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Effective communication can transform the way nonprofits work. In fact, 72% of business leaders believe better communication has increased their team’s productivity.
In a world of remote and hybrid work, with teams often spread across cities, adopting tools to ensure your team communicates and collaborates with each other effectively is critical.
A workplace messaging platform like Slack can help make this easy.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at how you can use Slack to successfully work together.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What is Slack?
Slack is an instant messaging platform that helps nonprofit teams communicate quickly and easily. It aims to decrease reliance on email and make collaboration easier, allowing your team to message each other in an organized manner.
Slack connects individuals and groups on digital spaces known as channels to help organize discussions. You can create channels for different nonprofit teams, specific projects or tasks. This helps ensure that people are involved only in the conversations that they need to be a part of.
To make collaborating even easier, Slack allows you to create conversation threads with specific people in a channel, use @ mentions to tag and address people directly and react to messages. You can also share files, assign and delegate tasks, send voice notes, and jump onto video calls directly from Slack.
Slack keeps everyone in your nonprofit looped in and prevents them from missing out on critical information and discussions.
The Benefits of Using Slack
Slack’s simple interface and intuitive design ensures that most people on your team will be able to use it without any in-depth orientation, as the chat format is familiar to most people. If your nonprofit has a remote team or includes offices in multiple regions, Slack is a great way to share updates and keep everyone in the loop across regions and time zones.
Here are a few more ways your nonprofit organization can benefit from using Slack:
- Central Communication Hub: Slack can host all your communication on one platform, eliminating the need for teams to juggle between emails, texts, and various other apps. You can host video calls or have discussions in a single space, saving you a lot of time.
- Integrated File Sharing: Easily share documents, images, videos and other files directly in your conversations. You can also integrate Slack with Dropbox or other file sharing applications so you don’t need to switch back and forth between them.
- Searchable History: Find past conversations, people, and shared files instantly. You can easily filter searches by channels or look for information from a specific chat all from the search bar. All your discussions are immediately backed up on Slack so your organization has a record of all ongoing discussions.
- Integrations: Slack’s integrations are what make this platform one of the most useful and effective communication tools around. Integrations can enhance your work experience and make the programs you already use more intuitive and useful. For example, you can set meetings and add them to your Google Calendar directly in Slack, helping to boost your efficiency. Slack connects with over 2000 apps, including popular nonprofit tools like Grammarly, Salesforce, Donorbox and Trello.
How Nonprofits Can Use Slack
Slack can be used to improve efficiency and enhance communication in various ways.
Nonprofits should clearly set priorities and experiment with the platform to see which methods and features best suit their needs. Avoid using an app feature because you were told that it will help. Different nonprofits have different needs – so make sure whatever you’re using works for you!
Here are a few ways nonprofits can use Slack to improve efficiency:
Instant, effective communication
The ability to message instantly with other team members is Slack’s key feature. The text-message-like layout encourages people to be more responsive as it is an easy and practical alternative to email. If you have an important announcement, you can send a quick message on your group thread. If you need clarification from a specific person, send them a private message. Both individuals and groups will be notified and can respond accordingly.
Group Chat Huddles
If your team prefers to speak over the phone or face-to-face, Slack also incorporates video chat, which are called group huddles on the platform. Group huddles allow different teams to schedule casual group discussions in advance or switch to a video call during a chat – which can help you solve issues and make decisions quickly.
Workflow Automation
Slack offers great automation functionality with over 2000 integrations for applications. You can integrate various apps and automate processes to save time and improve efficiency. For example, you can easily sync your calendars to automatically add meetings and out of office notifications on Slack so others in your team know when you are available and can reach out accordingly.
Group Teams and Departments
Slack uses channels to organize various groups. Each channel is marked with a hashtag (#). You can create different channels for departments, special projects and cross-department teams. For example, those working in fundraising can communicate among themselves about their projects without notifying everyone in your team. HR can have a dedicated group to discuss payroll and training, while a group of department managers can discuss big-picture issues. You can also set up channels to resolve a specific issue or invite external vendors and partners to work with you on a channel. This keeps all your communications in one place.
Mobile Communication
Slack’s mobile application ensures team members are notified and can respond to urgent messages on the go. You can access messages and groups via your phone, removing the need to switch to alternative messaging platforms when your team is working on an event or external campaign. Workplace communication can stay on Slack no matter where your team is located – or what they’re doing. The app is so intuitive and well-designed that about 76% of users access Slack via the mobile app.
Fundraising and Donor Management
Slack can improve how your fundraising team manages campaigns and engages with donors. You can set up a dedicated channel for donor communication, share success stories, and updates, and engage your donors regularly using Slack. You can also integrate your CRM software to add donor data into Slack. This ensures that key team members have real-time access to crucial information and don’t need to navigate away from Slack to get updates from donors.
If you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your fundraising, you should also think about using AI. Check out this guide to using ChatGPT for fundraising.
Project Management
Slack makes it easy for different departments to come together, discuss issues, and align on various projects. You can track the progress of tasks and keep the team updated or share necessary resources, documents, and updates within project-specific channels, ensuring everyone stays in the loop. Trello or other task management applications can also be easily integrated into Slack to support project management.
Partnership Collaboration
Slack Connect is a great new feature that can help you collaborate with other nonprofits and partner organizations. You can add up to 20 organizations in a single channel, enabling you to work effectively with partners and vendors without ever leaving your organization’s workspace. This helps you seamlessly collaborate with your partners and creates a space for discussions and high level planning across the nonprofit sector.
Is Slack free for nonprofits?
Slack has two subscription options – a free version and a paid one.
Everyone has access to the free version but the features available to users are limited. For example, you will not be able to store and search for data beyond 90 days, you cannot use group huddles or invite external vendors to Slack, and are only allowed 10 software integrations.
There are three subscription plans you can use for Slack:
- Pro version – $7.25, per person/month
- Business+ version – $12.50, per person/month
- Enterprise version – customized pricing for your nonprofit
Learn more about the pricing plans available on Slack here.
Nonprofits and educational institutions can apply for discounted pricing for the subscription plans above. In order to avail this discount you must hold a valid charitable status with either the IRS or your local tax service.
Conclusion
Slack can transform the way you communicate with team members and operate as an organization.
The platform helps nonprofits efficiently share ideas, manage donors and fundraising, and ensures your team can collaborate, innovate, and grow – ultimately amplifying your impact!
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