Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Figures
Acknowledgements
THE AUTHORS
THE EDITORS
Introduction
Planning and People
The Tools
PART 1 - Planning and People
CHAPTER 1 - Mission First: Achieving IT Alignment
Mission First
Vision Versus Mission
The Intersection of Technology and Mission
Definition of IT Alignment
Elements of an Organizational Mission
Benefits of IT Alignment
Stages in IT Alignment
Implementing IT Alignment
Conclusion
CHAPTER 2 - Managing Technology Change
Creating Conditions for Ongoing Change
Barriers to Technology Adoption
Key Success Factors for Managing Change
Conclusion
Recommended Reading
CHAPTER 3 - Measuring the Return on Investment of Technology
What Is ROI? Getting Beyond the Magic Spreadsheet
Why Thinking About Returns on Investment Is Important
Unpacking ROI
When Is ROI Used?
ROI: The Building Blocks
Communicating Results
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 - How to Decide: IT Planning and Prioritizing
Building a Culture That Frames Technology Planning
Making Planning Part of the Routine
Planning the Technology Show
The Goodwill Case Study
Sample Technology Plan Worksheet
Conclusion: The Nonprofit Planning Framework
CHAPTER 5 - Finding and Keeping the Right People
Deciding to Hire
Writing Compelling and Useful Job Descriptions
Determining Appropriate and Competitive Compensation
Recruiting Talent Early and Often
Interviewing Candidates
Managing and Developing Employees
Conclusion
CHAPTER 6 - Budgeting for and Funding Technology
Organizational Budgeting: Getting It Right
Putting Research to Work
Knowing What You Control
Financial Classification of Technology Investments
Strategies for Funding Technology
Conclusion
PART 2 - The Tools
CHAPTER 7 - The Foundation: Introduction to IT and Systems
Your IT System Basics
Critical Success Factors for a Healthy IT Infrastructure
Where to Find Technology Help
Conclusion
CHAPTER 8 - Where Are Your Stakeholders, and What Are They Doing Online?
Let Your Objectives Be Your Guide
Be Clear About What You Want
Establish Your Baselines
Track What Is Relevant
Use Relevant Engagement Metrics
Survey Your Constituents
Conduct a Cross-Channel Analysis
Listen to What They Are Saying About You
Perform Trend and Benchmarking Studies
Monitor Your Progress
Revisit Your Strategies and Objectives
CHAPTER 9 - Effective Online Communications
Preparing for Online Communications
The Meaning of Engagement
Effective Websites
Effective Email Communications
Evaluation, Metrics, and Benchmarks
Conclusion
CHAPTER 10 - Donate Now: Online Fundraising
How Not to Raise Money Online
How to Raise Money Online
Seven Steps to a Successful Online Fundraising Program
Conclusion
CHAPTER 11 - Where Will We Be Tomorrow?
Key Trends
So What? Strategic Implications
What If We’re Wrong?
INDEX
Table of Figures
Figure 1.1. The Five Stages of Managing Technology.
Figure 4.1. A Business Process Map.
Figure 8.1. Daily Count of New Members.
Figure 8.2. Rolling Thirty-Day Averageof Daily New Members.
Figure 11.1. Price Indexes for DomesticMainframes and PCs (1996 = 100).
Figure 11.2. Mobile Communication Costs for Disaster Relief.
Find useful tools from the book that you can manipulate and a special Webinar discount code at www.josseybass.com/go/nten.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NTEN is a community of nonprofit technology professionals, and tight-knit communities are like families. Mostly, we support each other, we listen to each other, and we bring out the best in each other. We’re better collectively than we are on our own. We also have our differences, but it’s those differences, and the spaces we create to share them, that make us better.
We’d like to think that this book is a reflection of our community. Not only are all the chapter contributors NTEN members from a wide variety of backgrounds, but the book itself was born from the NTEN community. It was your queries on our discussion lists, your comments on our blog, and your hallway conversations at our annual conference that inspired us to attempt to tackle these topics. Many of our members provided feedback and ideas as we worked our way through the manuscript, and we thank you for sharing your experiences and expertise.
Along the way, numerous people helped make this book a reality. First, thank you to Alison Levine. You tackled the editing of several key chapters, provided invaluable advice on the rest, were a sounding board whenever we needed to vent. You are talented and thoughtful—a real treasure. We were very lucky to work with you.
Second, the NTEN staff and board provided the technical and emotional support one needs when wrangling eleven chapters from eleven authors. Without your advice and help, we would still be dreaming about this book.
Of course, there wouldn’t be a book at all if it weren’t for our talented and selfless authors. You all went above and beyond the call of duty. We are so proud of your contribution to the book and are lucky to have the opportunity to work with you.
Thank you to the editors at John Wiley & Sons in our first foray into the book-publishing world. Jesse Wiley—the young Wiley, as you are known—you know what you are doing, and you know this sector and what it needs. Thank you for seeking us out.
And most of all, we need to thank our families. There was no shortage of late nights and lost weekends while writing, reading, editing, prodding, culling, and rearranging. Thank you, Ami, John, Sam, Emma, and Lenny for love and wisdom and insights. You gave us the support and copious coffee we needed. Thank you.
THE AUTHORS
Peter Campbell serves as director of information technology at Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting the earth. Peter has been managing technology for nonprofits and law firms for over twenty years, and he has a broad knowledge of systems, email, and the Web. Peter’s focus is on advancing communication, collaboration, and efficiency through creative use of the Web and other technology platforms. Peter is active in the nonprofit community as a member of NTEN, blogs occasionally at http://techcafeteria.com, serves as webmaster of the nonprofit technology portal at http://nptech.info, and spends as much quality time as possible with his wife, Linda, and eight-year-old son, Ethan.
Michael Cervino is a principal consultant and cofounder of Beaconfire Consulting (http://www.beaconfire.com), an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting firm that helps progressive and moderate nonprofit organizations build websites and online campaigns and marketing programs. For nearly two decades Michael has helped organizations create effective, results-driven online programs and integrated advocacy, fundraising, and marketing communications programs. He is an author and frequent speaker at NTC, The Bridge Conference, among other conferences. He lives with his wife, Kindra, and two sons, Mickey and Killian, in Washington, D.C., where they enjoy the cultural offerings of the city and the surrounding natural beauty of the region’s campgrounds and fishing holes.
Willow Cook is senior editor at TechSoup.org, a project of the TechSoup Global Network, where she edits technology articles for an international audience of nonprofits and NGOs. With a dual background in editing and design, she has also worked on projects for organizations including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, and Global Philanthropy Forum.
Dahna Goldstein, founder of PhilanTech LLC, develops Web-based applications for the nonprofit sector and has worked for venture philanthropies, including Ashoka and Blue Ridge Foundation New York. She has also produced interactive eLearning programs, including the award-winning “What Is a Leader?” program, for Harvard Business School Publishing and Global Education Network. Goldstein holds a bachelor of arts degree from Williams College, a master of education degree, with a concentration in technology, from Harvard University, and a master of business administration degree from New York University’s Stern School of Business. She is the chair of the board of the I Do Foundation.
Edward Granger-Happ is the CIO at Save the Children and chairman of the board of NetHope, a consortium of top international nonprofits focused on ICT and collaboration. In 2008, he was an executive fellow and CIO in residence at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, while on sabbatical from Save the Children. Save the Children is his third career; previously he was a management consultant and a Wall Street executive. In 2007, the editors of eWEEK, CIO Insight, and Baseline selected Mr. Granger-Happ as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT and one of the Top 100 CIOs.
Steve Heye was most recently at the YMCA of the USA in the Technology Resource Group for ten years but has been involved in the YMCA since age twelve as a volunteer. He has a unique blend of operations, technology, communications, and training experience with a backbone of finance. Heye created resources, conferences, and training on technology for YMCAs nationwide and worked with a committee of local YMCA staff to create a resource that helps YMCAs align their technology with the organization’s strategic, business, and operations goals. He has a bachelor’s degree in finance from North Central College. His blog is at http://steveheye.blogspot.com.
Beth Kanter is a trainer, blogger, and consultant to nonprofits and individuals in effective use of social media. Her expertise is in how to use new web tools (blogging, tagging, wikis, photo sharing, video blogging, screencasting, social networking sites, virtual worlds, and so on) to support nonprofits. She has worked on projects that include training, curriculum development, research, and evaluation. Kanter is an experienced coach to “digital immigrants” in the personal mastery of these tools. She is a professional blogger and writes about the use of social media tools in the nonprofit sector for social change.
John Kenyon is a nonprofit technology strategist who has worked with nonprofits for over eighteen years, providing advice, teaching seminars, and writing about technology. With Michael Stein he wrote The eNonprofit: A Guide to ASPs, Internet Services and Online Software. Kenyon’s consulting practice concentrates on strategic uses of appropriate technologies, effective communication, and leveraging the Internet. He is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco and has been a featured speaker at conferences and workshops across the United States, England, and Australia and online. For updates on his work or to contact him, visit http://www.johnkenyon.org.
Kevin Lo is lead technology analyst at TechSoup.org, a project of the TechSoup Global Network, where he creates a variety of content—including blog posts, articles, and in-depth papers—for the TechSoup.org website. He also does research, analysis, and evaluation for TechSoup Stock, a global partnership that helps nonprofits and NGOs with technology acquisition and utilization. Lo received his master of public administration degree and master’s degree in international relations at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.
Scott McCallum has more than thirty years of executive experience in operations and supply management, media and public relations, marketing and development, and government relations. He served as Wisconsin’s governor, with a career spanning more than two decades in public service offices. McCallum serves as president and CEO of the Aidmatrix Foundation, a nonprofit that uses advanced information technology to create efficiencies between donors and those in need. Over $1.5 billion in aid is transacted annually over Aidmatrix solutions. McCallum earned his bachelor’s degree at Macalester College and his master’s degree in international studies and economics at Johns Hopkins University.
Cassie Scarano is the vice president and cofounder of Commongood Careers (http://www.cgcareers.org), an innovative not-for-profit search firm dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs with recruitment and hiring at every organizational level while also addressing talent-related issues throughout the sector. She has ten years of experience in nonprofit organizations and has served as the dean of admissions at The Steppingstone Foundation, director of operations at The New Teacher Project’s Massachusetts Institute for New Teachers (MINT), and director of Summerbridge Cambridge, all nonprofits dedicated to providing high-quality educational opportunities to a diversity of students. Scarano holds a master’s degree in education from Boston University and a master’s degree in business administration from Boston University, with a concentration in nonprofit management, as well as a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Northwestern University.
Madeline Stanionis has been raising money, organizing, and communicating for organizations and causes for twenty years and is currently the CEO of Watershed, an online advocacy and fundraising consultancy. While at Watershed and in her previous role as president of Donor-digital, Stanionis has led internet strategies for organizations including the Humane Society of the United States, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Amnesty International, CARE, The Nation, CREDO/ Working Assets, Ocean Conservancy, Victory Fund, and NARAL Pro-Choice America. She is the author of The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising Thousands (If Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with E-Mail, published by Emerson and Church.
Keith R. Thode leads daily operations for Aidmatrix, after serving in consulting and leadership roles in major technology firms Accenture, Baan Company, and i2 Technologies. He has been a founding force, contributing to Aidmatrix since its initial solution deployments in 2001. He holds a summa cum laude master’s degree in industrial distribution from Texas A&M University and a bachelor of science degree in economics and organizational development from Vanderbilt University. Thode serves in advisory roles to organizations in multiple sectors. He contributes in board and officer roles with meaningful organizations such as 121 Community Church, NPower Texas, and the European Committee of Young Life International.
James L. Weinberg is the founder and CEO of Commongood Careers (http://www.cgcareers.org), an innovative not-for-profit search firm dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs with recruitment and hiring at every organizational level while also addressing talent-related issues throughout the sector. Previously, he served as the development director at BELL and the executive director of the Homeless Children’s Education Fund. Weinberg has a master’s degree in management and public policy from Carnegie Mellon and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Tufts; he was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He is the vice-chair of the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition and a board member of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy.
THE EDITORS
Holly Ross has spent more than five years at NTEN, combing through all the technology fads and listening to the NTEN community to line up the webinars, conferences, and research that will help members use technology to make the world a better place. From ubiquitous access to technology leadership to social media trends, as executive director, She brings the wisdom of the NTEN crowd to the nonprofit sector.
Ross came to nonprofit technology after working for social change at CALPIRG and during her college days at the University of California at Berkeley. In between meetings and emailing, Holly tries to raise her three-year-old daughter and occasionally pays attention to her fabulous husband.
Katrin Verclas is a recognized expert in new media communications for social impact. She is the cofounder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is also a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile strategy, impact evaluation, effectiveness and ROI assessment, and interactive capacity building.
Verclas has written widely on communication strategies and new media in citizen participation and civil society organizations and for development. She is a coauthor of Wireless Technology for Social Change, a report on trends in mobile use by NGOs with the United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation. Her background is in IT management, IT in social change organizations, and philanthropy. She has led several nonprofit organizations, including a stint as the executive director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Previously she served as a program officer at the Proteus Fund, focusing on the use of technology in civic and democratic participation, and in government transparency.
She is the author of a chapter in Mobilizing 2.0, a book focused on engaging young people in public life. She is a frequent speaker on communications and ICTs in civil society at national and international conferences and has published numerous articles on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications.
Alison Levine has worked in the nonprofit sector for more than ten years, the last two as NTEN’s Special Projects Fellow. She holds master’s degrees in nonprofit administration and in science and environmental reporting. She whole-heartedly believes that technology is the most powerful tool to help nonprofits change the world. When she is not thinking about technology and nonprofits, she likes to go to the other end of the technological spectrum and get out into the wilderness where her cell phone doesn’t even get reception.
INTRODUCTION
As a nonprofit leader or manager, you probably play a number of roles: human resource manager, chief financial officer, keeper of the mission, wrangler of the board, and on occasion maybe even cleaning staff. There’s one more role you need to play, even though you may not have realized that when you signed up for the job: the role of technology manager.
There is not much in your nonprofit that isn’t profoundly affected by technology. From financial management to program delivery to fundraising, technology is fueling the efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations in your organization and around the sector. Nonprofit organizations are using databases to track donations, email programs to reach members with their messages, and accounting software to manage their finances. Increasingly, nonprofits are using the Web to deliver services to their clients, bringing laptops out into the field with them, and experimenting with social media like Facebook and blogging.
Yet even as technology is changing the way we live and work, many nonprofit leaders are struggling to understand how to effectively manage the technology they have and how to position themselves to leverage technology in their future work. And yes, technology in its many forms can often seem like an unruly child: full of possibilities, but sometimes tough to manage. If you are one of those leaders struggling to make sense of all this, we’re here with three important messages:
It’s not your fault.
You are not alone.
You can do it.
Let’s start at the top: it’s not your fault. In our conversations with nonprofit leaders around the world, we often hear about the same challenges:
• The rate of change is accelerating. It often feels like your technology is out of date before you get it out of the box. Get used to the feeling, because it’s not going away any time soon. In fact, social scientists are throwing away their old models for predicting the rates of technology change. Some now estimate that the amount of change in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to all the change in the previous twenty thousand years.1 That’s a lot of change.
• Language is a barrier. Like medicine and law, the language of technology is littered with acronyms and secret meanings. RAM, ROM, and CPU are the tip of the iceberg. For the uninitiated, technology is the domain better left to experts who can navigate the zeroes and ones that make it all go. And let’s be honest: working with experts isn’t always easy.
• Choosing what advances your mission is hard. Whether you are investing time or money (and usually it’s both), you are expending precious resources to get that new database up and running, redesign your website, or update your computers. Given that technology is not your core expertise and that it changes all the time, understanding how technology investments advance your organization’s mission is hard.
• Failure is scary. You’re a leader because you’re successful, right? No leader wants to fail, and unless you are really comfortable with it, technology is probably one area where you will fail. Maybe more than once.
• Managing change is not easy. As you will see in this book, technology isn’t really about technology at all; it’s about change. The introduction of even the smallest technology at your organization will change how and why people do their work. And that is harder to manage than anything.
If any of those challenges sound familiar, then this book is for you.
Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission is more than just a technology primer. It will give you the information you need to know to understand the key technologies in your nonprofit. And more important, we give you the strategies you need to manage those technologies. Because each nonprofit is unique, how and why you use technology to meet your mission will vary. You will not find hard and absolute rules here, but you will find models for making technology decisions and guiding your technology strategy. We cover a wide variety of topics in the book, from budgeting for IT to online fundraising, but there are a few key themes that appear in nearly every chapter:
• Mission first. As a nonprofit leader, you may find that your staff, board, and stakeholders pitch new technology ideas frequently. Well-meaning individuals sometimes develop what we like to call “shiny object syndrome.” They see a new tool and are mesmerized. It may even happen to you from time to time. The first step in making good technology decisions at your organization is to understand which technologies matter for your mission and which don’t. This will eliminate 90 percent of the technology clutter you deal with. No matter what aspect of the organization’s use of technology you are addressing, you have to ask yourself first, “Will this help us meet our mission better?” If the answer is no, move on. If the answer is yes, you have some more investigative work to do.
• People second. Technology is always about more than the actual application or tool. If a technology is truly going to help you meet your mission, your staff, board, and stakeholders need to see that value and buy into inevitable changes. Recognizing and validating the human experiences in your organization is an essential ingredient to success. The “people” part of technology also means making sure that you have the right people providing your technology support and services.
• Evaluate and iterate. Regardless of size or scope, every technology undertaking should be evaluated. More than ever before, technology affords you the opportunity to measure. Although you won’t want to measure everything, you should measure the impact your technologies have on your organization in time saved, money saved, new stakeholders reached, dollars raised, and, most important, meeting your mission. If your technology implementations don’t advance your goals, you’ll need to rethink and iterate.
This brings us to our second message: you are not alone. Nonprofit leaders and even the people who wrote this book encounter these challenges every day. They surface in almost every training and in the many mailing lists that NTEN runs. This is why we’ve created this book. We hear about these from leaders at tiny volunteer-run start-ups and at giant international organizations. We want you to know that what you’re experiencing is par for the course, and that with some training and some resources you can indeed become an extraordinary leader in regard to technology.
The contributors to this book reflect the scope and diversity of the IT experience. Consultants, IT directors, and even a governor contributed chapters to this book, and each of them struggled with the issues they address before they became subject matter experts. What they’ll all agree to is this: successfully managing technology is about 10 percent technology and 90 percent planning and people.
Accordingly, you’ll find two parts in this book: Part One, “Planning and People,” and Part Two, “The Tools.”
Planning and People
Part One addresses the softer side of technology—the things that aren’t about technology specifically, but can make or break your effort. The chapters in this section address topics such as planning, staffing, and budgeting:
• Mission First: Achieving IT Alignment. The relationship between technology and mission isn’t always clear-cut, but it’s the most important part of managing technology in any organization. In this chapter, we help you understand how technology and mission relate and give you a step-by-step process for aligning technology with your mission.
• Managing Technology Change. Most nonprofit leaders will tell you that money and time are the two biggest barriers to technology adoption. But all the money and time in the world won’t guarantee the success of a technology initiative. To introduce technology in your organization successfully, you’ll need to foster the right culture in your organization. In this chapter, we discuss the finer points of learning and inclusiveness that can make or break any technology initiative.
• Measuring the Return on Investment of Technology. Assessing the return on investment (ROI) of technology projects is crucial to securing board support and staff buy-in. This chapter explains techniques for ROI analysis in the nonprofit context to help guide your decision making and demonstrate results.
• How to Decide: IT Planning and Prioritizing. Nonprofits have limited resources, which usually means that we have to make tough choices about where to spend our time and money. Here we cover best practices in planning for technology projects, providing tools to help you make smart decisions about where to invest those resources.
• Finding and Keeping the Right People. Having the right staff in place is crucial to success with technology. This chapter discusses different specializations within technology, how to write a good job description for IT staff, and how to match skills sets with organizational needs for maximum effect. It also discusses recruiting channels, salaries, and evaluation of applicants’ skills in the hiring process.
• Budgeting for and Funding Technology. Setting appropriate budgets and securing resources is one of the most important jobs a leader has, and raising money for technology presents a special set of challenges. This chapter examines adequate budgeting for different types of organizations and the classification of technological expenses, including what counts toward overhead versus program expenses. We review strategies for pitching technology projects and explore the foundations that fund them.
The Tools
Part Two gives you an overview of the common tools you will use to get your work done, communicate, evaluate, and even raise a little money.
• The Foundation: Introduction to IT and Systems. Fancy online fundraising strategies and a fantastic website won’t matter much if your IT basics aren’t working. This chapter introduces the basics of information technology and systems in nonprofits, in simple, easy-to-understand language. IT areas such as databases, websites, and back-office infrastructure are covered. You’ll gain a basic understanding of the workings and uses of IT systems and tools, providing a good foundation for the chapters that follow.
• Where Are Your Stakeholders and What Are They Doing Online? Before you engage in any online activities, it’s a good idea to find out if your audience is online and what they are doing while there. We take you through some easy to implement evaluation strategies for determining what your audience is doing online now and for evaluating your online endeavors later.
• Effective Online Communications. The Internet has revolutionized marketing as a field. The creation of websites, campaigns to drive traffic to those sites, email newsletters, and blogs are just a few ways that marketing has advanced. This chapter provides strategies, best practices, evaluation, and case studies about online marketing to familiarize you with the breadth of possibilities and inform your decisions about allocating your marketing budget and staff time.
• Donate Now: Online Fundraising. Anyone with a “Donate Now” button can tell you that online fundraising just isn’t that easy. Successful online fundraising strategies take planning, flexibility, and creativity. In this chapter, we outline the basics of a successful campaign, providing case studies and benchmarks to facilitate realistic goal setting.
• Where Will We Be Tomorrow? The Future of IT in Nonprofits. No one can tell you exactly what technologies and tools will crop up in the coming years, but we can talk about the trends that are most likely to continue and how that will affect your organization. This chapter offers practical advice to guide your current decision making and ensure that the choices you make now will matter in the coming years.
Don’t think you need to sit down right now and read this book straight through to get the most out of it. As executive directors and managers, we know that nonprofit leaders don’t always have the kind of time that book reading requires. Instead, we designed the book with your typical questions (and occasional crises) in mind. If, for example, you’ve just installed a new database, the staff hates it, and you want to quell the mutiny before it begins, you should skip straight to Chapter Two, “Managing Technology Change.” If your boss wants to you spice up your e-newsletter, head over to Chapter Nine, “Effective Online Communications.” However, if you find yourself facing a whole set of technology issues and you’re looking for support in developing a larger technology strategy for your organization, then the entire book will provide a nice framework for you.
We’ve tried to cover the most important aspects of technology management, regardless of the size or issue area of your nonprofit. As comprehensive as it is, it doesn’t cover every piece of technology used by nonprofits, and it’s not a how-to manual for any specific set of tools. Use this book to shape your technology strategy—that is, how you make technology decisions—not for advice about which tools or services to use.
We wrote this book to get you started on the path to expertise. We also know that you will need support along the way. Some days you will need advice; others, a place to vent. It’s important that you find a community of peers that will support you on your journey. The NTEN community is designed to provide that kind of support: answering technical questions, reviewing vendors, providing new ideas, and providing you with the support and wisdom along the way. In fact, we’ve set up a special site for readers of this book where you can get more information from the authors and additional information we weren’t able to include in the book, as well as discuss your organization and the book. Join us at http://meetyourmission.org.
Here’s our third and final message for you: you can do it. You can lead in the realm of technology as confidently and skillfully as you lead any other part of your organization. You don’t need to get special technology training, and you’ll never really have to know what XML stands for. Creating real change in your community is hard—and you do it anyway. You make remarkable things happen every day. Leading your organization’s use of technology will be easy for you in comparison.
We look forward to working with you!
Holly Ross
Executive Director, NTEN
holly@meetyourmission.org
Katrin Verclas
Executive Director, MobileActive
katrin@meetyourmission.org
Alison Levine
Special Projects Fellow, NTEN
Note
1 http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0563.html?printable=1.
PART 1
Planning and People
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams, 1923
It may seem odd that we are opening a book about technology with discussions of planning and people. But as you’ve likely experienced, it’s the people using the technology that control how successfully it is used.
A database can have all the reporting tools and other whiz-bang features you need to track and serve your clients, but if your staff doesn’t know how to use them—or worse, doesn’t want to—that database is just an expensive spreadsheet program. Your server, holding all your mission-critical files, may be the lifeblood of your organization, but if you’ve failed to plan for maintenance and upgrades, it will crash—becoming an expensive paperweight.
The chapters in this section of the book are designed to give you a better understanding of all those things that have nothing to do with technology directly, and everything to do with the success of your technology initiatives. The relationship between technology and your mission, change management, planning, budgeting, and staffing for technology are all covered.
After reading this section of the book, you should have the fundamentals that will allow you to navigate any technology situation successfully.
CHAPTER 1
Mission First: Achieving IT Alignment
Steve Heye
This book is filled with great advice about how to manage the technology in your organization, but none of it will do you one bit of good unless you remember this: mission first. As a nonprofit leader you are, in many ways, lucky in this regard. You are bombarded daily with technology news, requests for software or gadgets from staff, and advice from everyone about what technology you should use. This cyclone of technology activity can be maddening, but if you use your mission as a filter, the cyclone will become a soft breeze.
Ever since the first desktop computers made their way into the nonprofit sector, information technology (IT) has helped organizations become more efficient and more effective, while also driving nonprofit leaders a little crazy. For many leaders, technology is a necessary evil. However, if nonprofits are going to leverage technology to its fullest potential, their leaders need to change that way of thinking. They need to view technology as a partner in achieving organizational goals. In other words, they need to align their investments in information technology with their efforts to further their mission.
This chapter will explore the relationship between mission and technology, clearly define the concept of IT alignment, explain its many benefits, examine its different stages, and provide a clear road map for real-world implementation. Although the following information and stories were developed specifically for YMCAs by YMCAs, all of the presented principles and ideas can be applied to any organization. However, you will need to take some time to define your own situation and needs. Your staff, funding, daily operations, technical ability, mission, and organizational culture will directly impact how you adopt and employ IT alignment. Therefore the following is not a set of rigid rules; rather, it is a basic framework meant to spur ideas, questions, and concepts that can easily be applied to your own situation.
Mission First
Why is mission the first topic of a book about technology? Because mission is what makes the nonprofit sector matter. Unlike for-profit entities, nonprofits are not accountable to a financial bottom line; rather, they are responsible for serving a social bottom line. It’s true that nonprofit leaders must be good financial stewards, but that’s because their organizations won’t be able to keep providing services (delivering the mission) to their communities if they go out of business.
The goal of IT alignment is to use technology to support and enhance the work that you do to meet your mission. In other words, IT alignment will help you select and implement technology to achieve your mission and to avoid the trap of implementing the latest technology because it’s shiny, or because someone told you to. To make the most of this chapter, then, you’ll need to know what mission really means.
Vision Versus Mission
Many organizations use the terms vision and mission interchangeably, but they are not the same.
Vision
Your vision is the description of the world you wish to create. According to BoardSource:
tip
Through a vision statement, a nonprofit defines its ultimate motivation, its dreams, and its image of a desired future. A vision statement describes the ideal situation if the organization could fulfill its utmost wish.1
Vision statements should be future-oriented and establish a standard you are trying to reach. Vision statements often look like this:
• A community where no child goes to bed hungry
• Healthy wetlands that sustain a diversity of species in our state
• Clean drinking water for all Nigerians
Mission
Your mission, on the other hand, is what your organization does. Although your organization may want to achieve clean drinking water for all Nigerians, how you go about realizing that vision is what’s articulated in your mission. You may choose to work at the policy level, or you may provide direct services in Nigerian communities by providing wells, water treatment, or other services. BoardSource defines it as follows:
tip
The mission statement provides the basis for judging the success of an organization and its programs. It helps to verify if the organization is on the right track and making the right decisions. It provides direction when the organization must adapt to new demands.2
Here are some sample mission statements:
• Mercy Corps: Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities.
• A local United Way: To inspire the people of York County to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors through financial generosity and volunteer commitment.
• Save the Bay: Save the Bay is committed to fostering a personal connection between people and Narragansett Bay and encouraging investment in the bay’s future.
Notice that all of these examples are specific enough to tell you a little bit about how each organization plans to reach its vision (inspiring people to volunteer in their communities or connecting people to a natural resource), but they are not so specific that the organizations are locked into specific strategies or numbers (like recruiting a thousand volunteers, or connecting people to the bay only through nature walks).
The Intersection of Technology and Mission
Ultimately, every decision you make as a nonprofit leader should be grounded in your mission. Whether it’s hiring more staff or starting a new program, you do it because it will help your organization achieve its mission. It can be tough at times to draw the line between technology and mission. Many leaders think of technology in the same way that they think of office supplies: it keeps the office going, but it isn’t critical to the mission.
But technology is not just another office supply. Let’s say you run out of paper clips one day. You can probably still work toward your mission fairly effectively (unless your mission involves paper clips somehow). But if your computers are crashing every hour, or your staff members don’t understand how to use the software they are given, your ability to meet your mission slows down drastically. The kinds of efficiencies that well-implemented technology affords can allow your organization to serve more clients, plant more trees, and so on. A recent study reported that “information technology and telecommunications hardware, software, and services turns out to be a powerful driver of growth, having an impact on worker productivity three to five times that of non-IT capital (e.g., buildings and machines).”3 In other words, the new computer that you buy for your administrative assistant will make her three to five times more productive than practically any other investment you could make.
Of course, technology is different from your average paper clip in one other key way. Increasingly, nonprofits are using technology tools like handheld computers, smart phones, and websites not only to create efficiencies but also to become more effective. For example, online chat forums are connecting mothers of children with birth defects so that they can get the support and advice they need, regardless of the time of day or their location. In the past, this kind of service could only have been provided by expensive and time-consuming face-to-face meetings. Neighborhood associations are using smart phones to email reports of potholes, damaged lights, and other city services that need attention to city hall, rather than waiting for city hall to be open to place a report. Examples of the direct connection between technology and mission abound. You can’t say that about a paper clip—or any of your other office supplies.
Knowing now how technology and mission relate, you can begin to explore the process of aligning technology with mission in your organization.
Definition of IT Alignment
To many nonprofit leaders, technology is like a foreign language—full of buzzwords and three-letter acronyms that cause an immediate disconnect. So let’s begin by defining the term IT alignment. At its core, IT alignment refers to the coordination of an IT strategy with the goals, strategies, and processes used to meet an organization’s mission.
For example, an organization may use a database—rather than a slow and often inaccurate paper calendar—to quickly access client records and schedule new appointments. This creates efficiencies for the staff, allowing them to serve more people. Taking this example a step further, the same staff could be trained to interpret the client records and scheduling data and use it to make decisions, such as which classes should be offered more often or which classes should be dropped. That information could then be shared internally across functions and possibly with collaborating organizations. The organization could also create a website that allows clients to access their own data and schedule their own appointments any time, day or night. So with IT alignment, technology is not only allowing staff members to work faster, but also helping the organization serve more people and serve them better.
Elements of an Organizational Mission
To fully comprehend this concept of IT alignment, it is important to identify and understand the three critical components of achieving an organizational mission: goals, strategies, and processes.
• Goals are the tactical objectives that are set based on your mission and strategic plan. Goals can be set for many areas of your organization, like operations, administration, programs, or development. For example, you may have a program goal of serving one thousand meals per week to your clients, an operations goal of reducing the amount of time spent on data entry, or an administrative goal of producing more effective financial reports for the board.
• Strategies are the methods that your organization is deliberately using to meet their goals. This could include raising more money, hiring staff, building an email list, or any number of other options.
• Processes are the steps or procedures your organization uses to get its daily work done. This includes accepting donations, paying bills, tracking clients, identifying prospects, hiring staff, communications, delivering services, and much more.
If these three elements are not clearly defined or articulated, most IT alignment efforts will fail. But when an organization’s leadership and IT staff work together to understand its goals, strategies, and processes, they take the first significant step towards achieving true IT alignment.
Benefits of IT Alignment
It’s easy to focus on the costs of addressing your organization’s technology, but the benefits of implementing IT alignment are numerous. There are three benefits, though, that are particularly important to nonprofit leaders: avoiding legal and financial troubles, creating efficiencies, and improving effectiveness.
Avoid Common Legal and Financial Troubles
Technology that is aligned with the administrative goals of an organization can help prevent fraud within the organization, provide more accurate reporting information for funders and government agencies, and prevent the theft of stakeholder or client data such as sensitive health information or credit card numbers.
Although fraud and theft are rare, they do happen. According to a New York Times article, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that all organizations (for-profit and nonprofit) lose, on average, 6 percent of their revenue to fraud each year.4 In 2006, that amounted to $40 billion in the nonprofit sector. Beyond the monetary loss, any nonprofit that loses money or data will have to face public—and possibly legal—scrutiny, costing the organization valuable time and harming its reputation. At a time when public confidence in the nonprofit sector continues to drop, you can’t afford to give your stakeholders another reason to doubt your ability to effectively steward their contributions.
Streamline Operations to Create Efficiencies
Aligning technology with the operations goals can help nonprofit leaders better understand how an organization completes work and accomplishes day-to-day tasks. You will be able to eliminate unnecessary or redundant procedures and minimize the staff time spent on data entry and systems maintenance. You will also be able to identify possibilities for enhancing services or program delivery, highlight new opportunities to serve your community, and gain a better understanding of how your organization is functioning on the whole.
A common operations problem that technology alignment can help address at nonprofits is double data entry. Every week, thousands of nonprofits around the country spend countless extra hours first entering donations into their donor database, only to have the finance staff enter the same data into the accounting software. Not only does this waste time, but the data from the two systems rarely match, and donor information is often misentered in one or both locations. Technology aligned with the operational goal of reducing double data entry can help nonprofits avoid this common problem and create more time for staff to perform mission-related work.
Improve Effectiveness
When technology is aligned with the administrative and operational goals of your organization, you often see a savings of time and money, or improved efficiencies, as in the preceding example. When technology is part of the overall organizational strategic planning process, you can begin to see improved effectiveness—the types of benefits that let you not only do more, but also do it better. This is where IT alignment really starts to pay off.
The argument can be made that eliminating double data entry frees up staff time and allows your organization to then serve more clients, but the connection between technology and mission in this scenario is one step removed.
When you include technology in your organization’s strategic planning, you will find that you are able to tie technology to your program goals as well, creating a direct link between technology and your mission. A great example of this connection comes from the legal services community.
Legal services agencies provide legal expertise in everything from divorce to eviction to taxes for underserved communities across the country. Many legal services agencies work with populations of migratory workers, located in remote rural areas of the states they serve. Often the lawyers have to travel by car for hours to reach their clients. Before the recent advances in technology, inevitably, during an interview, the client would pose a question that required further research. The lawyer would have to get back in her car, travel back to her office, and go online to access her legal database and find the answer. More often than not, by the time the lawyer was able to make the rounds to that part of the state again, her client would be gone. It was a waste of time for both parties, and a lost opportunity to help someone in need.
Wireless remote access has solved that problem. IT staff at several legal services offices, involved in the strategic planning process, recognized that they could help their organizations serve more clients, more effectively, if the lawyers could access the Internet—and their legal database—while they were in the field. Their organizations made the investment in laptops and cellular modems for the lawyers. Now that same lawyer can access the information she needs to successfully advise her client in minutes, not days.
