When people think of the uses for eSignature platforms like DocuSign, they often think of a company that helps businesses and governments with paperwork. And that’s true—DocuSign, which CEO and founder Keith Krach says now has over 13 million unique users, does help a lot of businesses and governments, small and large, go digital with their documents. But DocuSign also has incredible potential among nonprofit organizations as well, something Craig Kielburger’s Free the Children is living proof of.
Free the Children, an organization created to fight child labor and help young people reach their fullest potential, was founded by the 12-year-old Kielburger in 1995. Today, Kielburger is an adult, and the organization is still going strong.
One of the biggest struggles of any nonprofit organization is to use as little money as possible for administration and overhead costs. When people donate to an organization, they generally want their money to go straight to the cause—not toward the staff’s salary. To do that successfully, nonprofits have to keep overhead costs down to a bare minimum.
But tracking volunteers overseas and keeping all their paperwork straight can be both expensive and time consuming—not conducive to keeping costs down. That’s where DocuSign comes in. Kielburger implemented the use of DocuSign to track paperwork for students going abroad as well as tracking volunteers for their “We Day” program.
Having a streamlined process that is purely digital makes the process much easier, faster, and cheaper for Free the Children. Kielburger has also begun using the program for his other organization, Me to We. The beauty of programs like DocuSign is in their potential for innovation. It is simple and easy to use, customizable and efficient, which makes adapting it to individual purposes a breeze.
Nonprofit is one sector that could benefit greatly as a whole from any programs that help streamline documents. Tracking information, whether for students and volunteers or for donations and programs, is more efficiently done digitally. Hopefully, other nonprofits will take a cue from Free the Children and Me to We and start using eSignature programs like DocuSign.