As much of the world continues to work from home, the importance of tools that support remote collaboration has never been more tangible. While the transition has been fairly straightforward for many tech-enabled companies, other organizations have been forced to rapidly adapt to keep serving their communities.
Recognizing the difficulty presented by the global shift to remote work, Asana, the popular work management platform, expanded Asana for Nonprofits, its dedicated nonprofit support program. Through it, Asana extends technology to teams that need it most— nonprofits working in vital medical research and disaster response related to COVID-19.
Extending the Asana platform where it counts
Asana for Nonprofits takes a thoughtful approach to helping organizations that have much to accomplish with limited resources. To alleviate the unexpected demands placed on nonprofits, the program needed to identify and implement a streamlined, efficient way to get charities and other organizations up and running on the platform. Adding to the challenge? Engagement with each nonprofit would require a unique agreement and a specific contract workflow (i.e., business process).
“Asana for Nonprofits exists to help organizations provide essential services, so speed was a top priority when we started to assess the contracting workflow that supports the process,” said Patrick Zecher, Legal and Privacy Operations Analyst at Asana, who uses Ironclad’s digital contracting platform to power Asana’s business contracts.
“With Ironclad, it was easy to explain how we could streamline all the steps in our nonprofit offer agreement, saving time and quickly onboarding new users. All we had to do was align on agreement specifics, and we were ready to go.”
Patrick Zecher, Legal and Privacy Operations Analyst, Asana
Setting up the Asana solution, self-serve to speed
Once the Asana legal and Asana for Nonprofits teams established core requirements and a baseline agreement, it was up to Patrick and the Legal Ops team to build the template and workflow on Ironclad. This meant uploading the agreement onto Ironclad, tagging required data fields, and setting conditions and approval routing.
The team was able to account for every aspect of the agreement, including customer tier, number of customer users and more. The result was a fully functional contract workflow — completed in a matter of days instead of weeks.
“Excluding breaks and back-and-forth with stakeholders, I was able to create and implement the nonprofit workflow in roughly a single working day,” Patrick said. “To date, we’ve completed over 250 agreement workflows, incredibly useful in our mission to support nonprofits.”
Providing essential support to nonprofits while preserving legal bandwidth
Asana for Nonprofits’ experience highlights how agile legal teams can expedite placing crucial resources in the right hands faster. Had Asana’s Legal Ops team relied on manual processes for the agreements, the engagements would have entailed a heavier demand in resources—and a significant delay in extending a key resource to nonprofits.
Without Ironclad’s Workflow Designer, Legal would have had to manually review and approve each agreement, whereas now approvals are triggered only when a contract falls outside key guidelines. In a climate of extreme uncertainty, the increased efficiency means Asana’s counsel can provide essential support to those on the frontline while maintaining bandwidth to help ensure business continuity—a win for everyone.
“It is extremely satisfying to help nonprofits on the frontlines by streamlining these contracts,” Patrick said. “It’s amazing to see how a contracting workflow delivers waves of positive impact—from allowing in-house counsel to focus on pressing matters to supporting a key business process, and ultimately getting our technology in the hands of teams who need it most.”
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Ironclad is not a law firm, and this post does not constitute or contain legal advice. To evaluate the accuracy, sufficiency, or reliability of the ideas and guidance reflected here, or the applicability of these materials to your business, you should consult with a licensed attorney. Use of and access to any of the resources contained within Ironclad’s site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the user and Ironclad.
