According to
the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are more than 1.5 million nonprofit and charity-based organizations in the United States. That is a lot of people working hard for less money than they could earn in the private sector, just for trying to create some positive change in the world and help others in need. But it also means that there are at least one million organizations out there in America who are renting offices, paying for telecommunications support and Internet services, and even paying janitors to clean their offices, all when they really don’t need to. The concept of the traditional office is an outdated one. Much of the work of even fairly conservative nonprofits can be accomplished just as easily when nonprofit professionals are working from home, meeting at a central location, or working in the field. In fact, a virtual office may offer a nonprofit or charity organization enough benefits that they can spend more time working in the field with clients and less time at a desk working through the details of infrastructure and intake. Let’s look at some of the ways a nonprofit organization might utilize the features of a virtual office and then examine a rough timeline that demonstrates how a nonprofit might be able to pull the plug on their traditional office model.