Expanding Digital Presence

Larissa Almeida (commercial planning analyst) volunteered for the 7th edition of Potencialize, a Fundação 1Bi volunteer program that provides free technology and management consulting to NGOs across the country. Below, they share what their one-month volunteer experience at Coletivo Motirõ was like.

In the seventh edition of Potencialize, expectations were high for working alongside NGOs and developing solutions that use technology as a tool to increase their potential for impact. In our first conversations, we gained an in-depth understanding of the resource mobilization challenge faced by Coletivo Motirõ as it sought to expand its projects, and we developed some initial ideas for how we could create viable solutions that made sense for the institute within three weeks.

In our conversations with Motirõ, we realized that we would need to work across different areas to deliver a more robust solution. However, given the limited development time, we faced the significant challenge of addressing all these areas with the desired depth. To optimize our working time, we divided the team into three focus areas and defined the scope of each one to ensure that all the topics needed to improve the organization’s fundraising would be addressed.

The solutions were not developed exclusively by our team. Throughout the program, we held weekly meetings with the institute to ensure that the managers’ expectations were met and to gather input about the NGO’s day-to-day operations and what would work best for its activities. Throughout the process, we were also supported by the Fundação 1Bi team, which helped guide our work and determine how we could divide responsibilities to deliver the expected solution.

Technology was the fundamental tool in the work we developed. We delivered not only tools to automate fundraising and expand the NGO’s digital reach, but also materials and content to help it become independent in resource mobilization through training for its volunteers and contact with market professionals who can support its projects. In this way, the work we began through Potencialize can be expanded and improved, truly addressing the problem the organization brought to the program.

When we presented the results, we were extremely pleased by the happiness and enthusiasm with which the NGO received them. The collective work of a team with diverse areas of expertise enabled us to deliver a project that met the NGO’s expectations and used technology to develop solutions with the potential to increase the impact generated by the organization.