Technology for your Mission

I like to take a holistic approach to technology. Technology isn’t just the servers and desktops — it’s the software, it’s the databases, the website, the people, the processes, the training, and so on. This isn’t exactly a new idea, but it is one I’ve taken to heart.

Actually looking at technology in this way is difficult. The human mind isn’t particularly good at viewing things as a whole, it has a (usually beneficial) tendency to categorize and break problems down. This is exacerbated by the complexity of Information Systems; it is impossible for any one individual to have detailed subject knowledge about every aspect.

The trick is to cheat. Instead of looking at the system as a whole and then break it down, look at the components, put everything together, and plaster over the cracks. At NPower, we use The House. It’s a little ridiculous, but it works. What is part of the house and what we call each section changes project to project depending on the scope, but the idea remains the same. When doing a strategic technology plan or technology audit we address each part of the house separately through interviews and on-site investigation. As part of this process we examine the interaction between each of these pieces. Finally, everyone comes together to discuss and recommendations informed by the whole are made.

This last part is the most important, and the most difficult. The ability to synthesize massive amounts of information and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of seemingly unrelated gaps is difficult to learn. It requires as much business acumen as technical know-how. What emerges isn’t technical recommendations; it is the huge, business altering ideas. At NPower PA we call them Strategic Initiatives, they are ideas that fundamentally change how you think about technology. Strategic Initiatives are the top-down approach to Information Systems.

In today’s world this top-down approach is crucial. We can’t afford to think of an Information System as discrete components. Take a look at the picture in this post. It’s been making the rounds recently, and is a drawing of the first steamboat (it didn’t work very well). It is intended to illustrate that simply adding technology to a current system or process (like emailing out a pdf copy of a newsletter) fails to fully grasp the potential of technology. Doing so is the bottom-up approach.

Strategic and transformative ideas are the paddle boats. They shift the question from fixing problems through technology to creating new opportunities. Things like websites that integrate internal data sources, online communities, social networking, problem-based learning, open api’s, and open source software all illustrate this concept. Start with what technology can do and then decide how it can help your organization.

Not just anyone can do this. The individual looking for these opportunities needs a somewhat technical background, needs to have excellent management skills, and needs the ability to be both detail and big-picture oriented. And they need to be within the organization, at the level of senior management. Only by having someone inside and invested in an organization, and having the decision making capabilities of senior management can understand the organization and be as proactive as necessary. The solution, unsurprisingly, is to hire a Chief Information Officer.

If your organization can’t afford such an individual, there is always the option to hire a consultant, or to educate senior management about technology. Of course, the unique combination of skills that makes a good CIO are impossible to replicate by non-technical individuals or individuals who aren’t personally invested in the organization.

A coworker of mine likes to say that clients pay consultants to tell them what they already know. I would agree, with one small change. Clients pay us to help them understand what they already know.

Our clients already know they need a new server. They already know their database isn’t tracking the data they need. They know no one is visiting their website. But they don’t understand it. They don’t know why, and they certainly don’t know how to go about fixing it. And frankly, telling them what they need to do in the form of a document isn’t going to help.

A few years ago I volunteered at a community center in west Philadelphia. There I taught basic computer skills to under-privileged adults as part of job training. If there was one thing I learned, it was that having them memorize a set of steps to save, or print, or italicize, just wasn’t helpful. As soon as something went wrong, they were out of luck. Instead, I had to teach them the process. Explain context menus, tool bars, contextual editing. I had to teach them how a computer worked. Only with this knowledge could they figure things out on their own. Not that I was particularly good at it, teaching this kind of thing proved very very difficult.

Creating a Strategic Technology Plan is no different. You can explain the steps needed to gather requirements and implement a database as much as you want, but it isn’t going to do them any good. You have to help them understand the process, the reasons for doing things in a particular way. They have to understand how metrics drive fund raising drives implementation projects. They need to understand why long term budgeting is important.

The deliverable is a piece of paper that will be shown to the board once and put on a shelf. The valuable part is the lesson. This is what our clients pay us for.

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.

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.