Non-Profit Tech Blog

Those of you who were there when the first Web bubble burst have known to love the Gnome business plan as presented in the picture to the left. I’m not suggesting that we’re in a bubble economy like the late 1990s but it’s hard sometimes to discount the hype I’m hearing. After all, if Time Magazine calls it the Year of Web 2.0 then you know it’s time to think twice.

There’s a bit of a hullabaloo over my earlier Web 2.0 posts. Nothing particularly rancorous but I believe that it’s hard to move the conversation forward until we start coming up with hard numbers for discussing the various values of Web 2.0 technologies. I suggest we come up with a straightforward matrix for judging the efficacy of Web 2.0 for medium-sized nonprofits. Despite my earlier criticisms of Web 2.0, no one has come up with examples of how Web 2.0 can affect the daily work loads of say… a case worker. I contend that almost none of the current Web 2.0 tools can do this. I would also go so far as to say that advocating for the adoption of Web 2.0 techniques may lead to a possible misalignment of mission between a nonprofit IT worker and the nonprofit itself.

However, let’s be more charitable. Let’s do this tabula rasa and move up the chain of information to say the development or fundraising department. Basically, how can Web 2.0 be used to effectively raise funds for medium-sized nonprofits (between $1 and $10 million in revenue) and what would it look like? Let’s say I was going to come up with an Excel spreadsheet I was going to send to my ED. How would I build it?

Some variables I’d like to assess (in no particular order) for new Web 2.0 technologies are the following:

1. Labor – How much lever pulling does it take to effectively exploit this technology? Will this require re-engineering current work flow?
2. Cost – Will you need consultants? Are there sign-up and subscription fees?
3. Reach – In theory, what is the maximum addressable space? Working from the bottom up, how many people can a nonprofit staff member reach with this technology per hour? per day? per year?
4. Technical details – Will this require a re-architecting of the current IT infrastructure? Will someone need a new computer to do Web 2.0? If new computers are needed, how many?
5. Buzz – There’s nothing like being the first underwater basket weavers to use YouTube and having a press release for it or is there?
6. Longevity – How long has this technology been around? What about other technologies like it? Is it currently profitable?
7. Profit – What’s the estimated ROI?

Of course in any weighting of variables, there are always going to be personal takes but here’s how I would order those variables for a medium-sized nonprofit.

Profit, Labor, Cost, Reach, Technical Details, Longevity, Buzz. Some of you may order them differently. Small nonprofits may put buzz first before profit even. However, I believe that a more mature nonprofit may not want to order things too differently from the way I just outlined. As always, I’m open to suggestions. I’ll even build an Excel spreadsheet and start ranking things that way.

If you’re interested in seeing more, just add comments as always.