Ishaani Dayal: Community Fellows Winter Quarter Blog Post
In the nonprofit sector, especially at an organization like the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits (SVCN), it’s clear that our priorities are very different from those at a for-profit organization or company. While traditional businesses make choices with the goal of maximizing profit, as we learn in any business class, I’ve come to realize that nonprofits work with the goal of maximizing impact. While these two goals couldn’t be any more different from each other, I was surprised to see that the methods of obtaining these goals have more in common than you would think.
As I’ve noticed from being in Silicon Valley, the general idea is that companies should be utilizing technology to streamline processes and keep adapting to the changing world, and nonprofits are no exception. At SVCN, there is a lot of excited energy and momentum to adopt tools that would be a good fit for the nature of our work and reduce the burden off of employees so that we can work more efficiently in supporting our member nonprofits. For example, SVCN handles a lot of operations and data management through Salesforce, a Customer Relations Management software, which is also used by a lot of major companies across the world. We’ve also had conversations about how to utilize artificial intelligence ethically and effectively, which is a fascinating sign of the times as AI has become more and more relevant in the workplace.
On a less technical level, my work in the past four months has shown me how important skills like research, communication, and team collaboration are. I’ve had to reach out to and communicate productively to experts and specialists outside of our organization to get more background information on topics I’m researching. Pushing out the Policy Newsletter every week requires quite a few meetings and check-ins to make sure the team is on the same page and ready to hit that tight timeline. Also, from observing other teams at SVCN, it’s clear how important marketing and outreach are for a nonprofit like SVCN that deeply values community and awareness. A lot of strategy and planning is necessary, especially in projects like launching SVCN’s first Instagram account. While viewing the presentations prior to launch, I thought it was very interesting to see how analytics and interaction rates on other social media platforms shaped the plan for Instagram.
I definitely came into this fellowship expecting to gain a very different set of skills than I would have in a for-profit or corporate setting, so it’s been a super cool experience to see how the skills we learn at SCU and other professional environments are still so applicable. I look forward to broadening my perspective, and my skillset, even more in the upcoming months!