I’d like to expand further on my earliest post about Nonprofit 2.0. Specifically, I want to talk about the things that Org 2.0 proponents don’t seem to consider when they get excited about the latest social media experiment. I feel that there is a serious disconnect between Org 2.0 proponents and people like me who are actually trying to do the hard work of instilling IT and associated IT practices into our employees’ daily work routines.
Many nonprofits are stuck in what we techie types call a non-scalable solution. That is, social services are not usually amenable to a solution that allows for the use of a technology that allows us to multiple the efforts of our employees. An example is the social worker’s case management load. Due to the face to face need for case management and the particular privacy issues surrounding it, you cannot replace social workers with “traditional” means of Internet-based technologies. You can’t IM, IRC, FTP, HTTP, Google, XML or SNS your way out of case management. Full stop. It’s not possible. You can however, take a look at the business processes surrounding case management and work accordingly. Many case management workflows are actually very similar to legal case management work flows. Documents needs to be kept, retained and indexed accordingly. This means that you’ll find yourself adopting for-profit technologies to nonprofit needs. Again, this means taking advantage of new developments in office technology.
Here’s are three office technologies that I guarantee will have more impact on your nonprofit than say, Second Life (which I believe is a boondoggle and a half) or Myspace (marginally interesting but Myspace doesn’t support an open API).
Copiers. They’ve advanced so far they’re not even copiers anymore. They’re MFPs (multifunction printers). Basically, all MFPs can print, scan, fax, e-mail, FTP or use SMB to send digital documents into your organization’s document store. These MFPs are not your father’s MFP.
As always, every MFP manufacturer out there has a different take on how to do things. Kyocera sells a fascinating turnkey solution called iTag which combines a workflow process designer, Sharepoint, and a Dell Server with the ability to dynamically modify the control panel of a printer in order to create custom workflows for your documents. Sharp is selling their printers with something called OSA which is tada! an open API for their printers. Canon has been selling the MEAP which gives developers the ability to write Java code that actually sits on their printers and can modify the printer’s control panel. All of these changes in MFP technology can only mean one thing — an easier interface for document retrieval and storage. You can literally pull case management documents straight off the printer without requiring a PC. This means that volunteers can be easily trained to implement document-based workflows and that employees won’t need to wrestle with a document management system just to do work.
Windows as a service. mygenii.org is now selling Windows dialtone for nonprofit organizations. What does it mean? It means you can use Remote Desktop on a Windows XP machine or thin client to connect to a session hosted on mygenii’s machines from anywhere in the world. In other words, we push the hassles and expense of maintaining dozens of workstations over to mygenii and as our desktops slowly go out of service we will be replacing them with thin clients. Essentially, this is a back to the 1970s model of resource allocation. Everyone at your organization will give up their local desktops in order to have a virtual desktop hosted elsewhere. This works extremely well for case workers should they want to connect to their work files at home. This stuff is so new that not many for-profits are doing it. Once you work the numbers though, you’ll see that this solution is a no-brainer.
Interactive voice response systems (IVR). One of the few things that do scale well in a nonprofit environment is telephony. I see seasonal variances with telephone usage due to the cold weather we experience every winter in New York that in turn causes our clients to seek shelter (and call my organization). This means we have to resort to automated means of answering the telephones. Using an IVRis the only way to scale a solution that can answer up to hundreds of calls an hour with the kind of information that our clients need.
Yes, I know, copiers aren’t sexy. Nobody has web pages devoted to Copiers 2.0 and nonprofit technology like social networking does. There will be no Second Life version of a bunch of people picking up the telephone and answering phone calls from distraught and anxious clients. There’s just going to be nonprofit workers trying to be resourceful with what they’ve got. It’s in our interest to get out of their way and provide them with the tools THEY need, not what some marketing consultant wants.
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Thanks for a useful article which counters a lot of techie hype of the Latest Thing!
I do a lot of work with government-funded nonprofits and I find that they are very into proprietary systems that are hugely expensive and not particularly efficient. There seems to be a rampant belief that re-inventing the wheel is preferable to anything else, in large part because these systems are often developed for the benefit of the organization, rather than the benefit of the client.
An example–despite the fact that sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder are more widely used and effective, each state has developed their own job order/matching service so that they are able to keep track of statistics about how many people get hired through their systems. This requires both businesses and job seekers to do double data entry if they want to use this system, which is completely idiotic.
My point here is that I think one of the big things getting in the way of adopting any new technology tools is the proprietary mindset of many NPOs where they believe that they have to create their own systems, rather than using existing systems that may, in fact, work better.
It would be even more useful if I pointed you at an article about my IVR - http://www.nonprofittechblog.org/the-magic-ivr
Yes, I’m not a big believer in custom apps. And your point is well taken that many NPOs have a “if it doesn’t say non-profit, then it must not be for me” mentality.” However, I prefer to make only modest promises on new technology simply because many technological gains require cultural acceptance and culture is not something that you can move easily. There’s a part of me that thinks that IT guys should read some of the standard academic texts in anthropology just so they can improve their understanding of workplace culture.
Sharps OSA API is great. For some early examples check out they have a cost recovery application called and a Legal Bates stamping and archiving system called
Thin clients? Really? That’s been tried and ditched before. It seems like a great idea until your internet is down and then everybody’s out of work. Can’t even write a Word document. Or, a buggy update gets applied to that *one* copy of the application on the server and everybody’s user experience is screwed up until it is fixed. Or, a virus. Or, you have employees that want to use their own applications rather than ones on the server. Or, you have employees who travel and therefore are not always connected to the internet (with thin-client all their files and applications are only accessible when they are connected to the internet). Am I missing something?
Your Internet won’t be down. Just get a T1 line and backup DSL. Get a router that does auto-failover. No one will even notice the hiccups. For even more redundancy, add Internet via cable.
The buggy update problem applies to more than just thin clients. It’s actually harder to roll back on multiple machines than it is on a virtualized image. Providing special apps for certain users is much easier now. You can do it by profile. Heck, the new virtualization tech from MS will let you even mix and match versions of MS Office. I’m only talking about this in a Microsoft setting but there is a way to access your thin client’s using only a Web browser so you’re never without it.
I think you should certainly look into it. It beats the old school way of doing things.