"If I told him that my problem was a broken leg, he'd tell me that Drupal was the solution."

This one comes from the grapevine.(1)

I gather that this was overheard at an event for nonprofit professionals:

Party of the First Part: "What do you think of that web developer, (Name Withheld)? Our nonprofit needs a content management system for the web site, and he says that Drupal is the solution."

Party of the Second Part: "He's great at Drupal development, but you'd better do your homework about all the options before you hire him. If I told (Name Withheld) that my problem was a broken leg, he'd tell me that Drupal was the solution."

Or maybe it was Wordpress. Or Plone. Or Joomla. Or Sharepoint. Or Raiser's Edge. Whatever.

It so happens that software applications tend to attract zealots. It's usually but isn't always open source content management systems that have this effect on otherwise reasonable people. There's a lot of this zealotry going around in the nonprofit technology field.

I've seen this sort of situation play out a number of times, so even if I don't know (Name Withheld), I can make a few guesses. He's enthusiastic, articulate, and public-spirited. His technical experience and skills are solid. He's probably willing to take this project on at a reduced fee (or free of charge) because he believes in the nonprofit's mission. But there's a major problem here: he's a true believer. In Drupal. Or in Sharepoint. Whatever.

This means that (Name Withheld) is going to have a hard time handling any cognitive dissonance that may emerge from the needs assessment process. He won't be able to hear any indication that his development platform is not the best choice for the nonprofit. This in turn almost guarantees that he will not listen to input from organization, and that's a disastrous flaw in a web developer.

While I'm making guesses, and extrapolating a great deal from very little evidence, I'm going presume that the Party of the First Part did not meet (Name Withheld) through a rigorous process of reviewing great web sites belonging to comparable nonprofits, and asking her counterparts in those organizations who developed their web sites. Nor did she educate herself about the relative strengths and weaknesses of various content management systems. Nor did she draw up a rank-ordered list of priorities for how the web site needs to support the organization's operations. No. It's more likely that she already knows (Name Withheld) socially, or that she met him in a professional setting, and they got into a conversation about web sites. He offered to make all of her worries about the web site go away with a platform that has all of the features she needs, and assured her that he would manage everything.

It will probably all end in tears.

Nonprofit executives with very little technical knowledge are highly susceptible to fallacious thinking and fear-driven decisions about their web sites. What the Party of the First Part wants to hear is that the solution will enable her to set it and forget it - in other words, that there's an ideal tool that can be installed, and that she won't have to participate in the distasteful development process, and that once it's implemented she won't have to think about it anymore. (Name Withheld) seems to be offering that, because he honestly thinks Drupal is just that good, and if she just hires him, the pain and anxiety will all be over.

In fact, it's probably just started.

I know, because I've watched a number of web developers like (Name Withheld) operate in the nonprofit sector. Oh, my! If you could only hear the stories they can tell! It's always about the client organization that seemed so promising, but mysteriously turned out to be unworthy of the Sacred CMS platform! Those Parties of the First Part start out so grateful and relieved when (Name Withheld) shows up to rescue them - but before you know it (Name Withheld) discovers the real truth, which is that the clients are demanding, impatient, unresponsive to requests for information, unable to articulate their apparently very specific but unspoken expectations, uninterested in the inner beauty of the Sacred CMS, and petulant because it doesn't have all the features they need. (Name Withheld) will be all injured innocence, and, oddly enough, the Party of the First Part will feel the same way.

Do you know where my empathy really lies? It's with the Party of the Second Part, a Cassandra of the nonprofit sector. She is faithfully fulfilling her duty to warn, even in the face of the Party of the First Part's willful disregard.(2)

When you meet the Party of the Second Part at one of those gatherings, please buy her a drink, and give her my regards.(3)






1) I love receiving stories from people who read this blog. Keep them coming, please.

2) Or perhaps I should say "invincible ignorance." It's difficult to be reasonable when you're terrified, and that's how many nonprofit executives feel when they step out of their areas of expertise.

3) You might learn something.

Putting the "inert" back into "inertia."

Here's another one from the grapevine:

An organization received a substantial (but not unlimited) grant from a foundation to help small, struggling nonprofits in their city that needed IT assistance.

The team very carefully polled members of the targeted organizations about their most pressing technology problems. They made site visits; they made phone calls; they passed out surveys at meetings; they used email and online tools to gather input.

The vast majority of the nonprofits had no technology support professionals on staff. Therefore, the team offered hands-on assistance. They also scheduled a series of trainings that were specifically tailored for the decision-makers and administrators in the nonprofit organizations.

Almost nobody showed up for the trainings.

Since the trainings were costly in money and effort, the team attended a meeting of these small, struggling nonprofits. They were put on the agenda, and had an opportunity to ask what they could do to make the trainings more attractive.

Most of the feedback can be summarized this way:

1. "These trainings are too high-level Just solve my IT problems for me."
2. "I don't want to go downtown for the trainings. You should hold the trainings at my office."
3. "You should pay us to attend the trainings."

I definitely understand #1. You have to be a pedagogical genius to design a training for a group with diverse technology problems and diverse levels of technology experience. The odds of putting it together so that everyone will get exactly the information that he needs are very low, and, when in doubt, it's easier to be more abstract and less specific.

I have less patience for #2, but understand that these people are extremely busy. However, do they think that with a finite sum of money, the team can take each training on site to an infinite number of small, struggling nonprofits?

It's #3 that I cannot fathom. What kind of sense of entitlement is operating here?

Taking all three of these together, what I see is not a pretty picture If I were a member of the training team, I'd be tempted to reply, "Oh, and would you like me to come to your office, spoon feed you your lunch, burp you, and wipe your @$$, while I'm at it?"

I'm well aware that most nonprofit workers (especially those employed by small organizations) are drastically overworked, highly stressed, and underpaid. Whenever it's possible, the trainers should be catering to their needs, and making it easy for them to show up for the trainings and get the most out of them. But there are limits.

But can you imagine what it's like for the training team to go back to their supervisors and the foundation and say, "they won't attend the workshops, unless we pay them to show up." What a way to kill a funder's enthusiasm for supporting IT capacity building! What a way to send a message that nonprofit workers are passive, demanding, and averse to professional development!

Time for attitude adjustment: Scarcity, entitlement, and nonprofit technology.

The topic on the listserv was the attitude of nonprofit organizations toward the availability of technology services.

Michael Gilbert responded:


"Some of this is...a reflection of the sector's culture of scarcity (about which I've been writing....) We can't afford it - that's a mantra for a great many of us. How to fight that, given how it's a reflection of the larger culture, is not at all obvious to me.

"Furthermore, as my friend and colleague Put Barber has written, we also have a problem with a culture of entitlement in our sector. Nonprofits expect to get things for free. On the surface, this may seem to be the opposite of the culture of scarcity, but I see it as the flip side of the same coin."


These are wise words. I wish I had an immediate solution, a better response than the cliches that immediately come to mind: wake-up call, paradigm shift, think outside the box.

I've previously said that in our sector really smart people sometimes make stupid decisions based on stupid assumptions. Michael Gilbert and Putnam Barber are suggesting that these assumptions are culture-wide. It's not easy to remake a culture, but cultures do change. We should start with a little self-scrutiny and attitude adjustment.

"Failure is not an option."

Here's another one from the grapevine:(1)

Apparently, a foundation officer who was directing an innovative program to distribute computers to nonprofits and schools across the country declared:

"Failure is not an option."

Oh, really?

Here on Planet Reality, that makes no sense.

First of all, we're talking about information technology. It fails all the time. Sometimes it doesn't do what it was designed to do, and sometimes what it was designed to do turns out to be irrelevant to the organization and the communities that are being served.

Secondly, we're talking about an innovative program. If you are truly doing something new, then you need to accept that some aspects of it may fail. Even if your model has been extensively tested, there's risk involved in bringing it to each new setting.

So can we amend this slogan? How about this?

"Failure is possible, but let's try to minimize
it, and to learn from it when it happens."

1) Please keep those emails coming!

You know what? You don't have to like it.

Feelings seem to be running high about a full-time nonprofit staff member creating a private email distribution list so that he and others in his position can have frank discussions about vendors, products, and services.

Naturally, some vendors don't like this. They have the right to say so, but it's not up to them to refuse (or grant) nonprofit professionals the right to hold in camera conversations.

My only concern about the new "nptechhelp" group is that the individual wisdom of of full-time nonprofit professionals (when making technical decisions) is not always remarkably good. And what about the collective wisdom of full-time nonprofit professionals? Although it's currently fashionsable to praise "the wisdom of crowds," I'd rather bet on Gustave Le Bon's thesis than James Surowieki's.

Nevertheless, those of us who work in the nonprofit sector sometimes need to blow off steam and tell war stories - at a safe distance from the reprisals of vendors, supervisors, funders, and lawyers. Why else would I be publishing this blog anonymously?

What century is this, anyway?

This one comes through the grapevine.

A colleague reports a rant from the executive director of a small nonprofit organization. Something along the lines of...

I should not have to think about databases. This is the 21st century. My staff doesn't need to go to any database trainings. Donors should give us the money to hire an in-house technical person, and that person will handle it all for us.

Wrong. Right. Wrong. Right. Wrong.

1. Sorry, but every executive director needs to make strategic decisions about databases. In order to do this in a non-random fashion, you need to use your #@$&*% brains.


2. Score one for you - you know what time it is.
   


3. This is not unlike saying that your staff doesn't need to know how to use a telephone.
   


4. Yes, you should have have the money to hire an in-house technical person. And can you guess who your organization's chief fundraising officer is?
   


5. See #3. Do you have one person in your nonprofit who picks up the phone and dials every time a staff member needs to make a call?

Yes, this is the 21st century. And there's a reason they call it the information age. When you've finished having your tantrum about what the world owes you and what you shouldn't have to think about, there will still be a gaping hole in your organization. Deal with it.

What if all technology innovation were in the hands of a nonprofit agency?

This blog post by Jeff Brooks shows us a (hypothetical) nonprofit version of Google. It looked all too familiar.

Capital expense or operating expense?

For some reason, it seems inconceivable to nonprofit decision-makers and to funders that information technology can be both a capital expense and an operating expense.

Yes, a new IT initiative can cost a major chunk of change, and then it costs more money to keep it going. Information technology expenses are not one-time crises, although you can expect your share of those. They are ongoing costs, integral parts of program operations, administration, fundraising, and other normal tasks that fall to nonprofit organizations.

It would be a great leap forward if not only nonprofit decision-makers but also grantmakers and philanthropists would learn to live with this reality.

Letterhead stationery, tech support, and other necessities of life.

I don't know if this is true everywhere, but our town is full of young idealists.

They have great tech skills, and they're dying to get jobs in the nonprofit sector, so that they can "make a difference."

But they can't find those jobs, so they go work for corporations.

Why can't they get hired? It's not like nonprofit agencies don't need tech support.

It's that the nonprofit managers can't find the money in the budget to pay them.

I realize that tech support might cost you as much or more than letterhead stationery, the executive director's secretary, manilla folders, the electricity bill, and publishing the annual report - but you manage to find the money for all of those things, don't you? After all, you just can't do business without letterhead stationery, could you?

Well, you just can't do business without adequate tech support. Deal with it.

Otherwise, all the young idealists will be absorbed by the corporate sector, and when you get around to realizing that you desperately need tech support, your only option will be to hire people who are older, more cynical, and more expensive.

Sometimes I wonder.

• Why does the executive director of the agency have a brand new monitor, when the people in Accounts Payable are still using the DOS verson of Lotus 123?

• What is the point of buying a new software package, when you don't invest in ongoing training for the employees who are going to use it?

• Why is everyone anxious for the agency to have a web site, when nobody has thought about what sort of content and features it should have?
  

• Why did management put all the candidates for the IT job through an 18 month hiring decision cycle, and then go with a part-time college student intern?

• Why are the servers located in the men's room?

Technology costs money. (Round 2)

Heads up, nonprofit executive directors!

This is the 21st century, and you need to buy your staff technology that was developed in this millenium, not the previous one.

What's that I hear you whining? Is it that you don't have the money in your budget for technology?

Here are two urgent messages from Reality:

1) If you don't have the money for technology, you don't have what it takes to operate, and it's time to decide whether to close down or find the money.

2) These days the executive director of a nonprofit agency has to be its Chief Fundraising Officer, so get moving.

Technology costs money. (Round 1)

A question for executive directors: how much do you make a year?

I bet it's a lot less than you'd make in a for-profit business. But you get paid a salary, right? And you deserve every penny of it, right?

Right.

So now it's time to choke down the realization that if you're going to run a nonprofit agency, you need a certain amount of computing power. This costs money. You need to create line items in your annual budget for technology products and services.

When I say services, that includes people. You need to pay real money to real people.

You need to pay people what they're worth. You get paid a salary, and you deserve every penny of it, remember? Well, please keep that in mind when you go looking for technical support.