Corporate IT vs Nonprofit IT part 1

OK, so my title says part 1, not sure how many parts this will be but I know it is more than one. So here we go.

Why does there have to appear to be such a HUGE gap in corporate technology and nonprofit technology understanding. Over the next few blogs, I will ponder why there appears to be such a large gap in the articles I read on nonprofit tech sites vs the corp tech sites.

First a caveat, I do understand that there are enormous differences in the focus and resources of corps vs nonprofits. We may not need the same level of spending and high tech gadgets, but why do many nonprofits appear narrow in their technology thinking?

OK, so my first example. Right now almost all of the corp tech sites are pushing for business process management or aligning your technology with your business:

Business alignment remains a top priority for IT executives. James Champy offers CIOs advice for turning IT into an integral part of their business operations, and no longer just a service center.

While the nonprofit tech sites are still just offering advice on how to convince your Exec Director why technology is important.

10 Things Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know about IT

I am not knocking the content of the above article, I think it is beyond great and should be a must read for every Exec or manager in my organization.

But what I am saying is that maybe a large part of my struggle is that the leadership in nonprofits are so fired up about mission that they lose any understanding about running the business of the nonprofit. Now I have seen the opposite, nonprofit has great mission, hires new exec from for-profit to focus on business and nonprofit looses mission focus. But that is not what I mean. I think that nonprofit leaders often only think of technology as another mission or communications tool, so they never acknowledge the importance of their business technology.

So as an example the org that I work for did not include technology in our new strategic plan and mission focus because it was CEOs and execs that were creating the vision. So now as they go through the next phases of planning, technology is an after thought.

But if you look at the corporate side of the house, the execs get it. They see that solid business practices supported by the best technology creates a foundation that delivers EFFECTIVENESS and well as efficiency.

So I vote that nonprofits continue to be less effective and only use tech as a gadget and not bother to focus on their core business practices supported by solid technology. It gives people like me something to do.

Anyway, cool random things:

Blog from Isoph on online learning, thought they would have done this sooner though. But great content already!

Beth Kanter continues her blog quest for world domination and awesome information. Now she shares a gem about creating demonstrations!