This is the second part of Build A Nonprofit’s Technology Assets From The Ground Up, Part 1 OF 2. In this post, I talk about the website tiers of the Maslovian hierarchy of nonprofit technology needs for the small nonprofit. Unfortunately, this article about a nonprofit website is so long that I’ve decided to expand the series to one long posting for each of the website, CRM and social media layers in the pyramid. And that’s why this series is now four parts long and not two.
Website
Why do I make having a website more important than a CRM? You need Web traffic first to get people to even read about your wonderful mission and programs. The amount you raise for your nonprofit online will be a function of how much traffic your website is receiving. If you have a significant offline presence OR you already have a legacy donations management program in place, then you can switch this layer out for the CRM. This is where your work at the lower levels of the pyramid will start to pay off. A great mission, competent staff and a rock-solid network will definitely put you in position to work on your website. Most nonprofit missions usually have an educational and policy advocacy component to them. Your progress towards this portion of your mission can be measured by using website traffic numbers. Your website is also the demarcation point where you turn your previous investment in IT resources into something approaching revenue generation. Yes, that’s right, I’m urging nonprofits to make sure that their IT efforts can actually make money for them.
Think of this as a hierarchy of things your nonprofit should probably have in place before you can get to doing social media. There’s no doubt that each level represents a moving part that may require a nonprofit’s focus from time to time. That’s the nature of how nonprofits work. However, for the small nonprofit still spinning up their operations, it’s best to approach this pyramid from the bottom up as you really cannot move towards social media without everything else working.
The Feast is a social innovation conference that I wanted to attend last year but another conference was on my schedule. I’ve met both the organizers, Jerri Chou and Michael Karnjanaprakorn of All-Day Buffet, and they’ve taken the time to look in on a wide range of social innovators. They even had the patience to hang out with a bunch of social capital people from the SoCap08 December meetup here in NYC. The reason I find this conference interesting is that it’s held in New Orleans. It’s rare that you see conferences focusing on social innovation in the locales where they need it the most. SF and NYC seem to be the two poles for social innovation conferences on either coast so it’s good to see it in New Orleans.
If you’re in New Orleans next Friday, go check it out.
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A one-day event on Saturday, 21 February 2009 in New York/Hunter College’s ‘Black Box‘
Exploring mobile tech to advance social development and social change goals
Interactive, particpatory, hands-on
For anyone interested in how mobile phones are changing the way we
And no, I don’t know how that last bullet item ends. Think of it as a mystery you can solve by attending. It’s a pretty cheap event and I think it’ll be fun to watch what people are up to.
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The applications we create during the course of the competition will be gifted to different socially-minded organizations around the world. Once the fun is over, our work will live on and hopefully do a lot of good.
So get to it folks… Go talk to them and see what you can do! Beware that you’ll have to support the app properly later on so make sure you have enough capacity to pay for ongoing development and maintenance expenses afterwards. The last thing we need is another orphaned app like my poor Kikono.org (destroyed by spammers but it’ll come back I promise!)
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Convio, Inc. today announced the signing of more than 30 new clients for Common Ground™ since it became generally available in late September of 2008. Common Ground is the company’s innovative, web-based constituent relationship management (CRM) system for tracking all interactions with donors and other supporters. Built and delivered natively on salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform, the product leverages cloud computing to deliver database solutions designed for the needs of nonprofits. Common Ground easily integrates with other open systems including Convio’s online fundraising and marketing applications. The new clients include Youth Villages, Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Colorado Environmental Coalition, Homeless Prenatal Program, RESOLVE, Parent Project for Muscular Dystrophy and the Minnesota Red Ribbon Ride among others.
Also, I asked Tad Druart, if I could say one thing in response to this release. Here it is: Read more…
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We’re writing to let you know that Google Checkout’s free transaction processing offer for non-profits has been extended until 2010. However, in an effort to bring more consistency to the eligibility guidelines for our non-profit offerings, only those non-profits who are also members of our Google Grants program will be eligible for free donation processing. All other non-profits will transition to Checkout’s standard fee structure on March 1, 2009. Read more…
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Incorrectly configured firewalls or wireless access points.
Incorrect licensing.
These issues sound familiar to you? As an IT director, I’ve had to deal with all these issues except oddly enough “improper use of scanners”. I cringe at the thought of people using scanners to take impromptu “medical” pictures of various parts of their anatomy. It could also be that people are digitizing documents using a scanner instead of using a Word to PDF mechanism. Also, what are “compliance issues”? HIPAA compliance or something else?
Are you seeing these issues at nonprofits that you help with?
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