Not-for-Profit Navigator
With Nicole Aebi-Moyo - SalesFix For Purpose Practice Lead
Where do you manage most of your life? I’m going to guess that for most of us, our phone now acts as the hub for our lives. We’re alerted and reminded, prompted and nudged through our busy days. Little red numbers shout at us to “get this done!”
And then there’s the dreaded portal.
Portal Expectations
The expectation, from whatever organisation, is that you’ll proactively engage with their interface. That you’ll remember the name and logon details for the app or portal they’ve chosen to manage their particular community. It could be your kid’s netball team, or the orchestra you play in, or the gymnastics club your daughter goes to. So many different places to go and things to remember.
I’ve always said that portals are loved by the organisations that set them up, not by the communities they’re designed to serve.
“Go self-serve over there, thanks!”
Why do we expect more of our communities than we do of ourselves? Why would a donor login to a portal to occasionally download a missing receipt or update their contact details when they probably don’t even remember there’s a portal in the first place?
Last year, thanks to Guy Fisher, I took part in a community fundraising activity with a difference. Each of the participants contributed $50 to the pot of funds and committed to undertake a physical challenge for a month. You could pick the challenge to suit you. I chose running 50km in a month. No need to get donations from your friends and family: at the end of the month, 3 participants were chosen at random to split the pool of money.
Excellent idea.
But what I really enjoyed was the fact that a WhatsApp group was set up for the participants. We shared our progress, came across people we knew (Australia is a very small place!) and encouraged each other to keep going. It was great.
I’ve done the PushUp Challenge every year for nearly a decade but I’ve never felt as much a part of the wider community as I did with this WhatsApp group last year.
If I’d been asked to login to a portal instead of being pinged by WhatsApp, I don’t think I would have felt as connected. I probably wouldn’t have even bothered to login.
Of course, some organisations don’t bother with portals: they rely on emails. Worse? I don’t know, certainly not better. With emails you’re competing against the noise of everyone else. What’s the open rate on your organisation’s emails? Probably lower than you would want.
What about those close communities you really want to engage with, like your board. A small group of people who really need to hear what you’ve got to say. Chances are you use email to engage with them right? You end up having conversations with long chains of messages with the thread of the conversation morphing along the way. Some board members are actively engaged, others less so.
And we’re all swamped with emails. So what do you do?
You roll out Slack, that’s what.
Anyone can use Slack: many people already do. I do for work, and there was one glorious year where the gymnastics club my kid was at used Slack too. I knew more about what was going on; could easily find the information I needed; if one person asked a question and got an answer, it was there for all of us to see (unlike email); I knew more of the parents; and the information came to me. I didn’t have to go search it out.
Even better, with Slack Connect sponsored connections, you can build a community of volunteers and boost engagement, all with an unlimited number of external users at no additional cost.
If you manage volunteers or donors, using Slack could change how you engage with them, and how much a part of the community they feel. Imagine your next peer to peer fundraising event with the community of fundraisers chatting in Slack about the best way to raise funds. Where you could share updates to everyone involved quickly and easily.
That’s not to mention any of the benefits of having Slack internally within your organisation as well. If you’re thinking “but we use Teams” then you don’t understand what Slack has to offer. Slack isn’t there to replace Teams, many organisations continue to use Teams for their internal communications even when they use Slack because Slack is so much more.
I play in an orchestra (French Horn if you’re interested. Come to our next concert, 2 August). Each section specialises in making a particular sound. Individually, the sections are capable of making beautiful music, but it takes the conductor to bring them together to create amazing music. That’s what Slack does: it brings in the right SME to do a particular job. That could be an Agentforce agent; ChatGPT; the internet; Claude; whatever. You ask Slack to do a job and it will go find the best person for that job.
Want to find out more? Join the Melbourne Slack Community Chapter’s next event on 3 June:
📒 Event: Inside the Sidebar: Practical Slack Strategies for Your Team
📅 Date/Time: June 3, 2026, 12-1pm (AEST) Virtual Event
💻 Registration Link: https://lnkd.in/dGSH2CFF
Or reach out to have a chat about how we use Slack and where we’re taking it next.
If you need any assistance understanding anything in this edition of NFP Navigator please reach out at [email protected], I am always happy to help.
Until next time,
Nicole
Useful Resources
Some great resources from the Institute of Community Directors:
Coming Up in 2026
- Agentforce World Tour Melbourne: 17 June, MCEC. Register for this free event.
- True Blue Blazing: 20 October 2026. Marvel Stadium. Tickets go on sale 1 June.
Australian Salesforce user groups
If you use Salesforce and you’re not part of a user group, you’re missing out! There’s over 30 groups in Australia and New Zealand alone, and many now meet online so there’s no excuse for not joining in and finding out more.