NPTech

The bulk of the blog posts here are on Nonprofit Technology topics

Hackcess To Justice

Regular blog readers know that landing my job at Legal Services Corporation, the single largest funder of civil legal aid to people in financial need, was not an accident.  The mission of providing representation to those who need it, but can’t afford it, is one that I targeted for over half a decade before getting this position. I’m passionate about the work of our grantees, because there is something about social and economic injustice that offends me at my core, and I consider it my responsibility and my privilege to be able to do work that attempts to alleviate such injustice.   That’s my best explanation,… Read More »Hackcess To Justice

It’s Time To Revamp The NTEN Staffing Survey

NTEN‘s annual Nonprofit IT Staffing survey is out, you can go here to download it.  It’s free! As with prior years, the report structures it’s findings around the self-reported technology adoption level of the participants, as follows: Stuggling orgs have failing technology and no money to invest in getting it stabilized. They have little or no IT staff. Functioning orgs have a network in place and running, but use tech simply as infrastructure, with little or no strategic input. Operating nonprofits have tech and policies for it’s use in place, and they gather input from tech staff and consultants before making technology purchasing and planning decisions.… Read More »It’s Time To Revamp The NTEN Staffing Survey

The Future Of Technology

…is the name of the track that I am co-facilitating at NTEN’s Leading Change Summit. I’m a late addition, there to support Tracy Kronzak and Tanya Tarr. Unlike the popular Nonprofit Technology Conference, LCS (not to be confused with LSC, as the company I work for is commonly called, or LSC, my wife’s initials) is a smaller, more focused affair with three tracks: Impact Leadership, Digital Strategy, and The Future of Technology. The expectation is that attendees will pick a track and stick with it.  Nine hours of interactive sessions on each topic will be followed by a day spent at the Idea Accelerator, a workshop… Read More »The Future Of Technology

Career Management In The Social Media Era

If you believe that your current job is your last job — the one that you will retire from — raise your hand.  You can stop reading. Now that those two people are gone, let’s talk about managing our careers. Because its a whole new discipline these days. Gone are the days when submitting a resume was sufficient.  Good jobs go to people who are referred in, not to those with no one to vouch for them. Per the ERE recruiter network, between 28% and 40% of all positions in 2012 were given to candidates that were referred in, but only 7% of all candidates were… Read More »Career Management In The Social Media Era

Why I Hate Help Desk Metrics

Photo: birgerking Tech support, as many of you know, can be a grueling job.  There are a huge variety of problems, from frozen screens to document formatting issues to malware infestations to video display madness.  There are days when you are swamped with tickets.  And there are customers that continually broaden the scale from tech-averse to think-they-know-it-all. I’ve done tech support and I’ve managed tech support for most of my career, and providing good support isn’t the biggest challenge.  Rather, it’s keeping the tech support staff from going over the edge. In our nptech circles, it would be natural to assume that having good metrics… Read More »Why I Hate Help Desk Metrics

Working With Proposal Requests Collaboratively

Okay, I know that it’s a problem worthy of psychoanalysis that I’m so fascinated with the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. But, hey, I do a lot of them. And they do say to write about what you know. The presentation that I gave at NTEN’s conference in March focused on the process of developing and managing RFPs. I made the case that you want to approach a vendor RFP very differently than you would a software/system RFP. I pushed for less fixed bid proposals, because, in many cases, asking for a fixed bid is simply asking for a promise that will be hard to… Read More »Working With Proposal Requests Collaboratively

Three Ways To Make Sure that Your Next Big Software Project Is A Success

This post also appeared on the Cloud for Good Blog in April of 2014. Buying a new fundraising CRM or replacing your finance and HR systems are big investments with critical outcomes. These are the types of projects can have a huge impact on your ability to accomplish your mission. Poorly planned, chosen and deployed, they will do the opposite. If you’re grasping for a cautionary tale, just look at the recent Healthcare.gov rollout, or the worse related stories in Maryland and Oregon. But successful implementations happen every day as well, they just don’t grab as many headlines. How can you make sure that big software… Read More »Three Ways To Make Sure that Your Next Big Software Project Is A Success

NTC Summary 2014 Edition

I’m back from the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference.  This one had some real high points for me, and a few things that made me a little sad, but I think I might have learned more than I do most years and I had a simply great time with old and new friends. Here’s a  summary of highs, lows, and links: This was my longest conference (of the nine I’ve attended): I met up for breakfast with some good friends at 8:00 am  on Wednesday, and I was one of the last people at the hotel at 6:00 pm on Saturday. The IT Leader’s Roundtable that… Read More »NTC Summary 2014 Edition

Career Reflections: My Biggest Data Fail

This article was published on the NTEN Blog in February of 2014.  It originally appeared in the eBook “Collected Voices: Data-informed Nonprofits“. Peter Campbell of Legal Services Corporation shares his biggest data fail, and what he’d do differently now. This case study was originally published along with a dozen others in our free e-book, Collected Voices: Data-Informed Nonprofits. You can download the e-book here. Note: names and dates have been omitted to protect the innocent.  Years ago, I was hired at an organization that had a major database that everyone hated. My research revealed a case study in itself: how not to roll out a… Read More »Career Reflections: My Biggest Data Fail

Notes From Here And There

Long time no blog, but I have good excuses.  Moving cross-country, even with a modest family of three, is no picnic, and we are now, over 13 months since I was offered the job in DC, starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Since summer, I’ve been frantically house hunting and, since December, busy relocating (for the third time) to our new, tree-laden home in Reston. This, however, doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing or totally neglecting my nptech duties. So here are some things to look forward to: #ntcbeer. First and foremost. The annual Nonproft Technology Conference runs here… Read More »Notes From Here And There