In our previous post, we pointed out that many non-profits operating in the United States have tiny staff teams, leading to situations where data collection becomes decentralized, fragmented, and incomplete. However, we didn’t mention that, despite the ostensible tight-knittedness of many non-profits, many teams are often spread out, both in terms of physical location and operation. This presents additional challenges when it comes to communication. For example, the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), a national HR accreditation firm, expressed the importance of a well-organized communications infrastructure in one of their online guides: “To be successful, organizations should have comprehensive policies and strategies for communicating with their constituencies, employees and stakeholders as well as with the community at large.”

To illustrate what can go wrong when an organization has poor communications infrastructure, consider this hypothetical example: let’s say an advocacy group for victims of domestic violence employs a team of advocates and case workers to coordinate with different shelters in their area. Such jobs would require the team to communicate regularly with the staff members at their organization and at the various shelters they visit.

The go-to way of communicating for many organizations is through email. The problem is that most orgs control their email communications in-house, which can lead to compartmentalized siloes of communication. This means that, unless all of the org’s staff members are exceptionally diligent, administrators who are not in the field would not be guaranteed a direct line of communication with the shelters they work with. Instead, they would have to corral that contact information from the case managers—who are probably too busy already—or they would have to solicit contact information from the shelters directly. At that point, they’re at the mercy of those organizations’ response times. It’s easy to see how quickly this could become a nightmare of confusion and inefficiency.

Luckily, there’s an alternative. AI platforms like C3S centralize communication into one program within and between organizations. As a result, staff members within the same organization can share documents and notes directly, and the HIPAA-compliant platform guarantees they can do so without violating their clients’ privacy.

Furthermore, AI applications provide a centralized way of communicating outside an organization. Once an employee has contacted an outside institution, they can directly share that institution’s contact information with everyone else in the org. From that point, anyone can send communications and make referrals to a shelter, even if that shelter doesn’t use the AI platform. Finally, the texting feature enables case managers and other employees to contact clients directly once said clients have gone through the intake process.

Contact C3S today to learn how AI can help you build your communications infrastructure.