8 Top Reasons Why an Intranet is a Must-Have for Non-Profits

Nonprofit organizations and charities must deal with a unique set of challenges. They  must continuously seek funding and donations to keep running, and foster engagement, knowledge sharing and enthusiasm among their community members, who may include a paid employee workforce, volunteers, and external stakeholders.

To assist these employees and volunteers in their work, non profits also require a platform that enables them to streamline internal communications, task management, and other essential functions. An intranet can help to achieve all of this.

An intranet is a private network which is only accessible to the employees of an organization, and approved third parties. The platform provides a digital workplace with tools and facilities that enable its users to communicate and collaborate with each other.

Modern intranets are loaded with apps such as corporate social media feeds, employee experience and engagement tools, and productivity apps, as well as integrations with third-party systems, e-forms and automated workflows, eLearning, and project management systems. These confer a number of benefits to organizations that use intranet software.

For the nonprofit organization, an intranet provides a number of specific advantages, which include the following.

1. Improving collaboration and communications

The internal communications tools of a charity intranet make it easy for employees and volunteers to communicate by providing tools such as corporate social networking, internal intranet messenger apps, and collaboration spaces. Digitally enhanced collaboration capabilities also contribute to an improved employee experience 

2. Making it easier for non profit employees and volunteers to stay on the same page

An intranet portal with support for mobile app software and productivity tools enables project teams and remote employees to access all their required digital workplaces from the comfort of their own homes when working remotely, together with mobile devices. This makes it easy and convenient for employees and volunteers to use group collaboration spaces to share ideas and resources and coordinate their activities.

3. Improved project management capabilities for non profit administrators

An intranet for nonprofit organizations enables project coordinators and human resource managers to keep a close and continuous eye on internal processes within the nonprofit organization itself, project tasks, and employees. This helps facilitate the orientation and onboarding of new employees, the updating of employee profiles, and the delivery of employee recognition output, such as commendations for hitting donation revenue targets or project completion dates.

4. Better information management

Modern intranet software makes document management and file-sharing simple and secure. With a digital workplace content management system (CMS), non profit organizations can easily update files and use version control to track each document. The software can also provide file and document download capabilities that facilitate knowledge sharing.

5. Enhanced and streamlined processes

Using automation tools like e-forms and automated workflows, non profit organizations can transform paper-based processes such as volunteer applications or requisition orders into streamlined workflows that require minimal human input. For the non profit, this saves time and reduces administration and busywork. It also empowers project teams and volunteers to focus on more valuable task. 

6. Enabling skills acquisition

A charity intranet with an integrated learning management system enables the non profit to train project teams, employees, and volunteers on a variety of topics, such as health and safety procedures, and fundraising best practices.

With all the features available on modern learning management systems, employees can create personalized dashboards unifying all the resources, learning and task management tools, social networking capabilities and knowledge base resources they require to plot a unique path for personal development.

7. Sharing information with external stakeholders

An intranet portal with extranet portal software allows non profit organizations to provide external stakeholders with controlled access to areas of their intranet platform, such as specific documents, intranet software pages, news articles, and communication spaces. 

8. Catering for global coverage

Non profit organizations must actively seek funding and resources from every available source – irrespective of the location of the donor. In this era of remote and hybrid work, a non profit organization may also have to give thought to catering for the needs of a geographically dispersed set of employees and volunteers.

Intranet software with multilingual capabilities empowers non profit organizations to localize their knowledge sharing and social features, and create intranet content in multiple languages for globally dispersed project teams and volunteers.

Choosing a digital workplace intranet for non profits

As with any technology partner, your intranet software and digital workplace provider should be a reputable organization with experience of providing intranet solutions for nonprofit organizations. Moreover, their charity intranet solutions should be capable of meeting the needs of your nonprofit organization – both now, and in the future.

At Claromentis, we’ve been in the intranet business for over 20 years, and have built company intranets for every industry including financial, education, and healthcare.

Our intranet software for charities and nonprofit organizations connects each and every one of your organization’s stakeholders to one collaborative space, from your part-time volunteers to the chief executive and trustees. Our drag and drop CMS gives you the power to build your own personalized charity intranet, where you can choose from over 40 configurable intranet widgets to build your intranet homepage, departmental pages, and team sites.  

With our intranet news application, you can keep charity staff and stakeholders up-to-date — and target specific content to teams or individuals so that they only see information that’s relevant to their role. You can translate our intranet software into any language so that menus, system messages, and content are displayed in the chosen language of the end user.

If you would like to learn more about how Claromentis provides an intranet for charities and non profits that can meet all the requirements of your nonprofit organization, book a demo with our experts.