Six Sigma, is that a phrase that you would hear in a nonprofit? I am not sure, but I know it would be rare in the org I work for. It seems that we dont strive for excellence as much as we could. Corporations are always seeking ways to be more effective and efficient, even if it means a monetary investment. While I see less willingness of nonprofits to make the same efforts, granted this may be due to a lack of funds to invest (or are they just using them wrong?).
One of the things I am proud of my organization for doing right now is taking the time to improve and clarify our mission. Rather than adding on more things to what we do and trying to expand, instead we are rethinking how well we do our core focus. Have we forgotten who we are? We plan to stop doing a few things if it doesnt make sense to our mission, even if it brings in needed cash. We want to focus our time and efforts more purposefully. Yet, amidst this change, there is no talk of updating our systems, staff tech skills, IT infrastructure or the tools we use to do the work. We will just work harder and longer, it doesnt matter if we see our own families. Lets just get the staff to use those pens faster, order more paper, spend more time filing, etc.
Anyway, what is the solution? I think one big change that is needed is for CEOs and leadership to be more open about admitting they dont understand technology and if they do understand it, admit their organization needs help.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Corporate IT vs Nonprofit IT part 2 - toys vs real impact
Toys vs. real impact. It seems so easy to find articles about nonprofits and technology that are fun stories or unique uses of technology. It seems so easy to find articles about corporations and technology that prove real benefit and direct impact. But can you find articles about nonprofits and technology that prove real benefit and direct impact? Or articles about corporations and technology that are fun stories or unique uses of technology?
Again, I understand there are huge differences in focus, types of staff, spending habits and drive for mission vs. profit. But why does this appear to be so extreme?
The nonprofit I work for has zero information and almost nonexistent interest in finding out about how technology plays a role in success beyond the fun new applications. When they talk about what makes a healthy organization they list fiscal management, building maintenance, high quality leadership and good financial development (fund raising). But please dont mention technology, that is just implied.
Conversely the conversations at corporations seem to brag about their technology prowess, effectiveness and efficiency.
For example, if you visit news on search CIO, you will see stories of companies using technology to in very strategic and tactical ways.
Conversely if you try to look for similar nonprofit technology stories, first you will have a hard time finding a site like that. Not like the ginormous number available for the corporate world. But I guess look at techsoup or nten , you will mostly find innovation and cool stories, not a lot on real strategy or tactics with real success stories highlighted. I give lots of credit to people creating great resources on strategy and tactics, but where are the organizations bragging about the real impact technology has had on their core operations, not the innovation but the everyday stuff.
No idea if I made any sense or anything close to a real point today, but I tried.
Random coolness:
Deborah Elizabeth Finn points out: Beth's weekly summary of nonprofit technology memes is always a delight, but this week's is especially full of good stuff. You can check it out at:
"NpTech Tag Summary: Exphones, Death by Powerpoint, and Facebook Causes How-To"
<http://beth. typepad.com/ beths_blog/ 2007/08/nptech- tag-summ. html>
Cool article (corporate about role of CEO) from McKinsey
Again, I understand there are huge differences in focus, types of staff, spending habits and drive for mission vs. profit. But why does this appear to be so extreme?
The nonprofit I work for has zero information and almost nonexistent interest in finding out about how technology plays a role in success beyond the fun new applications. When they talk about what makes a healthy organization they list fiscal management, building maintenance, high quality leadership and good financial development (fund raising). But please dont mention technology, that is just implied.
Conversely the conversations at corporations seem to brag about their technology prowess, effectiveness and efficiency.
For example, if you visit news on search CIO, you will see stories of companies using technology to in very strategic and tactical ways.
Conversely if you try to look for similar nonprofit technology stories, first you will have a hard time finding a site like that. Not like the ginormous number available for the corporate world. But I guess look at techsoup or nten , you will mostly find innovation and cool stories, not a lot on real strategy or tactics with real success stories highlighted. I give lots of credit to people creating great resources on strategy and tactics, but where are the organizations bragging about the real impact technology has had on their core operations, not the innovation but the everyday stuff.
No idea if I made any sense or anything close to a real point today, but I tried.
Random coolness:
Deborah Elizabeth Finn points out: Beth's weekly summary of nonprofit technology memes is always a delight, but this week's is especially full of good stuff. You can check it out at:
"NpTech Tag Summary: Exphones, Death by Powerpoint, and Facebook Causes How-To"
<http://beth. typepad.com/ beths_blog/ 2007/08/nptech- tag-summ. html>
Cool article (corporate about role of CEO) from McKinsey
Monday, July 30, 2007
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.
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!
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!
Monday, July 23, 2007
Measuring impact without data
For the last few years my organization has launched a major initiative that has been paraded as a mission imperative. This initiative has the right intentions and a solid foundation that feeds right into the new strategic plan and vision. It is wonderful when it all comes together. But (of course there is a but in this story) it pushes for all of us to start measuring impact, not just outcomes and numbers. Dont just tell us how many people you served and what the objectives were, tell us how those people changed and what else was impacted.
When I hear them talk like that it makes me chuckle a little, not because I disagree, because I do agree. But rather I chuckle because we already have a hard enough time with filling complete and timely 990s, getting simple counts and gathering solid data. So now we expect them to measure real impact? But wait it gets better...
Not only does this new initiative ask for impact measurements, it provides no insight on how to do that, what data to gather, what to track, data standards or any tactical operation changes needed. To their credit after years of this, they finally see this weakness and they are working on it, but (wow there are a lot of buts in this story) the key word is "they" in that sentence. We, meaning the tech and operations staff, helped point out the needed clarity. But it is "they" who are working alone to try to fix this and develop a strategy, "they" have yet to include us in the conversation.
Anyway, I guess the lesson here is that it is not enough for leadership and others to just set a vision and hope people will figure out how to follow it.
Random things I have bumped into lately:
www.capaciteria.org, this seems like a cool site, but it does not appear to get used or to be very active, hmmm. In their words, Capaciteria is a comprehensive, searchable database directory of administrative resources that help nonprofits leverage their own capacity. It promotes peer review because MEMBERS can comment on and rate individual resource links as well as add useful new links. Like Google, search requests return link results weighted to rise based on ratings and popularity given to them by nonprofit users.
The Anecdote blog offered up an article, Why people don't use collaboration tools, that I found to be true and interesting. Often we throw a website or technology at a problem to fix it, which will always work, NOT!
When I hear them talk like that it makes me chuckle a little, not because I disagree, because I do agree. But rather I chuckle because we already have a hard enough time with filling complete and timely 990s, getting simple counts and gathering solid data. So now we expect them to measure real impact? But wait it gets better...
Not only does this new initiative ask for impact measurements, it provides no insight on how to do that, what data to gather, what to track, data standards or any tactical operation changes needed. To their credit after years of this, they finally see this weakness and they are working on it, but (wow there are a lot of buts in this story) the key word is "they" in that sentence. We, meaning the tech and operations staff, helped point out the needed clarity. But it is "they" who are working alone to try to fix this and develop a strategy, "they" have yet to include us in the conversation.
Anyway, I guess the lesson here is that it is not enough for leadership and others to just set a vision and hope people will figure out how to follow it.
Random things I have bumped into lately:
www.capaciteria.org, this seems like a cool site, but it does not appear to get used or to be very active, hmmm. In their words, Capaciteria is a comprehensive, searchable database directory of administrative resources that help nonprofits leverage their own capacity. It promotes peer review because MEMBERS can comment on and rate individual resource links as well as add useful new links. Like Google, search requests return link results weighted to rise based on ratings and popularity given to them by nonprofit users.
The Anecdote blog offered up an article, Why people don't use collaboration tools, that I found to be true and interesting. Often we throw a website or technology at a problem to fix it, which will always work, NOT!
Monday, June 25, 2007
LOLnptech, nice humor release, http://lolnptech.blogspot.com/
Congrats to those who created and inspired this humorous blog and what a great name, http://lolnptech.blogspot.com/. Even mentioned by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
I think the web is a great place for people to escape from the real world and have some fun. The lolnptech is a good example of that.
Dont have anything to say this week though, but there is always next week.
I think the web is a great place for people to escape from the real world and have some fun. The lolnptech is a good example of that.
Dont have anything to say this week though, but there is always next week.
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