10 Things Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know about IT

This article originally the Web site Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector by Deborah Finn.

1. Very little technical knowledge is required in order for nonprofit CEOs to participate actively in strategic IT planning.

As long as you thoroughly understand your organization's overall mission, strategy, and tactics (and are willing to learn a little bit about the technology), you can keep your IT infrastructure on target.

Example: Your mission is to save the whales, not to maintain a local area network. In order to save the whales, you need strategy to stay informed and inform others about the issues; lobby for policy changes; issue action alerts; raise money; and maintain relationships with various legislators, constituents, communities, donors, potential friends, and allies.

Keep pressing for tactics that will help you achieve your desired outcome of saving whales; this will enable you to hold your own in most discussions with technical experts.

2. Your board of directors should be calling for and participating in your strategic IT planning.

If they're not, it's time to recruit some board members who are techies. For example, your region probably has an Internet service provider, a high-tech corporation, or a large retail firm with an extensive IT department. Perhaps you can recruit representatives from these organizations to serve on your board as part of their community-benefits program.

3. A tremendous number of high-quality resources for strategic IT planning are available to nonprofits at no charge.

Free advice, products, and services make it possible for nonprofits to lower the risk of trying new technology — but in the long run, you'll have to pay real money to have precisely the right tools for supporting your mission.

4. You can keep an eye on innovations in IT, and think about possible uses for them in the nonprofit sector, even if you don't have a technical background.

If you regularly read the technology columns of a good daily newspaper and a few general-interest magazines such as PC Monthly, MAC User, or Network World, you will soon catch on to the basic concepts and terminology. (Don't worry if it seems over your head at first — you'll catch on! Everybody has to start somewhere.)

Example: You work for a nonprofit organization with five employees and four non-networked computers. It's time to link them up so that you and your colleagues can share information and regularly back up your work. As you read articles on wireless networking and look at the building where you work — which is a pre-electricity Victorian house only somewhat successfully retrofitted for its current functions — you see that you may actually save money by going wireless.

You ask your IT vendors for estimates on drilling and running cables through the building, and find that the cost of labor, support, upgrades, future expansion, and maintenance for a more conventional network will exceed that of a simple wireless network.

5. Information technology, no matter how strategically you apply it, will probably never save your nonprofit organization any money.

It will, however, enable you to work more effectively. You will probably be able to do more work, of higher quality, with fewer person-hours. But don't be surprised if this raises the bar of expectations on the part of the board, the community, the clients, the constituents, and the donors.

6. You need an in-house IT committee. Convene an IT team or working group, within your nonprofit, and make sure that you regularly meet to give input to the senior management on strategic IT issues.

The team should include a cross-section of staff — administration and finance, programmatic, secretarial. Be sure to include staff members who are overtly or covertly technophobic; their concerns should be addressed.

7. Secretaries and administrative assistants should be the lynchpins of your IT infrastructure. Budgeting for IT training for these employees can be one of your best investments.

Which staff members are more likely to be there when problems arise, to know about the technical abilities (and phobias) of their colleagues, and to know where the (paper or electronic) files are? Professional development that includes IT training is likely to increase job satisfaction and employee retention. Don't forget to revise job descriptions and job titles as your secretaries and administrative assistants move into IT management responsibilities.

8. In the long run, IT training and support (and other operating expenses) will make up about 70 percent of your IT budget.

The more obvious line items — such as hardware, software, and network services — will comprise about 30 percent. This is a highly counterintuitive fact of nonprofit life. However, there is research on the "Total Cost of Ownership" that bears this out.

9. Donated hardware, software, and services can cost a nonprofit more than purchased products or services in the long run.

The cost in person-hours of using and maintaining non-standard or substandard configurations is astonishingly high, and donated equipment tends to be non-standard or substandard. Likewise, donated services will cost you a great deal of time in support, supervision, and ongoing maintenance. Beware of the Web-design services donated by a close relative of the chair of your board! You may end up with something that you don't like, can't use, or can't easily change.

10. In a nonprofit organization, most strategic IT problems are actually organizational development problems.

Is it a CEO who is resistant to technical innovations? A board of directors that hesitates to make the commitment to raise the money need for the IT infrastructure? Line staff that are already stressed and overworked, and can't stop to learn and implement new technologies? An inability to make outsourced IT consultants or in-house IT staffs understand organizational processes? All the information technology in the world won't resolve these issues, if you don't address them at the organizational level.

Bonus Item: Hands-On IT Skills

Finally, the CEO, CFO, and COO of every small nonprofit should know how to:

• Compose, send, read, and delete email using the organization's standard application.
• Create and save a simple text document using the organization's standard application.
• Do a daily backup of the system.
• Bring down and bring up the network server.