Welcome back to our series of Impact Stories, where we introduce organizations that serve their communities - and the world - for the better. The common thread in this series is the power of automation, and how it can help organizations achieve their goals in a fast, efficient manner.

Many of us have felt the tightening of our purse strings recently, from the grocery store checkout lines to the gas pumps, as prices and inflation rates creep upward. But millions of Italians are facing more than just a budget crunch. Italy’s National Institute of Statistics estimates 7.5% of Italian households (1.9 million) were in absolute poverty and 11% were in relative poverty in 2021. 

For reference, absolute poverty is when a household’s income is not enough to meet basic needs like food, shelter, education, or healthcare. Relative poverty is when households receive 50% less than the average national household income: enough to afford the most basic needs, but little or nothing else aside from that. 

Italian organization Agape has made its mission to tackle poverty and foster social solidarity. In fact, its name is a Greek word that essentially means “the pure love of our fellow humans”. 

What is Agape, and what do they do?

Founded in 2020 and based in the Campania region of Italy, Agape is a non-profit organization that assists people experiencing poverty, as well as physical, mental, economic, and family hardships. 

To do this, they provide people in need with food and clothing, professional training and social assistance, access to healthcare, tax, and legal services, and more. 

Agape currently serves more than 400 people in the region, meeting the needs of many families that were brought on by the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Community service is at the heart of everything Agape does, but they soon found that as their programs grew, so did the amount of data they needed to process. From incoming support requests to personal documents and data, they needed to refine their processes and eliminate as much manual work as possible to keep their focus on assisting those in need. 

To achieve this, they turned to automation and Make, which allowed them to improve their systems by leaps and bounds. They estimate a savings of about 8 hours per week on repetitive tasks, a number they expect to increase as they find more tasks and processes that can benefit from automation. 

Let’s take a look at some of the functions they’re automating now. 

1. Social media

A custom social media automation solution enables Agape to reach more people and generate more engagement than ever before. 

Thanks to this solution, they’ve seen a drastic reduction in social media maintenance time, enabling them to maintain a consistent presence on all their social channels. 

With less time spent on planning, maintaining, and posting, they now have more time to analyze the impact of their posts and develop strategies to reach a wider audience. 

2. Managing a network of supporters

Agape has a roster of about 200 supporters – volunteers, donors, professionals, and anyone who dedicates their time to helping others via the program. 

With such a robust network of helpers, they’re well-poised to expand their sphere of aid. 

But it can be hard to manage so many people, so Agape turned to Make to implement a CRM automation system that keeps donors and fundraising activities organized without lifting a finger.  

3. Email marketing

Agape relies on email marketing to promote its services and share its needs with the community. 

Using Make, they’re able to reach a wider target group via personalized email campaigns sent to supporters on a regular basis. 

Although this might seem like a fairly normal function, it’s making a big impact for Agape, allowing them to grow their subscriber base to exceed their first milestone of 1,000 active subscribers in 2023. 

4. Aid management

As is often the case, an NGO’s ability to serve its community comes down to money and how it’s managed. 

Implementing automation into Agape’s financial tools has enabled greater efficiency and transparency in their work, and allowed them to provide more timely and targeted support to those in need. 

What’s next for Agape? 

Agape is setting its sights on expansion. The organization plans to open new branches in other cities throughout Italy to create a vital, nationwide assistance network. 

Automation will play a critical role in helping to achieve this, ensuring requests are met in the shortest time frame possible while the organization scales to help more and more people. 

“Whether creating a table in a spreadsheet, adding a contact in a CRM, automatically publishing posts on your social media, or creating a bot for your instant messaging, Make manages to make everything simple, thanks to an intuitive system full of integrations,” says Agape’s head of HR Ekaterina Maryshkova. 

They’re aiming to provide more support-related services - from application forms and contact lists to information guides and tools - to help their patrons find the services they need. 

With streamlined processes and hours of time saved each week, the team behind Agape can devote their resources to helping more people, with fewer worries on everyone’s minds. 

Agape’s main objective is to provide help to people in need. Its mission is to improve people’s quality of life by providing them with support, information, and resources to face the difficulties of everyday life. 

To apply for Make’s NGO program, click here.