonprofit’s mission and scope? Does it leverage multimedia content like photos, videos, audio clips, and interactive content to tell a comprehensive, compelling story? Ensuring that your site has a cohesive message is key to recruiting new supporters and retaining existing ones.
Considering that 27% of nonprofits have experienced cyberattacks, it’s essential to continually review and update not only your payment processing system but also other security aspects of your website. This includes running Drupal core, module, and theme updates whenever new versions are ready.
Government
Many government websites turn to Drupal because of its top-tier security, scalability, and flexibility. To make the most of Drupal for government needs and maintain a secure government site, prioritize maintenance elements such as:
Compliance with federal and state regulations. Your government website must comply with relevant legislation at the state or federal level. For example,websites for federal agencies must be accessible, address consumer needs, comply with copyright laws, and follow other federal regulations.
Easily accessible information. Providing high-quality, easily accessible information relevant to incidents of national significance is another core requirement for government websites. The information must be objective, conveniently accessible, and delivered without unnecessary jargon.
Scalable network. Your website may have to adapt to traffic surges, especially during major national or international events when people are looking for official information. Ensure your site’s network can scale up to accommodate high traffic volumes and still deliver fast load speeds.
To deliver need-to-know information quickly, make sure your government website is also mobile-friendly. 92.3% of internet users access the web using mobile devices, meaning it’s critical to ensure your website is mobile-responsive and that all buttons and text are easy to read and tap on a mobile device.
Higher Education
Higher education web design trends subtly shift year after year as new generations of students seek information about colleges and universities they’re interested in attending. When refreshing your higher education website to maintain and support it over the years, optimize the following aspects:
Usability. Your site should have clear user journeys for each core audience group, whether prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, or faculty and staff. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly and has clear pathways for each segment to help them get their questions answered and find the resources they need.
Personalization. Website visitors increasingly seek personalized experiences tailored to their unique needs and interests. You can personalize the online experience your website provides by leveraging dynamic content that adapts to each user’s site behaviors. You can also allow visitors to create accounts on your website where they can access a personalized dashboard with relevant information, such as application deadlines.
Interactivity. Interactive content generates over 50% higher engagement than passive or static content. Your higher ed website will benefit from elements like interactive tours, infographics, timelines, or quizzes.
The top college websites grow and change along with their audiences. If you need support when refreshing your Drupal college website, it can be helpful to work with an experienced web design firm (like Kanopi!) that can support you at any stage of the website lifecycle.
Kanopi: The Best Drupal Website Maintenance and Support Service
By choosing an agency to manage your Drupal website maintenance and support, you gain a dedicated team with years of expertise. At Kanopi, we work with you closely to genuinely understand your business needs and create a plan to support it.
We do the ongoing work to stay updated with the latest industry trends and Drupal updates so we can be your trusted partner in the process. Kanopi also takes a continuous improvement and growth-driven approach with incremental improvements like navigation strategy and SEO fixes, so your site is always improving.
Features of Kanopi’s Drupal Maintenance Service
Here are some of our top Drupal maintenance and support services:
When you work with us, we also go way beyond the typical Drupal support and maintenance package. We provide creative support and ‘design on demand’, working with you on anything from user research, persona development, and conversion optimization to wireframing, mood boards, and style guides.
Is this the end of the shock rebuild? Kanopi’s take on the Drupal 9 promise.
Drupal 9 has arrived!
Powering one in every 30 websites across the globe, Drupal launched its latest, most innovative version earlier this month. Drupal 9 is flexible, inclusive, easy to use and faster than ever before.
Here at Kanopi, we’re thrilled by how many people have already contacted us about upgrading to D9. The good news is, unlike previous migrations from D5, to D6 and D7, moving to D9 couldn’t be easier. If you are considering a move to Drupal 9, we’ve summed up just how easy it is to do, and the benefits of moving to D9 now.
‘The easiest upgrade in a decade’
Drupal has claimed the move to D9 is their easiest major upgrade in more than 10 years. Now that we’ve had the chance to perform core upgrades for a number of client sites, we can say with confidence the move from D8 to D9 really is as easy as they say it is. Lead Developer of Drupal, Dries Buytaert explains the ease of the move to D9,
‘The big deal about Drupal 9 is that…it should not be a big deal.’
Dries Buytaert
If you’re operating on Drupal 8 and are ready to move to Drupal 9, look forward to:
The end of the shock rebuild: the need to start building your site from scratch is a thing of the past (Yes, really!)
Cutting edge technology: the platform will be supported with security fixes from November 2021 and will have the ability to add new features twice a year.
Tools that are easy to use: Drupal’s technical architecture made even easier to use with a new layout builder, content workflow tools, and a WYSIWYG media management system.
The move to D9 is so painless, our own Director of Marketing & Communications, Allison Manley had to cry out a Hallelujah!
Drupal 9’s forward-looking technology means Kanopi developers are better equipped to build the most intuitive online experiences and sustainable web platforms. Using the very best frameworks available, including emerging channels such as VR applications and digital assistants, we can help you meet your user’s needs now and in the future.
One thing to note: Drupal 9 core is easy to upgrade, but the contributed modules and custom modules may take a bit of time, depending on the state of the community contribution or your code. That is why we recommend working with us to create a Drupal Transition Plan so we can skillfully make the move when the time is right.
Ready to migrate your site to Drupal 9?
We’re not going to deny the uncertain times we currently face and we know a lot of people are operating on lean budgets to try and weather the storm. It might not be the right time for you to migrate your site, and that’s ok. Take a look at our Drupal 9 Planning Guide. We outline options whether you’re operating with D8, D7, or even D6. Kanopi can help you decide how best to extend the life of your website, with whatever version of Drupal you’re using.
But if you’re excited by the idea of upgrading to Drupal 9, or have questions about how D9 will affect your site, Kanopi is here to help.
“WordPress is just a blogging platform.” Not anymore. It can be anything you need it to be when it comes to working with content and media.
At Kanopi, we love working with our partners. They provide amazing services that complement our own, giving our clients a full suite of needs so that their websites are as powerful and impactful as possible.
One of our longest partnerships is with Pantheon, a WebOps Platform for open-source Drupal and WordPress websites. Their philosophy aligns with our own: that it’s more efficient and effective to make continuous improvements on a website rather than doing more expensive and disruptive monolithic rebuilds. Taking iterative steps towards improving your presence online is all about taking small bites to create big wins.
As a testament to our partnership, Kanopi was thrilled to be included as one of four expert agencies in Pantheon’s new ebook: Faster, Smarter, Safer WordPress for Enterprise. This ebook shares valuable insights on how enterprise-level clients can best leverage WordPress for their needs, as well as how best to work with an agency partner. It also offers “myth-busting” sections to address misconceptions about the capability, security, and scalability of WordPress.
Since WordPress powers about 39.7% of all websites on the internet, it’s clearly a wonderful and proven platform for projects of all sizes. It may have originally started as a platform for bloggers, but it is increasingly popular for enterprise clients. Download the new ebook today to learn more.
Spock: Compute to the last digit, the value of Pi. Computer: *screams*
This was the first thing that comes to mind whenever I’m asked “how do we migrate from Drupal 7 to WordPress”. It seems like an impossible task, like trying to calculate pi to the last digit.
Apples, Oranges, and Pi, oh my
Where Drupal has modules, WordPress has plugins. Where Drupal has nodes, WordPress has posts and pages. Drupal uses blocks, WordPress uses widgets.
Functionally these pieces all accomplish the same tasks, but technically they’re built differently. It means there isn’t a one click solution that will take all your Drupal content and smash it into a WordPress CMS, like replacing the center of an orange with an apple. It just doesn’t work like that.
Ultimately it comes down to this: a Drupal 7 database and a WordPress database are just too different. Their tables have different structures and names and they just don’t understand each other. And with any amount of customization possible on both sides of the equation, computers, or one click plugin scripts, just can’t make the leap.
A Developer Can Migrate D7 to WordPress
That’s right, where a computer fails, a human can succeed. Because the best way to migrate your content from D7 to WordPress is to execute a script (an automated process) that has been designed by a person who has some basic familiarity with the content in question. A developer can compare the different sets of data, determine where it should go, and create a script that tells a computer where to put what. They can also set up the receiving database with tables and columns that match any customizations needed.
Piece by piece, developers can identify the needed tables from your Drupal 7 database and how to migrate them into a WordPress database. It’s not a fast process, but it’s a careful and deliberate one, meant to preserve essential content and data.
Content Migration, Check. What about style and function?
Even though we’ve got your core content, there’s no way to mash a Drupal 7 module or block in a WordPress plugin or widget. Those will need to be built again, using your existing site as a template for the outcome. A developer can absolutely make your site do the same things, but they will need to use a different set of tools. The good news is being able to see the existing function on your website will help them execute the same effect with clarity.
Themes and styles are a mixed bag. They don’t directly transfer, but often chunks of code can be reused, provided it’s clean, documented, and follows best practices. In some cases, it may be easier for a developer to start from scratch and merely mimic the existing theme instead of borrowing from it. Regardless, your site will still look the same at the end of the day whether it’s on Drupal 7 or WordPress.
This sounds complicated!
It is! It really is. But that’s the reason you hire an agency like Kanopi to do the hard stuff for you. Our team is experienced in both Drupal and WordPress, giving us a wide range of internal resources to rely on as we approach your project. We can also help you with choosing your hosting platform; not all hosts are created equal and some are CMS specific, like Acquia for Drupal or WP Engine for WordPress.
That said, there are things you can do in advance of your migration to make the process smoother and reduce the overall time and cost.
Curate Your Content
Go through your website, top to bottom. Are there pages that are no longer relevant? Are you keeping an archive of your blog posts back to 2001 even though your analytics show no user activity that far back? It’s time to hunker down and start cutting out the content you don’t need. Or at the very least, create an accurate list of what you do not need your developer to migrate. Cleaning up your content means there’s less to move, and what is needed is easier to consolidate.
Consolidate
Now that you’ve checked through your site, are there areas that are too similar? Do you have a support page and a content page but the only difference is the url and the title? It’s time to trim away duplicate and redundant content. Redirects can handle your url changes, and your users will appreciate a more streamlined approach to using your site.
Update Your Site / Modules
If your site is out of date, it’s a security risk, plain and simple. And out of date modules can perform in unexpected ways; you don’t want incorrect functionality being copied to your new site. Getting everything up to date and verified will ensure there’s no confusion about what’s expected.
Remove Unwanted Sections / Functions / Content
Does your site have unpublished nodes? Are you saving them for something important? If not, it’s time to purge. Clean out that unused content. Got functions you’re not really fond of? Remove that too. Styles you don’t like? DELETE. Get rid of anything you don’t want; there’s no point in paying to have it moved to WordPress.
Clean Up Your Code
Sloppy themes and templates are bad for a lot of reasons, but specifically it’s not something you want to migrate to your new WordPress site. Cutting corners and using messy code will only cause problems later on. Getting your theme files documented at the very least will make a big difference when it’s time to rebuild them. Not to mention, Drupal and WordPress coding standards are going to differ, there’s some work that could be done ahead of time to ease the transition.
Compute to the last digit, the value of Pi
Unlike computing pi, going from D7 to WordPress is actually possible, even if it’s not easy. And that’s why Kanopi is the agency you want to partner with. We want to work with your site before it’s time to migrate. Our team will get to know your website (the good and the bad) through ongoing Drupal 7 support. We can help you with the content, the consolidation, the updates, and the code in advance of moving to WordPress. And when it’s time to start the nitty gritty migration, we’ll be ahead of the game with far much more than a basic understanding of your site; your needs and goals will already be a part of our roadmap.
And yet across the globe, out of all the websites built with a CMS, WordPress dominates with nearly 60% of the market share, while Drupal just squeaks over 4.5% and is barely knocked out of second place by Joomla!.
Why would anyone switch from Drupal to WordPress?
Because sometimes a power tool isn’t the right tool. Imagine buying a chainsaw to cut delicate flowers for an art project. I don’t doubt it would be amazing to watch, but it would ultimately be a messy, expensive endeavor with an outcome that doesn’t look anything like the result you would have gotten if you’d just used a regular pair of craft scissors.
Maybe you went with Drupal because you didn’t know there were other options. Or maybe Drupal seemed like the right CMS at the time, but now that you’ve had your site for a few years it isn’t quite what you’d been hoping for. Perhaps your needs and goals have significantly changed, and your site no longer lines up.
Regardless of how you ended up with a Drupal site, you now wonder if you need a different tool for the job.
Drupal vs WordPress
Before you decide to move away from Drupal, it’s a good idea to take a look at what both Drupal and WordPress can do specifically for you. They’re both quality platforms that can get the job done, but they do excel in different ways.
5 Advantages of Drupal
Robust User Access Control If you need a lot of users, or various permissions and access controls, then Drupal is going to give you more options from the start, with plenty of room to grow.
Multilingual Functionality Drupal has multilingual functionality baked right into the core. If your audience is multilingual, or your site will be used by a variety of countries, you’ll want this out of the gate.
Easier to Keep Secure Drupal core has a lot to offer developers, meaning they often don’t need as many third-party additions and extensions. Fewer modules means fewer potential holes in a site’s structure. If you’re storing sensitive data, you’ll want to consider this angle
More Flexible Content Types, Views, and Taxonomies Of course other CMSs have these capabilities, but Drupal has increased flexibility and control over how your content is displayed and the relationships between data.
Better for Storing Huge Amounts of Data Large directories, content types, products, etc., require big solutions. If you need to store hundreds of thousands of entries, you will want something made the handle that kind of bulk.
5 Advantages of WordPress
Easier to Use Overall, WordPress is highly user friendly and non-developers have a much easier time using the administrative backend, and Gutenberg has made the content editing process even better.
Larger Library of Extensions and Themes Because WordPress has such a high rate of use across the world wide web, it has a huge community, with a massive library of plugins and themes, both free and paid. There’s plenty to choose from and you’ll almost always find a ready-made solution.
Easier to Get Developers and Support More usage means more developers, and more avenues for support. There’s no shortage of WordPress devs out there, nor a lack of communities and forums where you can find solutions for your site.
Lower Development Costs WordPress has more ‘out of the box’ solutions that require less customization and development time. Reducing costs in those areas means developers can focus their energies on other aspects of your site.
Faster Builds Because of the ease of use, extendibility, community support, and available developers, WordPress builds tend to take less time. Your site can be up and running on a shorter timeline, and then continue to grow it as your budget allows.
How to Decide
Make a list of what you want your site to do for you. Add to that a list of things that would be nice to have, but aren’t absolutely necessary. Then make a list of barriers that you’re facing. Compare those items to the advantages listed above. At first glance, which CMS seems to address the majority of items on all three lists?
If it’s starting to look like you don’t need any of the high powered Drupal capabilities mentioned above, then maybe you’ve been using a chainsaw to cut paper flowers.
WordPress is an amazing pair of craft scissors
WordPress doesn’t own 60% of the world market share of CMS usage for no reason; it is a phenomenal platform. Developers can extend it to handle robust content needs, and can build most anything with or without third party tools.
Security also doesn’t have to be a concern; using custom solutions reduces the security risks associated with excessive plugin use, and there are several security services and hosts that specialize in WordPress.
As your needs grow, WordPress can grow too. You don’t have to switch back to Drupal because three years down the line you suddenly find a need for tightly controlled user roles and permissions, those things can be built into your site. Same with multilingual solutions and large data storage. Over time your site might become a Swiss Army tool of sorts, with new attachments being added onto those craft scissors, but instead only adding what you need as you need it. Sometimes a precise tool is better than a power tool.
Choose Your Tool
If a Drupal site is working for you, stick with it. We often recommend it for clients with complex needs, and who have a passionate crew of Drupal contributors. And as an agency that builds Drupal sites, we’re fans. But if it’s not working out, then maybe WordPress is the better tool for you. Whatever direction you choose, contact us if you need help.
In late October, I went with my colleague AmyJune Hineline to St Louis for WordCamp US, an amazing conference where the best and brightest in WordPress get together to learn and share knowledge. And I was thrilled to present this talk about Responsible Tracking. It’s one of my favorite talks since I believe it’s critical to find the balance between learning form your users without getting insidious with how the data is being collected. We all want to know more so we can make better websites that attract users, but we need to be responsible about it!
This talk exposes some touch points that you can leverage with WordPress (and other CMS as well) to help you learn about your users and how they interact with your site. I discuss tools that move beyond just your analytics platform to help you gain access to these insights, and walk through some core features of Google Analytics that you may not be aware of.
After this session, you’ll have a better understanding of the types of tracking tools, the information you can glean from them, and how to ensure your data tracking is responsible, transparent, and accessible.
