The third edition of the Nonprofit Trend Report published by Salesforce.org highlights how nonprofits are being asked to play a larger role in serving communities around the world, and how technology can accelerate their ability to do so. This report is based on a global survey run by the Urban Institute, with responses from 867 nonprofit professionals in six countries from a survey fielded in Jul 2020 to August 2020. The report found that high digital maturity nonprofits in all regions have been more successful in every area from fundraising to program management, and they were much better positioned to navigate to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonprofits are the engine of change.

In the report, digital maturity was defined as an organization's ability to leverage data to inform decision-making, reach new audiences, personalize communications, and forecast fundraising income.

Based on nonprofits' responses, the report categorized organizations into three categories: Low digital maturity, medium digital maturity, and high digital maturity. The majority of nonprofits were medium digital maturity, but about 16% of respondents were leaders, with a high level of digital maturity

Here are the key takeaways of the Nonprofit Trends Report:

  • 34% of organizations with high digital maturity strongly agreed that they were prepared with the technologies they needed to help navigate the shifts within their operations, versus 6% of low digital maturity nonprofits that strongly agreed with this
  • 38% of leading organizations strongly agreed that they were able to revise their services to serve different clients or new audiences, versus 8% of low digital maturity organizations
  • 35% of organizations with high digital maturity strongly agreed that they were able to move their programs online, versus 18% of low digital maturity organizations
  • 38% of leading organizations were able to develop new methods to reach new recipients of their services as opposed to in-person, versus 12% of low digital maturity organizations
  • 35% of organizations with high digital maturity were able to add new services to attract new audiences, versus 16% of low digital maturity organizations

Read the full article about how digital maturity helps nonprofits by Vala Afshar at ZDNet.