Major healthcare and larger school systems have rallied around the concept of constituent portals for their users, but typically these have had to be built from scratch and involved significant technical know-how and expense. But as of late, there are a few forward-thinking nonprofit CRM vendors out there who have opened up the constituent portal to we mere mortals in the field. There are a few reasons why these portals add such a meaningful addition to your communication channels.
The first is that they typically solve an organizational challenge. Say you are a nonprofit that leads student trips around the world, and you want a way for travelers to upload things like Visa’s and references as well as to be able to make payments whenever it is convenient for them. From submitting a trip interest form to checking on an updated flight status, constituent portals can be powerful tools in individualized program delivery. Secondly, portals reduce manual data entry, and the need to follow up to get things like updated constituent information, process payments, or track volunteer activity. You can also add automation to trigger certain reminders or other actions to take place when a particular field is filled out, like a change in program status moving from “in progress” to “complete” when certain fields are completed as part of an application process. You can also use portal fields to trigger the reveal of the appropriate next applicable view based on a completed section of a process phase such as filling out an application, event registration, or the like. For example, when a volunteer application’s basic information section is completed and approved by internal staff, they can check a box or change a field status to “complete,” and trigger the references section to then be visible to the volunteer.
The rise in wizard-based customization means your organization can create a portal that specifically mirrors your organization’s workflows and process needs with ease, so dream big, and really discover the full potential of how portals can serve your mission, from tracking volunteers to signing up clients for a program, to posting a survey. Perhaps most importantly your donor, volunteer, or client can personally engage with the portal in a way that gives the user control over their individual experience and connects them in a new way to your organization. Since it is a proactive engagement, the experience involves the constituent’s own agency and engenders a feeling of being an involved partner, rather than someone being tracked down for information or anonymously recorded in a CRM they have no interaction with. In these ways, they can be reminded of mission and see how their personal involvement is making a difference even when they are doing something utilitarian like updating their name or printing out a gift receipt.
Being able to access the portal wherever and whenever they want also adds a positive element to their experience and contributes to that sense of being a proactive partner. Don’t forget, people have come to expect (for better or worse) a uniquely individualized on-demand experience (think about when you place an order on Amazon if you are searching for a reference point), and portals provide the infrastructure for such an experience. While these may not be standard features within nonprofit CRM’s or most other CRM’s for that matter, they will be the new norm shortly, so be sure to investigate the power of this tool, and how it can add value, efficiency, and an enriched user experience for both internal staff and external constituents. Power to the user!
For more information about Nonprofit Vertical Source CRM click here.
Here is a short video about Nonprofit Vertical Source CRM’s Constituent Portal:
