Nonprofit Technology Roundtable: Navigating Nonprofit Technology Costs
3.9.06
Why are you here?
- Convincing people that systemic technology solutions are necessary
- Works with a grassroots network of organizations & people working together and needs a centralized website, but doesn’t have funding to create a website
- Has big technological needs they would like to solve more effectively, wants to identify funding sources
- Usually buy-in needed to do tracking & data management, needs language for funders, benchmarks on budgeting, to project what can be expected
- Wants to find out what npo’s need to make npo software
- Knows that organizations have need for custom web development & wants to find them
- Trying to network.
- Quantifiable answer on ROI of upgrades.
- How best to reach nonprofit customers in South Bay.
Points of pain:
- Helping people dream & know what’s possible. Explaining the benefits of being ahead of the curve as well as the drawbacks.
- We don’t really get paid to help people dream, but we end up doing it anyway.
- Someone who wants to do something very cutting edge, and it’s very difficult to explain to funders what you’re trying to do.
- Having costs associated with possibilities. Listing the real wants & needs.
- Speaking data to people who don’t speak data, who don’t understand that in those terms
- Bridge building – understanding the organizational culture *People are really stuck “we’d like to do that but our people only use Excel”
Count:
Nonprofits: slightly less than half
Vendors/Service Providers: 1/3
Funders: 1
Lawyers? School.
Why isn’t someone coding yet (WISCY)?
When you spend more time in design, you spend less time in implementation.
Bridge between techie/non-techie world. Problem statement. Paragraph in regular English, you have everyone in organization get together & write it up.
As a nonprofit, the biggest pain & most successful strategy would address the very fundamental dynamic of finance.
How do you feel about renting software?
- Would want to be able to extract data
- Trust in where it’s hosted, that everything’s going to work & we can call them in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve *Lack of control is scary *Ethical guidelines, security
3 database syndrome. By the third time they do the database, they realize how much time they’ll save by spending a lot of time creating it.
If you do 80% up front to make sure there’s a cultural map
Knowledge management
Strategies
- Engaging in workflow analysis tools
- Information flow map
- Data treasure hunts – at very beginning, ask what do you need to know, what tools do you have now, worksheets
- ensure technology works now
- avoid the wiscy syndrome (why isn’t someone coding that?)
- formulate a strong project statement
- not just focusing on one particular project
How do you determine whether something is worth doing yourself or getting someone to do.
Have your conversation internally in your organization before you start paying a consultant to spend time – it’ll save ya money!
*Websites: CNet, TechSoup, (Lynda.com)