Microsoft’s group of Tech Team for Social Impact has been offering innovative platforms and suite of solutions to non-profits worldwide, helping them carry out their mission and create as well as scale their impact.
Non-profits of all sizes, these days, have to engage with various groups in the community, such as volunteers, donors, and sponsors, both public and corporate, to promote their agenda. They also need to carry out certain processes towards their objectives to efficiently deliver their services and to achieve their mission.
Though significant progress has been made, many of the non-profits are still struggling to function efficiently and are not able to measure the impact while delivering on their promise. To address these challenges and seamlessly execute both backend and frontend operations, Microsoft has introduced certain new features to Dynamics 365 platform – the Dynamics 365 Non-profit Accelerator. Through this common standards-based data model, Microsoft makes an effort to broaden its partner channel and technological footprint.
Let us take a look at the salient features of this first-of-its-kind model for non-profits that reflects industries’ best practices. Most of these new features draw directly on the existing features and applications of Dynamics 365.
Constituent Management
This feature provides a holistic view of the supporters or constituents. The key strength of this new capability allows recording all contacts, interactions, and activities involved, providing a complete picture of the relationship between the membership organization. It is dynamically integrated with Power BI and Excel. The added functionality of Advanced Find assists any user or volunteer to easily enter data, create reports and views to be shared by everyone across the non-profit organization.
Donation Management/Donation Tracking
This makes it easy to track donor commitments and manage donations from institutions and/or individuals. It can be used to efficiently organize and follow up on one-time as well as recurring donations, bequests, pledge amounts, and grant payments to specific campaigns. The intuitive interface allows transactional data to sync with other third-party gateways for processing donations made across various platforms.
Awards/Grants Management
Managing grants is made easy through this feature. It improves the transparency of the entire process, wherein investments, awards, and grants can be effectively tracked and managed right from the initial stage to the completion of the campaign. Reminders and renewals of grants can also be automated so that nothing slips through leading to a lost opportunity.
Campaign Management & Fund Raising
Non-profits can now successfully manage various campaigns using non-profit accelerator. They can book venues, organize sponsors, assign tasks, manage schedules, and even track attendance of a particular event or campaign. Fund raising which is an essential part of any campaign can also be taken care of smoothly. Custom segments of individual contacts can be created, which makes it easy to identify former donors who might be interested in a similar event. Donations can be measured and the tool also helps to inform the supporters on how efficiently their contribution is being put to use.
Volunteer Management
The volunteer force of any non-profit is incredibly valuable. Volunteers help support and work towards a noble cause and mission. The timesheet features of Dynamics 365 Non-profit Accelerator helps in profile management, making it easy to assign particular rights to volunteers related to various projects. It also helps track the school credits of a volunteer and helps ensure that the volunteers adhere to regulations that are important during the course of services.
Specifically designed to address the most pressing challenges encountered by non-profits, the Dynamics 365 Non-profit Accelerator is a suite of solutions consisting of templates, connectors, and apps. Accelerators are designed for use by the partners to develop cost-effective and better solutions for non-profits so that they can fulfill their mission and easily measure its impact.
Launched in November 2018, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Non-profit Accelerator, is reported to have nearly doubled its size of common data model entity (from 35 to 75) and its partner network has tripled rising in number to 40 from 14.
Also, Microsoft recently announced its plans to release the Dynamics 365 Non-profit Accelerator v2, which will include improved new apps, enhanced common data model and core features, as well as other added solutions from both Microsoft and its partners.
