Technology for your Mission

Free is great. As a member of the nonprofit community, I realize that every dollar not spent on software and support services can be redirected to helping clients. I realize that money is always tight. It’s great that there are innumerable free, open source, and donated tools to help organizations work more efficiently. Google docs, salesforce, google adwords, comparison shopping sites, techsoup, AVG, it’s all there. You can probably find an adequate free solution for just about every issue. So, what’s the problem?

 
You have to find it
This might be the biggest issue. Google, Microsoft, and large companies seem to think that every single nonprofit has someone on staff with technical aptitude and lots of free time. Someone that reads the right blogs. Someone that knows how to search for things.

This is, frankly, not even close to accurate. Non-profits, by and large, are not the young hip organizations that everyone in corporate has romanticized. Many nonprofits are staffed by older, less technically included individuals. Even nonprofits with “young and hip” staff usually don’t have the time to wander around the Internet looking for cool tools.

 
You have to learn to use it
Free isn’t really free. Most of these tools are poorly designed, complicated, or both. That means time — lots of time — installing, configuring, and learning. This is assuming that you can figure it out. Again, many nonprofits just dont’ have the technical aptitude to pull it off. Despite what google seems to think, everyone and their mother can’t learn css, javascript, and mysql in an afternoon.

 
You have to maintain it
Most of these tools — especially the really helpful ones — require periodic monitoring and adjustment. Google adwords campaigns aren’t successful if you don’t update them. Databases need to be updated every time your business processes change or you add a new field for reporting. Ongoing costs, even if they are measured in the man-hours of a salaried individual, can be brutal and unpredictable.

I’m not saying these tools aren’t useful. They absolutely are. But throwing free at the problem usually doesn’t solve anything. Most of these tools should be implemented with the help of a professional and care should be taken to budget for long term maintenance.

Today I read an article in Wired, The New Socialism. While it has a misguided perception of Socialism as a historical movement — basically equating it to communism — it makes a powerful statement about the empowering force of technology. The article speaks of a world of open source software, of information freedom. Frankly, I feel that this OSS utopia is unrealistic, and I’m a little tired of hearing about it, but the fact remains that technology has blurred lines. It has opened information, giving rise to an particular brand of information socialism. Information is no longer just the purview of the elite, it is owned by everyone and created by everyone. At least everyone with enough money for a computer and an Internet connection.

It is important that the nonprofit world recognizes this change. The role of nonprofits as the single point of information and aid is dwindling. Instead, nonprofits need to shift to information brokers. We need to help our constituents communicate with each other. Our job is increasingly to facilitate communication — between individuals and the government, between individuals and other organizations, and particularly between individuals — and less to be content providers in our own right.

Obviously nonprofits must adapt their use of technology to meet this changing world, but the change must go deeper than that. Nonprofits must fundamentally change the way they think about their organization, their mission, and their clients. We must think about communication, marketing, outreach in an entirely new light. Technology isn’t the tool we need to use, it is the way we need to think. In today’s age, there is no difference between technology and communication, the Internet and outreach. 

Well, that was all a little (maybe more than a little) melodramatic. The world isn’t going to change overnight. Nonprofits still provide and will continue to provide very real and very needed services — homes need to be heated, children need an education, everyone needs to eat. Our prominent place in this nation’s social safety net isn’t going to change. But the approach is changing,  and we need to pay attention.

For further reading on the topic I recommend Here Comes Everyone, by Clay Shirkey.

At NPower PA we provide a Strategic Technology Planning service. Organizations pay us to work with them to create a large document and ancillary reference materials that outlines a 3 year planning horizon for technology within their organization. This document is designed to interface with, but does not replace, a traditional strategic plan.

So, the obvious question to ask is, where does technology end and the rest of the organization begin. This is a particularly difficult question for me to answer since I don’t really believe that there is a difference between technology use and the organization as a whole. What that said, I am being paid to help them plan their technology use, so concessions must be made.

Obviously computers, servers, and networking equipment are related to technology. I think most will agree that the IT support structure also is. What about the processes that determine how people use technology? Databases that directly determine how work is done in the office? Budgeting procedures? Staffing? Training? The way they communicate? Technology touches every aspect of an organization, making it difficult to talk about in a clear way.

At NPower PA we use the “house.” This somewhat ridiculous diagram breaks technology down into discrete components that can be discussed separately. We can then color-code the parts of the house to show the health of the organization at a glance. Sort of like kindergarten, but it has proven surprisingly effective. To the right you can see the parts that I am using now. They seem to change with every project depending on the organization’s needs.

The “pillars” of the house are the most substantive portions of the document. They cover all the hardware, operating systems, databases, websites, and communication processes and software packages used by an organization. The rest covers policies and procedures within the organization, including BCP, planning, budgeting, support, training, etc. I’ve found this to be the easiest way to explain the impact of technology within an organization, but I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it far down the road.

The hardest part is figuring out how the client thinks about technology. Previous iterations seperated workstations from servers or combined databases and operating systems. This kind of document needs to be client-centric, not IT centric.

Well, I finally jumped on the band wagon. I have a blog.

For a month or so now I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about the thoughts I wanted to share. About the time I don’t have to devote to a blog. About how a blog fits into my professional development and my work. I’ve decided its time.

I’ve been working at NPower Pennsylvania for over a year and a half now. NPower PA is a non-profit consulting company in Philadelphia. We work only with other non-profits and help them use technology to achieve their mission — our somewhat cheesy tagline is “Your Mission, Our Technology.” I started doing IT consulting — fixing servers and networking equipment, checking backups, reinstall windows, etc — but I’ve moved on to technology planning, requirements and business analysis, training, and just about anything else people related.

Non-profits are curious beasts. They are both like (not that many like to admit it) and unlike their for-profit counterparts. They are often driven by a toxic mess of politics, fundraising, personal missions, and alcohol. And their relationship with technology is complex. Something about non-profit organizations’ unwillingness to adapt or change and their conflicting propensity to adopt novel and forward thinking programs raises tremendous challenges for their often outdated infrastructure.

And that is really what has driven the development of my personal mission. I want to help non-profits (and other public service organizations) use technology in ways that support their mission. I want to help them use technology not just as an operational tool but as a force for transformation within their organization. Technology drives business and business drives technology, and its time non-profits woke up and realized that fact. I don’t want to just help these organizations get new servers, new workstations, and new databases; I want to help them fundamentally change the way they think about and plan for technology.

On this blog I’ll share some of my experiences with non-profits. Some of my hair brained ideas. Some of my wild aspirations. By writing these things down I hope to further hone my understanding of the non-profit world and possibly give someone else a glimpse into the sector.