A virtual assistant’s tasks for a nonprofit or an NGO can vary significantly, depending on the organization’s needs.
Manage Your Emails
Virtual assistants are often tasked with responding to emails. So, how do you respond to emails to make them feel like they’re getting their questions answered? You can follow these simple steps:
A Virtual Assistant will Prioritize Your Emails
If you have 100 emails in your inbox, don’t just start at the top and work your way down. Instead, look through all the emails and separate them by what kind of response they need from you. Some may require more research or an acknowledgment that you’ve received them (these should be at the top), while others may only need a quick response (and maybe even an attached document). So, a virtual assistant can help make sure these get done first!
Your Virtual Assistant can Answer Queries
Answer all questions directly in one email so there aren’t any lingering issues for future conversations/projects/etc., which will help prevent confusion among team members who may not have been involved before but still want answers about what happened months ago! This also gives people peace of mind, knowing their current question has been answered thoroughly enough, so no one else needs to worry about it again, which leads me to my third tip…
Manage Your Admin
Virtual assistants can file paperwork for a nonprofit and digitally scan, archive, and retrieve documents. A nonprofit organization must file paperwork, especially for funding requests, but filing paperwork can take time. Instead of doing all the work yourself, you can hire a virtual assistant to do it for you. The benefits of hiring a virtual assistant include the following:
- Saving time
- Making sure that documents are filed in the correct place
- Ensuring that no important documents get lost or accidentally forgotten about by your employees or volunteers
Manage Your Customer Service
A virtual assistant can be trained to handle customer service or administrative hotline calls. This can be done through email, phone, or online chat. Customer service calls are handled by answering questions about the organization’s products or services and helping customers resolve their problems. Administrative hotline calls are handled by following up on referrals from other departments and ensuring that information is recorded correctly in the database for future use.
Create Your Presentations or Other Documents
Virtual assistants can create document templates, presentations, or spreadsheets for nonprofits. Creating templates is an essential task for a virtual assistant. Templates are documents, presentations, or spreadsheets that can be used repeatedly by the nonprofit and by multiple staff members. For example, if you have a meeting agenda template that has been used several times with different groups of people, it will save time when creating new agendas.
Templates should be easy to use, edit, and update so that they add value rather than create more work for staff members who use them. They should also be easy to share among staff members so everyone works from the same document rather than from different versions, which could result in inconsistencies between documents. Finally, templates should be easy to find and retrieve so that when you need them again, it’s easy for someone on your team to locate what they need without having had access previously (or if you forget where it was saved).
Manage Your Content Marketing
Writing blog posts is another task a virtual assistant can handle. Blogging, which forms part of content marketing, is a great way to get your nonprofit’s name out there because it allows you to present information in an easily digestible format that requires little reading time on the reader’s part. It is also an excellent way to establish yourself as an authority in your field and gain access to a broad audience. Additionally, by using storytelling, you can get your message out, which includes your funders.
If you’re unsure how well writing works for content marketing or if you don’t feel comfortable with it yourself, one option would be to hire someone who specializes in this area to write blogs on behalf of your organization. If this would benefit you and your organization’s mission, we recommend reaching out through our contact form!
A Virtual Assistant’s Responsibilities Will Vary Based on the Nonprofit’s Needs
An excellent way to determine what tasks you can reasonably expect from a virtual assistant is by reviewing their experience and seeing if it aligns with your own needs. You may also want to ask other people if they have any recommendations for virtual assistants who can help you.
The most important thing to remember when hiring a virtual assistant is that your relationship with them will depend entirely on how well you communicate with them, so make sure you’re both on the same page about each person’s role in this partnership!
Conclusion: 5 Tasks That a VA Can Perform for an NGO
While the tasks you assign to your virtual assistant may vary, they will likely be a mix of administrative tasks and more creative ones. Virtual assistants are great because they can handle some of the more tedious work (like data entry) while letting you focus on other important things like creating new programs or expanding existing ones.