Scaling Nonprofit Operations with Docusign IAM

We’ve heard from nonprofit leaders like you that making the most of every dollar and resource is critical to fulfilling your mission. That’s why many organizations take a lean and nimble approach to managing their overall operations. 

For many nonprofits, this means operating without dedicated IT personnel until reaching 50-100 employees. With smaller nonprofits allocating just 13.2% of their budgets to technology and larger ones only 2.8%, digital investment often takes a back seat to mission-driven initiatives.

Yet, in 2024, 71% of nonprofits reported an increase in demand for programs and services. To meet this growing demand, you must adapt your processes and operations to maximize impact.

But scaling isn’t easy. We hear over and over from nonprofits around the world that complex grant processes, data management challenges, and accuracy concerns slow you down—especially if you’re relying on manual processes to complete agreements. These outdated processes can cause unnecessary delays, nonstandard terms, missing documents, etc. On top of that, valuable data gets trapped in static, flat files like PDFs. At Docusign, we call this the “Agreement Trap.” 

Overcoming the Agreement Trap means finding a way to streamline and scale your contract management processes effectively. This reduces administrative overhead and strengthens your relationships with donors, volunteers, and employees, allowing you to focus more on the mission. With the right tools, you can simplify operations and make every resource count, even with tight budgets and limited staff.

The Agreement Trap and grants management

If your team still relies on traditional forms, email approvals, and Word templates to handle your grants process, you’re likely stuck in a slow, manual cycle. Every modification requires back-and-forth emails and tedious redlining, while final signoffs are handled in static PDFs. Once awarded, we often see grant obligations being tracked in spreadsheets, making compliance and reporting difficult.

These inefficiencies don’t just add frustration; they make an already complex grant process more confusing and error-prone. Manual paperwork creates unnecessary burdens for both grantees and grantors, delaying funding and slowing your impact.

Grants management is just one example. Across your organization, inefficient agreement workflows can hold you back, limiting operational efficiency and technology effectiveness. Here’s how these challenges affect different teams:

• Fundraising & Membership Teams risk losing funding when pledge agreements and renewals are delayed 

• Volunteer Coordinators struggle with slow onboarding, discouraging participation

• Finance Teams face compliance risks and budgeting challenges due to inefficient contract and grant management, which delays funding

• Program Teams encounter bottlenecks in partner agreements and beneficiary consent forms, stalling program delivery

Transform grant management efforts 

Imagine your grant applications transformed into simple, web-based forms that easily collect necessary data and documents. Picture a seamless signing experience that’s embedded directly within your grant management platform, triggering post-signature award processes without requiring manual follow-ups. And what if the captured data syncs automatically to your downstream systems, eliminating data entry errors and saving you precious time? With Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), this vision of a streamlined grant lifecycle can become a reality. 

Scaling nonprofit operations with Docusign IAM 

With tight budgets and limited resources, you need solutions that simplify operations. Docusign IAM empowers you to maximize limited resources, build stronger relationships, and innovate and scale efficiently across key processes like donor management, volunteer recruitment, grants management, and more. Nonprofits are turning to IAM to focus more on their mission and less on paperwork by building and deploying customized workflows that automate agreement processes, centralize documents, and enable their teams to find what they need fast—whether or not they have dedicated IT staff.  Building on Docusign eSignature, a tool thousands of nonprofit customers already trust and love, IAM introduces powerful new capabilities that simplify even your most complex agreement tasks:

• Docusign Maestro: Build a step-by-step, low-code process to standardize the way nonprofits move fundraising forms, volunteer waivers, and grant reports through the create, commit, and manage stages of an agreement lifecycle. This standardization saves time, reduces errors, and ensures compliance, freeing up resources to focus on what truly matters—advancing the organization’s mission.

• Docusign App Center: Integrate seamlessly with platforms like Salesforce, Fluxx, Google, Microsoft, and others to complete agreement work without manual data transfers or switching between tools. By reducing the time spent switching between tools, nonprofits can strengthen relationships with stakeholders, providing a more secure and seamless experience for donors, beneficiaries, and volunteers.

• Docusign Navigator: Store your completed agreements in an intelligent repository that turns long pages of text into organized collections of structured data for faster action. This enables nonprofits to scale efficiently by speeding up decision-making, reducing administrative overhead, and empowering staff to act on data-driven insights quickly.

No matter the size of your nonprofit, leveraging technology to streamline agreements helps you scale efficiently, reduce administrative burdens, and stay focused on driving meaningful change in your community. 

Managing your mission with fewer hands

Ready to streamline your agreement processes and unlock the full potential of your nonprofit’s operations? Take advantage of our exclusive nonprofit discount on select IAM plans. 

To dive deeper into how Docusign supports nonprofits, visit our site. To connect with your peers on Docusign best practices, visit the Docusign community.