Fully remote clean energy nonprofit, Advanced Energy United, collaborates smarter with Microsoft Loop

As climate change impacts communities across the US, building an electricity system free of fossil fuels has never been more important. Advanced Energy United is a business membership-based nonprofit that brings together businesses across industries to make that vision a reality. 

“We can't create a clean energy future without the technologies that make it happen,” says Amey Bruno, Marketing and Communications Operations Manager at Advanced Energy United. “We really need the power and numbers of all these businesses—solar, transmission lines, battery storage, EV charging, all of it—working together for a clean energy future.” 

Yet the nonprofit’s disjoined project management and collaboration tools impaired its holistic approach to advancing clean energy legislation and policies. “One of the goals within our organization is to limit our tech stack, and we needed a centralized way to organize, communicate, and collaborate,” Bruno remembers. So a year ago, she and her team experimented with the collaboration app Microsoft Loop. 

The platform is included in its Microsoft 365 licenses, so adopting Loop didn’t add any expenses. As the marketing and communications team has integrated Loop into all their projects, more and more teams have organically come on board, too. Now Loop is a vital tool that supports Advanced Energy United’s ambitious mission.  

As Bruno says, “With so many projects across our organization and across the country, communication needs to be part of the process as opposed to an afterthought. Loop allows us to do that.”  

Streamlining communication for remote teams 

Achieving 100 percent clean electricity in the US is an enormous challenge, and “it can’t get done in a silo,” Bruno says. Yet interdepartmental communication through email, various project management platforms, and spreadsheets led to frequent questions about the strategy, status, and tasks of projects. “With Loop, everything is in one space and communication is streamlined. It saves us a lot of time.” 

Content automatically syncs across Loop. If someone from a state issues team is following a bill and a graphic designer is designing a one-pager to describe it, but then the legislation dies in committee, updating its status in one workspace or page populates to the linked Loop elements. That way, staff stay current and don’t lose time working from obsolete information. Similarly, leadership keeps tabs on priority projects by looking through the strategy, notes, and assigned tasks documented in Loop workspaces.  

Better communication also helps employees plan ahead, especially for interdisciplinary projects that involve stakeholders from across the nonprofit. “With Loop, we know what projects are coming down the pipeline,” Bruno says. “Our team is better prepared and can start conversations with the relevant people earlier, so we’re more successful.” 

As a fully remote organization that has nearly doubled its staff in the last couple of years, clear communication is more important than ever. HR, operations, and marketing teams collaborate on a shared workspace for onboarding and off-boarding. They link to crucial resources (such as the employee handbook), work together (like on company-wide presentations, linked from PowerPoint to Loop for easy access), and assign tasks. Loop components such as the Voting Table enable remote employees to weigh in on decisions, such as where to hold an upcoming companywide retreat. “Having everything in one place ensures we get employees everything they need to be successful and helps everyone feel welcome,” Bruno says.

Driving results for a clean energy future 

Advanced Energy United aims to encourage legislators, communities, consumers, and businesses to prioritize clean energy. “We have to make sure the right information gets into the right hands,” Bruno explains.  

The nonprofit painstakingly researches and writes reports on everything from reliable power during extreme weather to connecting battery storage projects to the grid. Advanced Energy United teams now build out a page in Loop for each report so they can coordinate a successful launch. While subject matter experts write the report, the marketing and communications team craft fact sheets, infographics, messaging documents, press releases, and more. Tagging a colleague and assigning tasks clarifies who is responsible for what “so things don’t get lost,” Bruno adds. “It’s an easy way to maintain one space for everyone to stay on track.”  

In addition, visibility into each report enables the nonprofit to take advantage of breaking news. For example, they can adjust the timing of a report launch to align to White House announcements, providing a newsworthy hook that gets Advanced Energy United research into the media. As Bruno says, “When we know what other teams are working on, we can be that megaphone that gets the word out. Then people take action and make change.” 

The nonprofit is also growing its presence at events to elevate Advanced Energy United experts and attract member companies. “Loop provides a great way to manage the many moving parts of events,” Bruno says. By centralizing all communication and resources, staff meet important deadlines and commitments. Most importantly, they can promote solutions to big environmental challenges.  

Staff can stay connected while traveling or working in the field with the Loop mobile app. On-the-go employees meeting with policymakers and industry partners can refer to crucial saved information, write notes in the relevant Loop pages, and update everyone working on a given issue—all from one app. 

The collaboration platform also integrates with all the Microsoft tools Advanced Energy United already uses, from Outlook and To Do to Word and Planner. Staff can copy a Loop element to these other apps. When they make a change in one place, it translates to the others. “I’ve really seen my team members’ productivity increase because they always know what to do to be successful,” Bruno says.  

She adds, "Building a clean energy future is not going to happen overnight. We all need to collaborate and put our heads together to move the clean energy transition forward. Loop helps us do that.” 

 Find out more about Advanced Energy United on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.