As your nonprofit grows bigger, the number of assets increases accordingly. The marketing campaign becomes more complex, and your team consistently grows. There also appear more donors, volunteers, and authorities you have to share your assets with.
And here you’re managing high volumes of files instead of engaging donors. You’re distributing visuals, videos, and documents instead of staying focused on your mission. Finally, you’re spending hours on finding that right version of the contract instead of changing this world for the better.
Here in Pics.io, we value a lot the contribution of nonprofits to our society. Many NPOs have become our dedicated clients, and we’re glad to come in handy to them. DAM can be the greatest find for nonprofits. It can improve the workflow and facilitate the processes in a way you’ve never expected.
Let’s learn about the value of nonprofit DAM to nonprofits first-hand…
What are the typical problems facing the nonprofits?
Working for the greater good, NPOs deal with different pain points, uncommon for their counterparts — for-profit organizations. If you’re working in the nonprofit, you must have experienced:
- The lack of space. NPOs store thousands of files: board docs, marketing materials, presentations, event photos, a list of volunteers, and so on and so forth. The longer you work, the more documents your company accumulates. And this continues until you understand that you’re out of space, whether it’s PC or external HDD.
- Disorder and mess. When you’re storing lots of information, it’s just a matter of time when your files collapse into chaos. Very soon, you won’t be able to find your assets quickly and easily, and what to say about your numerous affiliates.
- Sharing issues. As a rule, nonprofits have distributed teams. For this very reason, half of your workday is spent on sharing docs and granting permissions. Worst of all, this is the time you could dedicate to more urgent tasks like fundraising or building your brand.
- Brand inconsistency. The distributed team creates extra pitfalls for your branding strategy. With volunteers and partners scattered around the globe, it becomes more difficult to make sure all the materials stay on-brand and updated.
So, why DAM?
Competition in the nonprofit sector is as fierce as anywhere else in the market. And to stay afloat, you need to choose progressive business solutions. Digital Asset Management (DAM) is exactly one of them.
DAM is a comprehensive software to store, manage, organize, and share your files. The latest statistics indicate that DAM implementation will result in your work optimization (92%), centralized access to files (90%), and reuse of digital content (72%). No wonder that DAM can become true help for nonprofits and solve the troubles we’ve mentioned.
Over the years in Pics.io, we’ve worked with a bunch of NPOs, Plastic Bank, Mind & Life Institute, Environmental Justice Foundation, Genesis, CFA Society to name a few. This is why we’ve decided to share real-life stories — what actual problems our nonprofit clients dealt with and how DAM came in handy to them.
Genesis — How to fit all those files?
As we discussed, the storage of photo and video materials and quick navigation across them are among the top priority for many nonprofits. Hence, it’s not a surprise that most of the NGOs, contacting Pics.io, looked for unlimited storage with efficient search capabilities. For example, Genesis, a nonprofit that provides shelter and support for women, aimed at speeding up the processes of storing, sorting, and searching for their photos.
Here’s how they described their problem:
“We didn’t have anything in place to manage creative provided by our team of photographers. We wanted to have a central place where photos could be organized in a flexible taxonomy […].”
Monica, Photographer from Genesis
DAM indeed helped with storage — our team has created a single media library where all the materials could be stored in one place and organized properly. With DAM, you have no space limits (!) — the account works on the top of your storage service. So you access your photos, old legal agreements, and brand templates whenever needed.
Mind that very few of your volunteers will be equipped with their own materials. As a leader, you should ensure that they have all they need to communicate your message. With DAM, you get enough space to make your library extensive and full-fledged. So, your affiliates access and use these resources for event organization, educational initiatives, or marketing campaigns.
CFA Society of the UK — Where is that invitation?
When the number of assets grows, there also arises a logical problem concerning file organization. This was exactly the issue the CFA Society of the UK had approached us with. CFA Society is an association of investment professionals, and we gladly presented our DAM solution to them.
With DAM, your nonprofit uses organized file and folder structure: collections, subcollections, and so on. A good solution is to arrange your files by projects — you create a separate folder for each project/ client and place all the related materials there.
Or you can choose an alternative categorization method — tagging. In this case, you attach a range of tags to your media to characterize them. These may include dates, regions, physical descriptions, types of data, etc. Then, when you forget your file location, just filter the search (any information/tag you remember about the file), and you’ll find it in a minute.
Thanks to DAM, you can prefer using custom metadata for your search or AI-empowered search by color, a number of people, etc. Both approaches still extend the lifespan of your assets. With DAM, your affiliates access old event invitations, B-roll videos, flyers, and posters immediately. Thus, you get an opportunity to reuse your materials instead of creating duplicate content.
After the trial period, CFA Society commented on these features,
“Really easy to use, great organisation tools, good team collaboration tools, fantastic customer support.”
Duncan, Content Editor from CFA Society of the UK
A valuable moment here (and our friends from CFA Society would agree) is preserved brand consistency across nonprofit departments. With the DAM solution, your nonprofit can create customizable templates for brochures and presentations, with logo, business name, and brand design. Regional volunteers will then access and localize this content. But you’ll know their materials align with your brand standards.
In the long run, DAM is merely good for your brand history. Your nonprofit archives and digitalizes materials, so you can track them easily, update, and provide to donors if needed. Needless to say, it’ll increase your company’s transparency.
Plastic Bank — Why is sharing so tiresome and time-consuming?
But it’s not! If you choose DAM for nonprofit, the same as our clients from Plastic Bank did, sharing becomes as simple as pie for you. Plastic Bank is a nonprofit devoted to cleaning our waters from plastic trash, so it was a matter of honor for us to help them.
DAM works as a self-service so everyone who needs your materials gets them on request. For example, Pics.io has public websites where you locate all the information you want to share with a specific amount of people. Third-party sharing is more secure in this case as you don’t provide access to your documents directly.
Here’s how our clients from Plastic Bank responded to this feature:
“We need to quickly get new media assets to our partners and our social media team and this does the job really well. It has been a lifesaver and is really easy to administer.”
Rob, e-Business Activation Manager from Plastic Bank
One more pleasant surprise for you is the ability to choose between different types of websites. Generally speaking, we have 10 templates of shareable websites, all of them highly customizable. You may change the web address, adapt its functionality like adding contact details or an “About” section…
Personally, I’m fond of proofing templates where your affiliates can interact with the website, for example, rate your files or leave comments on them. This feature will be especially useful if you’re eager to get feedback from your donors or volunteers.
DAM provides an extensive potential for internal collaboration too. You just add new members to your account, and they download the files easily. Your affiliates will also be able to upload their own templates and designs to the storage.
Other volunteers can, in turn, comment on these materials, revise them, and edit. Your team will also get automatic notifications on any updates. It’ll significantly ease your life: when the nonprofit gets bigger, you won’t be able to control everything.
What else?
At some point, you may question how to ensure smooth work between the library and other tools you’re using on a daily basis. For instance, many nonprofits are active users of Google Add-ons and Adobe services. Streamlined integration with other services is not an issue for DAM either.
In case you choose to use Pics.io as your DAM service, your volunteers will be weaponed with GD, Slack, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. So, when you’re preparing a speech and need archived photos from the library, insert them directly. No need for downloading/uploading. Add images from Pics.io in their original size and resolution and make your presentation stand out.
“The direct integration with Google Drive saves us lots of admin time.”
Rob, e-Business Activation Manager from Plastic Bank
We understand that nonprofits have to work with documents in various file formats. This is why Pics.io supports a considerable variety of media formats: images, raw photos, videos, vector illustrations, fonts, and 3d images. Here’s a full list of formats that are currently supported in Pics.io.
Another challenge you may encounter is the need to upload files to your library by non-users. Your nonprofit probably collaborates with lots of people outside your core team like photographers, design teams, or official representatives. Of course, you won’t grant access to your account to all of them.
And no need to do it! In Pics.io, so-called inboxes allow you to check the materials uploaded by external users before adding them to your collection. Now when one of your newly recruited volunteers wants to share their own thank-you letter, you’ll be able to review it first and, for example, check for branding.
DAM — Help your nonprofit to thrive here and now
Do you want to upgrade your nonprofit? Create a whole media library with unlimited space and powerful management opportunities? Distribute your templates, marketing collaterals, and any other media files more easily? If yes, choosing DAM for your NPOs will be the right decision for you.
Let’s summarize how Media Asset Management for nonprofits can become useful to you:
- Endless storage space;
- Improved productivity due to better file organization and immediate access to your assets;
- Reuse of materials;
- A consistent brand message;
- Increased teamwork, with commenting, sharing, revising, and similar options;
- Well-synchronized work with other services.
By all means, DAM will be a sweeping change in your nonprofit’s workflow. Book a demo in Pics.io — in Pics.io — and switch to DAM in a moment. This is particularly a good deal if you consider special conditions available for nonprofits.
