NP Times Technobuzz today mentioned a list of Top 10 Nonprofit Technology issues released by Randy Johnston from K2 Enterprises:
- Lack of consistent, firm-wide procedures.
- Compliance issues.
- Insufficient training.
- Incorrect cabling.
- Power problems.
- Improper use of scanners.
- Too little memory in servers and work stations.
- Not balancing server and work station purchases.
- 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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YES! YES! YES! Procedures and training are both significant issues at my nonprofit. For whatever reason, it is impossible to get our management to understand that investing in both of these areas will actually SAVE us money (not to mention tons of staff frustration!)
I've tried every angle to make the argument to no avail…
I've often thought that writing a procedures manual is the easiest part. Getting folks to follow through is much harder. Training was also difficult — part of the problem is that front-line staff didn't want to go to training even when it was offered on the premises. It wasn't seen as "real work".
[...] we’re reading, week of 1/12 From Non-Profit Tech Blog… Your “Top 10 Non-Profit Technology Issues” List Allen Benamer shares the Nonprofit Times’ list of readers’ top 10 technology issues in [...]
I'm auditing 120 small nonprofits in Victoria, Australia and I'd generally agree with these categories.
Almost all the organisations' computers are underpowered for what they're used for.
Licensing is often haphazard, some have pirated software or they've paid too much because they're not aware of charity discounts.
Organisations don't get advice before embarking on website, database and other projects. They don't plan properly or realise the likely consequences of IT decisions.
They aren't generally aware of online apps and only think in terms of software.
Too much knowledge about their IT systems is in the head of one person.