Managing social projects might be even more challenging than corporate ones. Organizations’ workforce is formed by a majority volunteers, to whom the only reward is motivation, without any financial return. Of course, today, there are many social enterprises, hiring professionals to run social projects, too, so this universe is wide.

Anyway, there are common issues for all social projects to deal with. Planning activities, executing them, managing charital events and nonprofit campaigns, attracting sponsors, and reaching sustainability are some of them.

One common ground they share, many times, is the challenge of attracting private sponsors, to avoid dependence on government support.

Originally, it would be a contradiction for an NGO (non-governmental organization) to be supported by the government. But, in the real world, they end up finding no alternatives in many regions. Well, strategic management can help turn the key to a change.

Tools don’t operate miracles by themselves, but they can surely help you work much better to reach your goals. GitScrum helps you start managing your social projects assertively

How Kanban boards help social Projects?

You can turn your social project management into a much better experience by using Kanban boards.

Kanban boards were created by the Japanese Taiichi Ohno and introduced into industry usage in 1940 at Toyota. Since then, they’ve been used worldwide to help all kinds of companies plan activities and reach goals.

Since 1940, the world has changed a bit. So, what started with paper notes on the wall, is now a virtual dynamic board. You can use it to interact daily and resolve issues with your team of social workers.

The modern version of Kanban boards – the GitScrum Board, brings its customizable columns you can label and name with different colors, sorting your task stages according to your working process.

You can start working with one Gitscrum Board and add your team of collaborators to it. As long as your operations grow, you can create as many boards as you need. First, include different committees to each one of them. Then, invite partners and sponsors to visualize your projects and contribute with them from their very beginning. In the end, you’ll build strong institutional relationships with them.

Working with this board will make your routine very dynamic. You’ll be able to create tasks inside your projects, assign them to team members, delegate power so they make updates on their execution, and get prompt notifications on their progress. This will facilitate your coordinating routine like never before.

Kanban Board applications for NGOs and Social Businesses

Things you can do to power up your social projects and social business with GitScrum Board:

Strategic Planning:

Run your yearly planning and SWOT analysis, inserting your scenario of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to be explored directly to Kanban boards, so they become practical actions right away;

Workflow Management:

Manage weekly tasks assigned to volunteers, assistants, and committees, monitoring them daily, as soon as they update their accomplishments;

Active Citizen Framework / Roadmap:

You can create a roadmap for your social project, which means you will determine a sequence of stages that must be followed by volunteers while they run the project, interacting with citizens from your community (for example: plan, research, interviews, data processing, project review, pilot project, adjustment meeting, scaled project);

Charity Event Coordination:

Create charity event tasks and subtasks sorting columns by area to facilitate its production (location, sound/light, food, safety, parking, tickets, marketing, etc);

Administration / Treasury:

Create tasks with deadlines on Kanban boards for financial tasks of all projects, as well as the organizational ones. Create board cards for new sources of income. Integrate GitScrum Spreadsheets with your financial data to keep all teammates and stakeholders up to date with your accountability;

Educational Projects:

If you work with educational projects for children or teenagers (on technology, environment, religion or any other subject), you can use GitScrum Board to create collaborative groups of study and common tasks, where students can develop something together, comment on each other’s tasks and ask for guidance from a mentor;

Manage a Charity Bazaar:

Kanban offers a simple platform for you to plan and control an event like a fundraising bazaar, controlling items that come and go, permanent equipment and assignments;

Create your Project Gallery History:

Still today, many organizations keep a record of their past projects stored in random drives, personal hard drives, individual clouds, or who knows where. A lot of information is spread, and valuable data ends up lost. Don’t let this happen to your precious past. Create a gallery of your past projects with Kanban Boards, adding documents, images, completed tasks;

Plan Training Trips:

Do you usually go to conventions and congresses related to your projects? If you are responsible to coordinate your group’s trips, nationally or abroad, use Kanban boards and don’t struggle! Take notes on bookings, reservations, transportations, health insurance, documentation, and communication to ensure the best experience for all;

Plan Marketing Actions:

The success of your social projects also depends on your marketing actions, so you will probably need to manage this area with special dedication, to attract solid partnerships and keep in touch with society influencers;

Plan Your Editorial Calendar / Content Creation:

Also related to the item above, you can plan blog and social media posts directly to Kanban, sorting them by month, by category, or as you find more convenient;

Team’s Individual Growth Plan:

You can design an individual growth plan for each member of the team, or a teamwork development challenge with Kanban, adding training tasks, certifications, achievements;

City Study Case:

You can conduct a study case or research about your city or town, creating columns per theme area (economy, employment, education, health, sanitation, environment) to analyze local critical issues that could demand your dedication, be interdependent and generate community projects or partnerships.

Advantages to Manage Social Projects with Kanban

1. Visual Management
   Our modern version of Kanban – GitScrum Board – is very visual, with colored columns that team members identify at a glance. It makes work more pleasant, and you can still customize your projects with background images that have everything to do with your activity (children, religion, environment, elderly, animals…). We believe in uniting functional, working features to a moving, vibrant design.
2. Dynamism
   Gone is the time when team members needed to call each other all the time to check their task status. It’s just a lot of work you can save now! Use a collaborative platform and get everyone working together on projects, updating accomplishments, and checking each other.
3. Team’s Autonomy
   GitScrum Board with Kanban facilitates remote leadership since it’s appropriate for collaborators to self-organize and be responsive. Once you teach them how to do simple updates, you’ll grow as a mature team and will stand by a tool to help you demonstrate the impact of deadlines and individual contributions.
4. Motivation
   The experience to move tasks forward is very rewarding, so a project management tool with Kanban and other graphic features is a powerful asset for nonprofit organizations who want to stand out with their projects, improve their team performance and achieve better results. Moving a task to “done” offers a positive feeling, and we need to remember that team members are human, not machines. It’s up to leaders to use this tool to promote mutual help among teammates, offer support and encouragement.

For all these reasons, of course, your organization has a lot to grow with Kanban. Move your social projects to another level with GitScrum!