As per the U.S. Federal law – Electronic Signatures in Global and International Commerce act enacted in June 2000, electronic signatures are valid signatures as ink on paper for business contracts.

7-ways-non-profit-e-sign

Non-profit organizations make great things happen. They are the selfless change-makers of the world who are at the forefront of finding and providing help and solutions to the most pressing problems that haunt communities around the world. These superheroes have noblest missions, but the road is riddled with complex day-to-day tasks, most of which are administrative in nature such as handling cumbersome but necessary documents. To help you with this mundane task NGOs could try to incorporate e-Sign features offered by Apptivo and others in your life. This way you could focus more on transforming the world and less on managing documents.

It isn’t easy switching to a new system. You’ve been using physical paper and ink for forever and switching to something new might seem daunting at first. So, in this article, you will discover 7 ways non-profits can use E-signature to optimize their day-to-day administrative workflow and streamline business practices for efficiency and let you decide.

1. Better Document Management

Most non-profit organizations work on a very small budget where every dollar saved gets reallocated to another important mission-related task. Document management is one of those pesky back-end office processes that can put a significant dent in an already razor-thin budget. Electronic and paper data from employees, volunteers, donors, and sponsors can be hard to organize and most software that claims to help prove to be an expensive endeavor. But, thanks to the pervasiveness of sophisticated tech, there are a few affordable and top of the line solution available for non-profits to make their document management easy. An example would be Apptivo- a cloud-based project management software that helps businesses and non-profits perform and manage a wide range of day-to-day functions through a suite of powerful third-party integrations – slack, Dropbox and Intuit Quickbooks. SignNow is one such software that integrates with Apptivo. SignNow is one of the best e-signature software that enables non-profits to collect secure E-signatures and shorten its turnaround time by up to 90%.

Using SignNow with Apptivo, helps you to create or upload any form, send instantly through email directly from the app. Once the document is signed, you will be notified via in-app notification and email.

2. Volunteer Applications

Volunteers are a critical asset to the lifeline of a non-profit organization. Every non-profit need a way to provide interested volunteers a medium to securely submit their volunteer application. With Apptivo integrated with SignNow, you get to invite volunteers to join your team, create specific mini-groups, share specific forms with each of those groups and get them electronically signed- all within seconds. With Apptivo, you also get to track how many signatures you have collected. If you have different needs for different volunteers, you can easily customize the forms within the Apptivo dashboard based on those needs. You can even save the templates of the commonly used forms for the future. This way, you don’t have to waste hours recreating (recreating and duplicates have a similar meaning) from scratch.

3. Fundraising Registration Forms

Fundraising is an essential cornerstone of a non-profit’s financial plan. Apptivo and SignNow allow users to create fundraising registrations forms using a variety of different apps present within its dashboard and have its signature-ready within minutes. These forms have e-signature built right into the form and are mobile-friendly too, which means that people can register or pledge you their support even on the go! Using Apptivo Campaigns and Apptivo Projects, you can track the progress of your fundraising campaign, along with getting insightful data you can use to optimize the campaign’s performance for better results.

4. Donor Profiling

SignNow makes getting e-signature an effortless task, which keeps both you and your donors happy and satisfied. But, as a non-profit, fundraising and organizing special events is not a one-time thing, but part of your day-to-day activity. With every signature, you have the opportunity to learn more about your donor. If a specific donor has been actively supporting you in each one of your campaigns, their loyalty to you will be different than a one-time donor. With Apptivo’s Contacts, Customers, and Leads App, you get to organize your donors based on different categories. For example the length of their relationship with your organization, and their engagement level. You can then specifically tailor different campaigns to your targeted category. In this sense, Apptivo is a robust lead management system that your non-profit needs to maximize the donation it receives from each of its donors with hyper-personalized campaigns.

5. Customize and Send in Bulk

With non-profit organizations, time is of the essence. Many campaigns are time-sensitive, for example, in a relief fund following a hurricane or an earthquake where help is needed immediately. Usually, donation and volunteer drives can generate an influx of sudden interest that can send decision makers within the organization down a space of dizzying panic in an attempt to get back to all these interested parties with the right documents before their interest fades away. With Apptivo CRM
, you get to send the right forms to targeted lists of recipients with no more than a single click. Using SignNow, you can ensure that these forms are signature-ready, and since the donor information is already saved within Apptivo’s platform, you don’t have to worry about typing each email one at a time.

6. Expense reporting

Your teammates and volunteers can easily create expense reports and get it signed for approval using SignNow’s e-signature feature. This makes it extremely easy to have all the receipts coming through mobile, credit cards or bank account consolidated in one place. If you are organizing an annual fund drive, with different volunteers handling the purchase of different aspects of the event, they will be able to log in to the app, and submit a new expense with the cost, receipts and other details for approval, from anywhere- including their mobile phones! These expenses can be sent individually or be grouped and submitted as part of a report. This makes the reimbursement process very easy and quick.

7. Sponsorship contracts

Non-profits partnering with businesses can be beneficial to both parties. The non-profit gets to use the funding for an event or a project, and the business gets to add a philanthropic touch to their company identity, which helps them better relate to their community. Making this relationship legal through a contract can help avoid future misunderstandings, and legal and tax issues. Apptivo, together with SignNow, makes it easy for non-profits to create effective sponsorship request forms that include details like the sponsorship purpose, use of funds, expected responsibility of both particles, and the term and termination date, clearly within the contract. Your sponsor can then sign the contract within seconds, and their signed contract will be quickly saved within the Apptivo dashboard for you to access and refer back to in the future.

E-signature adds structure to what was once considered a chaotic and tedious process. It has allowed non-profits to get rid of the archaic paper and pen-based recordkeeping and document management. With affordable cloud-based software like Apptivo and SignNow, you get to put your full focus and funds on stuff that actually matter, while using the power of technology to keep all the records, and streamlining donations and pledges.

Cheers,
Prithvi

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