
Transform Donor Engagement: Omnichannel Service for Nonprofits
Enhance your nonprofit's communication strategy
In this presentation, Sunrise and the Microsoft Elevate team showcase how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center uses AI and automation to deliver exceptional experiences, improve team productivity, and reduce operational complexity.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us for today's session on transforming donor engagement through AI powered omnichannel service. We're excited to explore engagement strategies powered by AI can help strengthen relationships and drive greater mission impact. Here's how we'll spend our time today. I'll briefly have Nate introduce Sunrise. I'll talk a little bit about Microsoft Elevate and frame why modern engagement strategies are becoming mission critical for nonprofits. Then Nate and the Sunrise team will walk through Dynamics three sixty five contact center in action, and then we'll wrap up with q and a. For for way of introduction, to those that don't know, my name is Jen Singer. I'm an AI business solution specialist Microsoft Elevate focused on Dynamics three sixty five and Power Platform. I'm joined today with Nate Andraco, principal consultant at Sunrise Technologies. Sunrise is a premier Dynamics three sixty five implementation partner, and they'll be walking us through the demo shortly. I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Nate to talk a little bit about Sunrise. Fantastic. Thanks, Jen. So Sunrise Technologies, Who are we? So at a high level, we're a Microsoft focused implementation partner, Dynamics three sixty five, Copilot, Azure, Power Platform. That's our world. We tend to work with organizations in retail, nonprofit, manufacturing, consumer products, print, and distribution, so industries that tend to have a lot of moving parts and benefit from well connected systems. Additionally, we've been doing this for a while. So overall as a company, we have over one hundred and ten active customers, four hundred and forty successful go lives, and a team of just over three hundred fifty employees globally. So I'd like to say we're big enough to bring a deep expertise yet still structured enough to be hands on and accountable. What makes us different? So one thing we're really proud of is our track record with complex implementations. Our project methodology emphasizes iterative business feedback and strong delivery discipline. That's part of why we've been recognized in Microsoft Center Circle, which is the top one percent of partners globally. Another big differentiator is our investment in building experienced stable teams. We're proud to say that we have very low turnover, which means our clients don't constantly see new faces and projects don't lose context halfway through. And then the last point. So lastly, maybe most importantly, our partnership doesn't end after go live or it doesn't have to. We offer structured global support models designed around your specific needs. So with that, Jen, I'll pass it back to you. Great. Thanks, Nate. So Microsoft Elevate exists to bring the power of cloud and AI technology to social impact organizations and education institutions everywhere. Our mission is rooted in Microsoft's broader mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more and good. For nonprofits specifically, that empowerment shows up in how we support operations, engagement, workforce enablement, and innovation, ensuring mission driven organizations have access to modern intelligent tools. That includes how organizations engage with donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries in increasingly digital and AI enabled environments. And importantly, it includes rethinking how service and engagement systems are architected, not just adding new channels, but not modernizing the foundation beneath them. When we talk about AI in today's session, it's important to anchor it in our belief that AI should amplify human inguity, not replace it. In a contact center environment, your staff and volunteers are interacting with donors, beneficiary, community members at moments that truly matter. AI should service contacts, reduce friction, and empower your teams to respond with insight and empathy in real time. Technology should strengthen relationships, not complicate them. And often complication doesn't come from lack of effort. It comes from fragment systems. That's what people putting people first looks like in action. Across the nonprofit sector, we consistently see four major priorities, enriching staff experiences, delivering impactful programs, engaging partners, transforming operations. Today's focus on contact center sits directly at the intersection of these priorities. Modern engagement isn't about answering calls faster. It's about recognizing that every interaction is an opportunity to deepen trust. It's about creating a unified experience where voice, chat, email, SMS, and social are connected to complete a donor profile. It's about ensuring no conversation exists in isolation. And achieving that level of connected engagement requires more than good intentions. It requires a unified service strategy. Across many organizations, the typical service stack wasn't for today's expectations. Voice in one system, email in another, chat later on later, reporting somewhere else. These systems were added over time often with the best intentions, but not always with integration in mind. That fragmentation causes friction, staff toggles between systems, donor history isn't visible across channels, manual handoffs slow resolution, experiences feeling consistent, And when engagement breaks down internally, it's felt externally by donors, by volunteers, and by the communities you serve. This is where the unified platform becomes essential. Rather than layering more tools, Microsoft Business Applications brings together CRM, ERP, low code automation, analytics, and AI, all in a shared data foundation. Engagement data, operational data, and financial data are no longer siloed. They work together. As AI becomes embedded into workflows, that unified data foundation becomes even more critical. AI is only as powerful as the context behind it. When engagement systems sit on the same data platform, you unlock real time insight, automation, and intelligence that spans across the entire donor journey. Now entering what Microsoft refers to as agentic service, where AI agents, Copilot, and humans work together. This isn't about replacing this is about evolving service models at your pace. You can think about this evolution in three levels. Level one, every employee has an AI assistant. Copilot helps draft responses, summarize interactions, and surface context. Level two, agents join teams as digital colleagues. They take on specific tasks, routing, case creation, and knowledge retrieval. Level three, human led agent operated, where agents can manage workflows end to end when human oversight. Organizations don't jump to three overnight, but the opportunity is to move intentionally towards more intelligent, scalable service. This model is supported by an AI powered learning loop. Intent detection, case management automation, knowledge management agents, quality evaluation agents. Each interaction strengthens the system, helping service teams respond more intelligently over time. All of this comes together in Dynamics three sixty five contact center. It redefines the contact center using AI and automation to deliver exceptional experiences, improve team productivity, and reduce operational complexity. And importantly, it can work with your existing CRM or along Dynamics three sixty five customer service, giving you flexibility in how you modernize. Now we move from vision to reality. Nate is going to walk through how Dynamics three sixty five contact center brings voice, chat, SMS, email, and AI driven assistance into a single connected experience. You'll see how unified data, intelligent routing, and Copilot powered insights work together in real time to strengthen engagement, improve service delivery. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Nate. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much, Jen. Let me grab the screen here. Just confirming every well, I guess, Jen, you can see my screen? Yep. I can go yep. You're good. Fantastic. So let me see before before I jump into our two demo scenarios. We're gonna show two live demo scenarios to you today. The first one's gonna be a a live incoming voice call. We're gonna have a voice call from a contact named Ava Patel. We're gonna register her for education gal within the system. And while we're doing that, we're gonna show you kind of the UI features and the look and feel of an incoming, voice call within the system as well as show you kind of that three hundred sixty degree view of the customer. And then the second scenario, that we're gonna walk you through is gonna be an incoming chat, from another contact in the system, named Lucas Green, and we're gonna handle his request to up his monthly, donation. So with that being said, let me go ahead and update my presence, to available so I can receive a voice call. And, Eva, when you're ready, you can go ahead and and dial in and send us in the call. So as we wait for Eva to call in, the first thing that you're gonna notice is the screen pop in the right hand corner here. So it looks like we're receiving a voice call from Eva Patel. I'm gonna go ahead and accept that voice call. Additionally, if I'm overwhelmed, I did have the option to reject that. So hi, Eva. My name is Nate. How can I help you today? Absolutely. So let me go ahead and put myself on mute and also expose the transcript that we have available. So I just created Eva. I asked her what I could help her with, and it looks like she's looking for some more information she'd like to register for the twenty twenty six education impact gala. So one thing that you may have noticed is, it automatically populates Eva Patel's, contact information based off of the mobile phone that we have registered and that she dialed in. So this is all configurable data. This is kind of an out of the box flavor that we'll be showing today, but it automatically populates, if she's associated to an account or a company within the system, her email, her mobile phone, as well as her as well as her address. So, you know, as I'm talking to Ava, I could say, hey. Just confirming, Ava. Are you located at one eighty two Lexa Ave, apartment nine b? And she could get back with a response there. Additionally, just calling out some of the omnichannel, UI capabilities that we have. So we do have sentiment analysis. This is evident on voice as well as, incoming messages as well. So, that sentiment can show, you know, slightly positive, positive, neutral, slightly negative, or very negative. And that's based off of, you know, key tones and words that the customer provides us, as we're corresponding to them. So, for example, if this was very negative, there's an out of the box manager dashboard that a manager could be, you know, looking at calls to seeing how they're going. And if they see that, you know, Nate's on a call with Ava, it's very negative, he has the ability to jump in, consult, or message me to help out. So, additionally, we'll walk through some of these features here. We have the ability to put the call on hold and off hold. We have access to a keypad. We could mark the call as spam as needed. Additionally, we could summarize, the conversation with Copilot AI. We could check our device settings or our speaker settings. We could take notes during the call as well as link it to an active conversation. Additionally, at any time, I could transfer this call, so we could configure it so that we could transfer it to an a number outside of the system as well as to another agent, if I'm being pulled into too many tasks. Also, I could consult with a manager so I could proactively loop in a manager, if I'm being asked questions that, you know, I don't have the answers to. So, additionally, just walking you through this new conversation form that popped up in front of us. We could also see the conversation details. So, again, it's providing us insight to the phone number. It looks like it came through the voice call here. They waited a total of eleven seconds, and it came right into the default voice queue. Also, it prepopulates any open cases that we currently have assigned to to Ava, the contact as well. So it looks like she does have an open case, where she was also asking, is there a twenty twenty six education impact calendar this year, which I'm assuming that's her reason for calling. Additionally, we also show the timeline on the right hand side. And the timeline, is a really cool piece of functionality that tracks all of the interactions that we have with the customer via email, phone calls, task or notes, appointments, you name it. So that's all great transparency as I'm assisting Ava. So let me go ahead and, start working on answering Eva's question. So I'm going and opening up her contact record within the system. So that's the record that you see, right in front of me. So I could go through and look and see all of the other information that we have associated to Ava. So I have her first and last name, her job title, her email, business phone, mobile phone, preferred method of contact, and her address. We also have a native integration with Big Maps so I could see her location. Looks like she's in New York City. Additionally, we have that timeline again, centralized on the form. We could also see key information. So what's her active payment schedule? Looks like she has a twenty five dollar monthly donation. We currently have that exposed on the main form as well as a separate tab. And to get back to the root of her ask, it looks like she wants to register for a twenty twenty six education impact gala. So let me go ahead and jump to participation history and register her for the event. So for this engagement opportunity, I'm gonna find the education impact gala. She's going to be a guest, and I'll go ahead and save and close that record. And as this record saves and closes, you know, I could communicate with Abel on the phone call. Hey. You're now registered. Can I help you with anything else? But for the sake of the demo, I kinda wanna be more thorough and and show you some more functionality. So, let me keep talking to you about some additional functionalities that we have. So another piece that I noticed whenever I was on the contacts timeline, it looks like there was a note previously added here, and it says, Ava previously mentioned that she'd be interested in bringing her sister to a future gala. So that's, you know, great information. If I'm still on the phone with Ava, could say, hey. Is her sister still interested in going to the gala? And if so, I could query this data in the system to see if her sister is already an active contact. And if not, let me go ahead and show the Smart Paste functionality on how to actually copy this information and leverage AI to paste it into a new contact. So I copied that data to my clipboard. Let me go ahead and just click this button. It takes it from my clipboard and identifies the fields, that I copied, and it'll paste it in, and it provides those suggestions. So it looks like here's her sister information, Angela Patel, correct phone number, correct street address. Great. So that saved me a lot of time, with manual entry. So I'm gonna go ahead and accept those, twelve suggestions, save and close this record, and we now have her sister added as a contact with the system seamlessly. And all well, you know, I'm on the call with Ava. I could go back and also register her sister, for the education in PACKAL as well. So just highlighting that piece. So let me jump back to the customer summary and now pull open the case that we currently have open. So on the case, I wanna highlight the Copilot AI summarization capabilities that we have. So this is a case or an incident kinda tracking any customer interaction that we have. And, again, this is configurable. We could add more fields. This is just the out of the box vanilla flavor. So we're tracking your case title. We're categorizing it into a case type. So right now, question, problem, request, we could obviously expand upon that and then leverage that for reporting. We have our customer tag, the priority, as well as the case status and the description. And the system dynamically, looks at all this information and provides us with a case summary, which is really cool. So without having to go through all this data and look at all the records in the timeline, automatically Copilot tells us, alright. Ava Patel is an active monthly donor. She contacted the donor care team to inquire if the education in PAGALLA will take place in twenty twenty six. She referenced attending the previous year's event and sought confirmation. So that's fantastic information that I have at my fingertips. Additionally, we do have the ability, to store data, about, like, an Impact Gala in our knowledge article repository, which I can access directly from this agent assist toolbar. So as I'm helping Ava, if I went to the case first and let's say I wanna search a keyword like Gala, let's see if we have a knowledge article create it. Oh, looks like we do fantastic. So this is another thing. You know, while I'm with Ava, I could say, hey, Ava. We actually do have a twenty twenty six education pack gala. It's set to occur on Friday, November twentieth from six to nine thirty at the Metropolitan Ball Ballroom at one twenty three fifth Avenue, New York, New York. Do you have any questions there? And we correspond back and forth. So that is an additional, helpful piece of information, and I could link this, to her record as well if that proved to be helpful. And then lastly, I do wanna highlight, the ability to create an email and send that back to Ava. So through the timeline, if I go ahead and select plus email, I could leverage Copilot in drafting a response back to Ava. So let's say I wasn't on the phone call and I'm just handling this interaction via email going back and forth with interactions in the timeline. I could draft an email based on context that we already have collected on the taste on the case through Copilot. So let's say, for example, I wanna request more information from Eva because what she previously sent me wasn't clear enough. I could select request more information. Copilot automatically creates draft for me, and then it presents that option, for me to review. So look at this. Dear Ava Patel, thank you for reaching out with your inquiry. I'm pleased to confirm that the education and pack galley schedule take place on Friday, November twentieth twenty twenty six. So you could see it's it's leveraging our knowledge sources, which is extremely powerful as well. So if this looks good to me, but I wanna make a couple tweaks, we could also adjust this through Copilot. So maybe this is a little bit long worded. I wanna make it, you know, a little bit shorter, a little bit more concise. I could change the length as well as change the tone. So maybe that's a little too rigid and professional. Let me make it more friendly, try and update it, and see what that looks like. Alright. So this is a little bit better. And if this is to my liking, I could go ahead and and send this and it'll track that correspondence that email received and email sent through the timeline of the case. So that's another cool feature that that I wanted to to share and expose. So let me go ahead and close this email. Describe the changes. Hey. Was there anything else I could help you with since I have you on the call today? Awesome. Greatly appreciate it, Ava. Take care. Have a good day. So you could see, through the back and forth correspondence with Ava, the sentiment went from neutral to slightly positive. So we were able to help Ava out, and now I could go ahead and resolve this case. So as, once that call ended, we're also putting some wrap up time. So, this actually sets me to do not disturb so I don't automatically receive another phone call, so I could perform duties on this case. So let me go ahead and resolve this case associated to Ava. Problem solved. We could configure different resolution types. Right now, I'm using the out of the box problem solved, and I will say, registered for that and resolve that case. So that case will go into resolved status. It will still be associated with Ava Patel's contact, and she's not registered for the event. So that first, scenario is now solved. Now let me jump to our second scenario. So let me close out of the conversation with Ava. So I had a live chat actually already going while I was on the phone call with Ava. I don't wanna go through all the messages from this live chat, we do have the ability to get a summary, from Copilot as well. So it looks like the customer requested to speak to an agent. The assistant introduced itself as a virtual agent. Okay. The customer introduced themselves by name, Lucas Green. Fantastic. So now that I'm ready, to meet with Lucas, I could see that he already has slightly negative sentiment. It doesn't look like he's happy about his wait time, so that's understandable. So instead of keying out a long response, we do have quick replies available to us. So let me go ahead and select from a list of preconfigured quick replies. So let's use this one. Thanks for reaching out. Happy to help with your request. Could you please share a few more details? And as I could see from his previous request, it looks like he wants to increase his monthly donation from fifty dollars to a hundred dollars, so that's what I'm gonna help him with. I wanted to show for this example the ability that that we have of querying data and systems. So, in most scenarios and for most clients, we automatically, identify the customer as they come in based off of, like, key attributes, like email address, phone number. But if we didn't have that information, I wanna show you know, if I type in Lucas Green, you could also search in their database database, and populate his information, dynamically as well. So alright. Fantastic. We have Lucas Green. I have his email. Let me go ahead and copy that email and just say, hey, Lucas. Can you please confirm this is your email address? And, you know, while I'm chatting with them, I have that information directly in front of me, and it just creates a better better ease of assistance as an agent for myself. So, again, in front of me, have the customer details, email, mobile phone, address. I could see conversation details. So if there's a pre chat survey, if we prompted them to answer a couple questions before, being escalated to a live agent, we could expose that here. And then for Lucas, it looks like there's two cases currently open, assigned to him. So an inquiry about matching gift eligibility as well as an increase his monthly gift from fifty dollars to a hundred. And it looks like based off the conversation I'm having with Lucas, that's what I'm gonna help him out with today. So before I jump into that, I wanna highlight a couple more, feature sets that we have with live messaging. So I talked through the Copilot summarization. We have, a list of quick replies that we could leverage to save us time and our response. We also have the ability to transfer this chat similar to what I showed for transferring a live phone call. I could start a consultation as well. So if I need to loop in a manager to assist me with this, I could start that consultation. I have the ability to attach files for Lucas. So if he's looking for, you know, a form of certification, I could send those files to him as well. And then lastly, I could link this to a conversation, take notes, and also leverage rich messages, in our conversation. So let's get back to to helping Lucas. So let me go ahead and look up the case corresponding to Lucas. So it was increases monthly gift from fifty to a hundred dollars. Additionally, let me go to his timeline. If there's any previous chats that we had with him, I could see those here. So alright. I have all the information I need. Let me now go to Lucas's contact and gain some more contacts context. So, again, once I go to his contact, I could see all the contact information that we currently have recorded for Lucas. That includes our email, business phone, mobile phone, and his address. Additionally, if I go to the timeline, I could see any other, conversations that we had with him. So it looks like we had a previous live chat with Lucas. If I wanna see the transcript from that chat from a previous conversation that we had, it looks like yesterday, I could actually pull that open. And it shows me kind of our back and forth correspondence that we had together, which is pretty cool. Additionally, it shows me the work stream, so it came in via web chat and all the other additional information such as were there any skills, what was the overall sentiment of the call or the chat. Excuse me. So I can reference that as well. So as we're talking, if he says, yeah. I actually spoke yesterday, I can navigate to that transcript and and better assist him. Alright. So with that information on my fingertips, let me go ahead and and assist Lucas. So if I jump to his giving tab, it looks like he's currently signed up for a fifty dollar monthly donation. Let me go ahead and actually deactivate this to stop his fifty dollar monthly donation and off that two hundred dollar monthly donation. So I'll create a new payment schedule for Lucas. As this is loading, I also wanna talk about we do have the capabilities to integrate this with an ERP system. So if your your current businesses are working off of d three sixty five f and o, we do have native Doret capabilities to to integrate this data across to finance and operations as well as, you know, other systems outside of Microsoft d three sixty five as well. So let me go ahead and and call this one hundred dollar monthly donation. Billing some key criteria here. Deposit date today. Book date today. Okay. For the payment schedule, recurring amount he said was a hundred dollars. Start that first of the month. We wanna put a recurrence end date, if we have that, we could put that in. If we have a frequency, we could configure the frequency, and then we could set payment iteration. So first payment date, last payment date, next payment date, and then finalize the total amount. And then once we have all the mandatory, information saved, I could go ahead and save his monthly donation and confirm that the update was made. So I'll go ahead and leverage a quick reply here. Say thanks for your generosity. I've updated your monthly gift as requested. You'll see the charge reflected in your next billing cycle. So fantastic. And, you know, while I have him, I could also ask him if he needs help with anything else. So it looked like if I go back to the customer summary, there was another case. He was asking about an inquiry about matching gift eligibility. So if I have those tools and I have them on the line, I could help him with that. So, really, I wanna highlight, you know, we have everything. We have all the information in one place to help Lucas and, you know, really optimize that that customer experience. The last thing that I wanted to highlight before I kind of finalize and end this demo is if I jump back to to Lucas's contact, I really wanna highlight that the centralized contact or account record within d three sixty five provides that three hundred sixty degree view, and tracks all of the interactions with customers and accounts and and handoff and data points. Currently, with Lucas, I highlighted the summary form, which again is configurable. If there's custom fields that we wanna track to these records, we could easily add those, via low low code, no code configuration. Additionally, we could see his giving history, as well as participation history. So it looks like, if he participated in any past events, we could log those here in a centralized location. So it looks like last year, he did a five k turkey drop. If there's any qualifications or preferences that we have associated to these contacts or accounts, we could also log them here. So it looks like he is CPR certified. We can see a start date and end date if he's a volunteer for a future event. We have that readily accessible. We also have other, granular details available. So, you know, personal information, personal notes, what are his contact point preferences, marketing preferences, as well as billing preferences. And then lastly, we also have the the native ability to integrate this with SharePoint. So if we need to store, you know, large file sets, it doesn't eat up storage within our our CRM system. It natively, you know, stored on SharePoint as well. Alrighty then. So with that being said, let me go ahead and close out of the demo here and stop sharing my screen. Nate, quick question before you, that I have about, from one of the people. Under the recent case, we saw the gate the case boost gift from fifty to a hundred dollars. Is that another case, or is that the one that is being created for this chat? Yeah. Again, let me preface this. This is all, demo information. So that that was the case created from the chat. I created it in advance just for the demo to save time for manual case creation. Talking forward, though, what's common is we we configure the automatic creation of cases for interactions so an agent isn't slowed up and has to manually hand key this information in when creating a case. So in addition to what I showed here for an inbound voice call as well as an inbound chat, one of the common ways that cases are created through are through inbound emails. So we have the ability to automatically create, case records from ingesting emails to a a shared mailbox as well. So we can automatically create a case from an inbound, email as well as dynamically route that based on key criteria on the email. Thank you. Absolutely. Alright. Let me stop sharing. Jen, I'll I'll pass it back to you. I think I could touch upon very briefly some of our our customer stories, and then in order to have some more time for q and a, we could jump to q and a. Okay. Alright. Yeah. So, again, as as mentioned, I'll I'll go through these very briefly as I do wanna leave some more time for q and a after this. If you do have any more, questions about customer stories, for our experience at Sunrise as well as Microsoft, please please do reach out after the call. But for Bound Health, we provided an an omnichannel customer service as well as marketing solution for this customer. They are in the health care industry, and they they provide caregivers for people with disabilities. So we did provide a solution with with incoming voice capability as well as, inbound messaging. I know I I didn't have a chance to talk to this in the demo since we only had time for for two scenarios. But in addition to voice and and messaging, so escalations from chatbots, we do have the capabilities, to implement, chats from SMS. So if you have customers that wanna text in, I just wanna highlight that as well. We could facilitate that as well as, escalations from social media messages. So if you do have an active social media account such as a Facebook and and you have customers direct messaging you, we could route that to the the customer service application as well. But, yeah, I I think, Jen, we could jump on jump over to ******, and then we can jump to q and a. And then so ****** Furniture, was another, customer of ours. They're actually one of our our very first omnichannel customers. It was actually right when Microsoft released the omnichannel functionality. We engaged in this project with ****** Furniture. We implemented an omnichannel solution for them, specific to omnichannel for customer service, regarding to inbound voice calls, inbound, messages, and escalations from chatbots as well as SMS messages. Alright. And I think with that, Jen Yeah. We we do have one, one question, for you, Nate. How can this help with loads of donor communications, acknowledging gifts, receiving, etcetera? Yeah. So I I think first and foremost, the ability to put a chatbot, and kinda deflect a lot of those large volumes from your resources or your agents actually working in the system, is a great benefit. So if you need to deflect kind of some I don't wanna call them simple questions, but easier easier to answer questions where we could load up a knowledge repository, this is a great solution for that to keep kind of the the bulkier, beefier questions, for your agents for escalations there. How can this help us with what's the general communication, acknowledging, gifts, etcetera. Additionally so this is a case management system. So every interaction is logged through a a case in the system. So it it creates, you know, mass transparency as to what sort of interactions your agents are getting from who are those being received. So what are the customers? What are the contacts reaching out? As well as what's the workload of your your agents look like? Are they overwhelmed? Do you need to bring on an additional agent to help, with this workload? Do you need to reassign some of these cases to new agents? So through that centralized case management system, it it really helps track a lot of those incoming incidents, questions, cases, and it provides, you know, rich, robust out of the box Power BI reporting on that as well. Great. I do have a question for you, Nate. What if they like their current telephony system, and can they still use it, or are they required to use Teams phones? Yeah. Yeah. It it can integrate, with existing telephony. I think we need to see, you know, what you're currently working with, in addition to leveraging, you know, Azure or Teams. Great. Okay. Another question for you. Our donors don't have questions. They want to be received, acknowledged, and appreciated. Let's see. I don't know, Mike, if you have anything else that you'd like to add into that. I think it's received. It might be a duplicate. Yeah. I I could maybe elaborate upon that. Maybe if your donors aren't, you know, submitting questions, you could set up automated workflows. So every time that a customer donation is received, we could send out an automated email thanking them, for the donation, send out customer surveys, you know, asking them how's their service? Is there anything that we could do better? So we could we could automate, correspondence and communication with your donors showing, you know, appreciation and feedback in in that way through the system as well. So it it doesn't require manual agents to reach out to them, but we could set up automation based on key system triggers and as well as when donations are received. K. Can the system work with giving platforms like Pushpay? We've specifically Pushpay, I I would need to to look into that farther and get back to you on that, but we we have integrated, with other payment systems, for past implementations. K. I think one of the other questions is, and I I can probably confirm this will, integrate into your ERP system if it's not my Microsoft. Correct. And same with, CRM. Awesome. Any any other questions? Let's see. I think we do have another one. K. So if we already have a fundraising and engagement and have a third party telephony system, when do we use this product, and when do we use contact center? I'm sorry. I may not have understood that. If they if they already have a a third party telephony system. Yep. Third party telephony system. If they're using a different fundraising and engagement solution is what I'm taking out of it, how would how would they use those products, I think, and when would they use contact center? Yeah. I I think there's an opportunity, to centralize that all in one place into contact center. And I think, really, the value add there is the native integration with the Microsoft technology. So the ease of leveraging Microsoft Teams chat within the contact center application if you're currently leveraging Teams, the ease of, you know, exporting to Excel, leveraging Excel online through different spreadsheets and and, other files that that you're leveraging there. But I I think it does have to make sense for your organization. If it does make sense to to centralize that solution into one, this this is a great application for that. I could probably go into that deeper. I think I probably need to meet with that person, though, and kinda better understand what they're asking and what they're currently using. Well, I think we are, just a minute over time. So if there are any other questions, I'm happy to reach out to you directly individually. I know there were some licensing questions that we didn't get to, but happy to follow-up if you do wanna reach out to me directly here at Microsoft. But I wanna thank everyone for joining and participating. We will send out the recording within the next five business days, and happy to follow-up with any further questions. So thank you, everyone for your time, and I hope you have a great day. Thanks again. Thanks, everyone.
Why Nonprofits Need Modern, Unified Communications
Nonprofits are navigating rising expectations from donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. Supporters want quick answers, personalized outreach, and seamless experiences across voice, chat, email, SMS, and social channels. At the same time, internal teams are managing growing volumes of communication with limited staff and resources.
Modern engagement is not just about responding faster. It is about recognizing that every interaction is an opportunity to deepen trust and reinforce mission impact. To do that well, nonprofits need more than additional channels. They need a unified platform that connects engagement, operations, and data on a shared foundation.
The Cost of Fragmentation
Many organizations have built their service stack over time. Voice lives in one system. Email lives in another. Chat was added later. Reporting happens somewhere else. Each tool may work well on its own, but together they create friction.
When systems are disconnected:
- Staff toggle between platforms to piece together donor history
- Conversations lack context across channels
- Manual handoffs slow down resolution
- Experiences feel inconsistent to the people you serve
That internal complexity is felt externally. Donors who repeat their story. Volunteers who wait for follow-up. Beneficiaries who receive delayed responses. Fragmentation erodes the very relationships nonprofits work so hard to build.
A unified service strategy eliminates those silos by bringing CRM, case management, knowledge, automation, analytics, and AI together on one data platform.
AI Should Amplify Human Ingenuity
Both teams at Sunrise and Microsoft emphasize one core principle: AI should always amplify human ingenuity, not replace it.
In a nonprofit contact center, staff and volunteers engage with supporters during meaningful moments. AI’s role is to reduce friction and surface insights so teams can respond with empathy and confidence. This evolution can happen in stages:
- Level 1: AI as assistant. Copilot drafts responses, summarizes interactions, and surfaces relevant data.
- Level 2: AI as digital teammate. Intelligent routing, automated case creation, and knowledge retrieval streamline workflows.
- Level 3: Human-led, agent-operated service. AI manages defined workflows end-to-end with human oversight.
Organizations move at their own pace. The goal is not automation for its own sake. It is building a smarter, scalable model that strengthens relationships over time.
How Dynamics 365 Contact Center Delivers a Unified Experience
Dynamics 365 Contact Center brings voice, chat, SMS, email, and AI-driven assistance into one connected interface. From the moment a supporter reaches out, agents can see a complete profile that includes:
- Contact information and preferences
- Donation history and active payment schedules
- Event participation and volunteer qualifications
- Open and past cases
- A full interaction timeline across channels
For example, when a donor calls to register for an event, their information is automatically identified based on phone number. Agents see open cases, previous notes, and participation history in real time. Registration for an event can be completed directly within the same system, and the interaction is logged instantly on the timeline.
AI adds another layer of support:
- Real-time transcription and sentiment analysis highlight how the conversation is trending and allow supervisors to step in if needed.
- Copilot case summaries condense complex histories into clear, actionable insights.
- Knowledge suggestions surface relevant event details or policies without forcing agents to search multiple systems.
- Email drafting and tone adjustments help staff send polished follow-ups in seconds.
On the chat side, agents can review AI-generated conversation summaries before joining, use quick replies to save time, and update recurring donations directly from the contact record. Previous transcripts, cases, and giving history are accessible in one place, eliminating guesswork.
The system also supports automation at scale. Cases can be created automatically from inbound calls, chats, or shared mailbox emails. Donations can trigger automated acknowledgments, receipts, and follow-up surveys. Chatbots can deflect routine questions, allowing staff to focus on higher-value conversations.
Importantly, Contact Center can integrate with existing CRM, ERP, telephony, and payment systems, giving nonprofits flexibility in how they modernize.
Bringing It All Together for Mission Impact
Unified communications are not just an operational upgrade. They are a relationship strategy.
When contact center and omnichannel capabilities work together on a shared data platform, nonprofits can acknowledge gifts promptly, recognize loyal donors, and empower volunteers. Every call, chat, or email becomes part of an ongoing conversation, not an isolated event.
With Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Omnichannel, nonprofits can ensure that donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries feel seen, appreciated, and essential to fulfilling your organization's mission.

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