Non-Profit Tech Blog

This is in reply to Holly Ross’ recent NTEN blog posting which itself was a response to my original posting about the Top 25 Nonprofit and Philanthropy Web site list.

Let it be said that Holly and I always chat all the time on Skype and we’re good chat buddies in general. There’s no “bad blood” between the two of us and we generally get along. Besides, I apparently owe her a martini the next time I see her. Anyway, I think she’s wrong on this one and part of the problem is that NTEN has a leadership position that it has to take on this issue.

Are web site statistics a matter of transparency? She thinks that context matters. This is true, but it especially matters for a nonprofit organization that seeks to represent nonprofit techies. To that extent, showing site stats for NTEN is especially relevant. In fact, within the context of NTEN’s mission, there are two salient ideas that address this topic:

• We are accountable to you and to your needs and strive to engage, listen, and be responsive to you, our members, in all that we do.
• We walk the talk. We want to surface new ideas and tools within this community, and we want to demonstrate, experiment, and play with them. We are eager to adopt the tools and practices that will matter in this sector.

Umm… I’m an NTEN member. Can NTEN be responsive to my demand for open site traffic statistics? Quantcast is not a particularly new tool but it is a new idea to demonstrate that we can show site statistics for every site within the nonprofit sector. Within the context of NTEN, its own values statement practically cries out for the site stats to be revealed. After all, NTEN cannot purport to represent nonprofit techies if it is not doing its job to increase site statistics usage or if it doesn’t have enough penetration into nonprofit techie user audiences. It has no choice but to walk the site statistics talk.

What’s also clear is Holly’s argument relies on a bait and switch. She proffers that web site statistics don’t equal transparency. She points out that “Ffor [sic] most, though, tracking web site visitors will not tell me how many hungry people they feed, whether that’s helping the community, or whether the program is well managed.” Granted, web site stats will not tell me anything about how many hungry people a nonprofit feeds. How odd is it then to teach Google Analytics to nonprofit techies but then say that site statistics had nothing to do with a nonprofit’s mission? Why bother having a web site at all? Properly used, web sites are more than just a payment solution for credit card bearing donors. They can be used for a nonprofit’s mission and that is why nonprofits should exercise transparency on web site analytics.

Just saying web site stats do not cause transparency, positing that other statistics are in fact more transparent, and then not offering those newly posited statistics is presenting yet another smokescreen. In fact, it’s eerily similar to earlier arguments by vendors such as Blackbaud that open APIs would result in lower security when in fact, they were using it as a delaying tactic to hold demand down within the sector for open integration.

Instead, Holly would leave us with this argument:

Ask me anything about NTEN and I will tell you. What I will not do is publish numbers without the proper context. That’s not transparency, that’s foolishness.

This is don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you transparency. This is the kind of transparency that most software vendors and parts of the US government likes. What Holly really wants is a chance to spin the numbers before they’re revealed. That’s certainly her prerogative but I think we all need to know this up front. It’s also exactly the same kind of attitude that nonprofit techies face when they ask their EDs to blog or add Web 2.0-like properties to their organization’s web site. How many EDs and nonprofit techies have faced off over a conference table at a web site design meeting about the need for greater online transparency? And how many times has the ED stated that he or she would rather not have that higher level of transparency using exactly the same argument that Holly responds?

Is it not clear that the same arguments that we apply to for-profit vendors of software products in terms of their lack of openness also apply to the very same advocacy organizations that purport to speak for us? Again, I have to reiterate, I know more of Blackbaud’s internal operations through its financials than I do of nonprofits through their 990s. Why should nonprofits get a free ride on transparency and accountability? And especially, the one nonprofit that even trumpets their accountability and transparency through its values statement on the web.

In summation, it’s clear that NTEN should release its web site statistics if it wants to retain a leadership role. What’s rather ironic is that the Blackbaud User Society and Beth’s blog as well as PICnet and ChipIn have already implemented the Quantcast script. As far as I know, the sky didn’t fall for either web site nor did people call them out as foolish. As more people eventually adopt the idea of opening up their site statistics, NTEN will be alone in its atypical and atavistic stance on open site statistics. I don’t think too many people give a fig about the size of NTEN’s traffic. We’re not stupid — we know that the NTC is growing, it’s getting bigger and better every year and that NTEN is very active on the Web. However, with this post, more people than ever will be curious about why NTEN won’t release its traffic statistics. And this is Holly’s new conundrum: figuring out how to step in time with the Web’s ever-increasing drive towards greater transparency even in the mundane topic of web site traffic.