Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission

A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders

Holly Ross, Katrin Verclas, Alison Levine, Holly Ross, Katrin Verclas, Alison Levine

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470343654
• eBook ISBN: 9780470442852
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission is a practical resource that will help nonprofit professionals make smart, strategic decisions about technology. The book shows how to effectively manage technology and offers practical advice for decision makers and staff alike who often have little or no experience with technology.

With contributions from the top experts in the nonprofit technology field, this must-have guide addresses technology planning and people. It includes the tools you need to get the work done, and the knowledge that will help you communicate better, evaluate technology investments, raise money, and more. Written in nontechnical language the book covers a broad spectrum of topics including:

Achieving IT Alignment with Your Mission
STEVE HEYE, YMCA of the USA

Managing Technology Change
DAHNA GOLDSTEIN, PhilanTech

Measuring the Return on Investment of Technology
BETH KANTER, trainer, blogger and consultant

IT Planning and Prioritizing
PETER CAMPBELL, Earthjustice

Finding and Keeping the Right People
JAMES L. WEINBERG and CASSIE SCARANO, Commongood Careers

Budgeting For and Funding Technology
SCOTT MCCALLUM and KEITH R. THODE, Aidmatrix Foundation

Introduction to IT and Systems
KEVIN LO and WILLOW COOK,
TechSoup Global

Where Are Your Stakeholders, and What Are They Doing Online?
MICHAEL CERVINO, Beaconfire Consulting

Effective Online Communications
JOHN KENYON, nonprofit technology strategist

Effective Online Fundraising
MADELINE STANIONIS, Watershed

The Future of IT in Nonprofits
EDWARD GRANGER-HAPP, Save the Children

Praise for Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission

"This invaluable guide for nonprofit leaders proves that nonprofit organizations can and should embrace technology, rather than being scared of or intimidated by it!"

—KRISTIE FERKETICH, SENIOR STRATEGIST, GOOGLE GRANTS, GOOGLE INC.

"NTEN's Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission can help leaders craft a technology strategy that makes sense and builds ROI while also providing inspiration for their staff and supporters!"

—JONATHON D. COLMAN, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND WEB EVANGELISTA, DIGITAL MARKETING, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY

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 o...

Table of contents

• Table of Figures
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• THE AUTHORS
• THE EDITORS
• Introduction
• PART 1 - Planning and People
• PART 2 - The Tools
• INDEX