Defining the connection between IT and your mission will help your organization thrive and fulfill its mission more efficiently, allowing you, in turn, to create more impact in the world.
At the recent Online Nonprofit Technology Conference, Edward Granger-Happ of Save the Children, shared some valuable insights on how nonprofits can work towards the sweet spot at the intersection of technology and mission by looking at the ever-important starting place: strategy and vision. Edward said the single most important strategic question you can ask is "What's my destination?" This leading question took him to the vision of "Making us all a part of one virtual village." He uses this concept to lead IT strategy -- simple but very ambitious!
Nonprofits have been getting a lot of heat of late for not being innovative enough because they fear change. This is debatable -- and we can certainly pull together more important stats than twitter followers -- but what nonprofits should recognize (along with Wall Street and the business sector) is that we must continue to adapt and work for change within our organizations/businesses as we work towards solutions for our collective problems.
Nonprofits have many limitations beyond fear of change, and Edward has some guidance for leaders:
Edward challenges nonprofits with "Poke-in-the-Eye" questions:
These are not questions to knock us down, but to challenge us to better solutions. Edward offered a few more tips when thinking about IT Strategy:
Peter Campbell, IT Director at Earthjustice, dove deeper into IT performance and how to prioritize your goals through balanced scorecards, business process mapping, SWOT analyses, and technology planning. He likes the idea of 360 degree participation: evaluations must be made by technologists and users, and then decisions can be vetted from the top down. This idea of doing your work in a new way, ignoring traditional departmental divides and collaboration, reappeared throughout the ONTC from conversations about developing a high performance team to understanding your online stakeholders to engage them in meaningful ways. If you're going to have a successful fundraising campaign, your communications staff need to be on the same page as the IT staff so that they can work together to deploy new strategies creatively.
As the conference progressed, the notion of change -- and how we can manage it within our organizations -- resurfaced. Dahna Goldstein, PhilanTech, talked about reasons why tech changes fail: no leader/champion, no direction from the top, no context, lack of communication/poor communication and lack of involvement/empowerment.
So what can we do?
Dahna also added that we can manage the tech change life-cycle by communicating (and communicating some more) and involving end users. Technology is no longer just for geeks -- nonprofit staff are increasingly using technology to get the job done. They must be involved in the technology plan.
Technology success within your organization boils down to aligning IT with your mission, embracing change, and adopting an organized approach to letting go of control. Nonprofits can be the leaders that show the rest of the world great examples of creative technology solutions!
Gain more insights by listening to the recordings of all the amazing, thoughtful sessions from the Online Nonprofit Technology Conference or checking out the resources on the Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission wiki.
The first 5 thoughtful comments to this post on how your organization's IT strategy excels or struggles to meet your organization's mission, will receive free access to the recordings (a $99 value)!
* This article was written by Anna Richter, the Program Manager for NTEN.
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