I owe somebody an apology. Last night, a nice woman that I’ve never met sent me an email relaying (not proposing) an idea that others had pitched. Colleagues of mine who serve in communications roles in the nonprofit sector were suggesting a talk on “Why CIOs/CTOs should be transitioned into Chief Digital and Data Officers”. And, man, did that line get me going.
Last week I attended two events sponsored by my new employer, Legal Services Corporation (LSC). The first was a two day Technology Summit, where a group of 50 thought leaders gathered to develop a plan for addressing the demand for legal aid more dramatically by making strategic use of technology. That was followed by the three day Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) conference.
I’m still knocking on wood a bit, but I think it’s now safe to rep0ort that I’ll be joining Legal Services Corporation as their Chief Information Officer in January. Those of you who read my Looking For A New Job post in August know that I had some pretty strict requirements for that gig, and this one meets or exceeds them. LSC is the nonprofit that allocates federal funding to legal aid societies across the country.
This article was first published on the Idealware Blog in December of 2011. My work planning for, evaluating and deploying technology at nonprofits requires that I have a good understanding of fundraising concepts and practices, and I do. It’s an area that I’m sufficiently knowledgeable about, but no expert. So my current personal fundraising campaign for Idealware is an amateur effort. It is, happily, a successful one. I did some things right, including, I think, making strategic use of my social networking connections and channels. I might have done a few things differently, given what I’ve learned. And much of the success has been instructive. Setting Up… Read More »My Foray Into Personal Fundraising
This article was co-written by Matt Eshleman of Community IT Innovators and first published on the NTEN Blog in June of 2009. Peter Campbell, Earthjustice and Matthew Eshleman, Community IT Innovators This year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference offered a good chance to discuss one the most important — but geeky — developments in the world of computers and networks: server virtualization. Targeting a highly technical session to an NTEN audience is kind of like cooking a gourmet meal with one entrée for 1000 randomly picked people. We knew our attendees would include as many people who were new to the concepts as there were tech-savvy… Read More »Virtualization: The Revolution in Server Management and Why You Should Adopt It
This article was first published on the Idealware Blog in March of 2011. NPTech maven Deborah Elizabeth Finn started a blog last week called “No Nonprofit Spam“. As a well-known NPTech consultant, Deborah is far from alone in finding herself regularly subscribed to nonprofit email lists that she has never opted into. But, as opposed to just complaining about what is, in anyone’s definition (except possibly the sender’s) unsolicited commercial email; Deborah took the opportunity to try and educate. It’s a controversial undertaking. Nobody likes spam. Many of us like nonprofits, and aren’t going to hold them to the same level of criticism as we… Read More »Do Nonprofits Spam?
This article was originally published on the Idealware Blog in February of 2011. There’s been a ton of talk over at the NTEN Blog this month about Accidental Techies. I had a few thoughts on the phenomenon. If you don’t know, Accidental Techie is an endearing and/or self effacing term for someone who signed up for a clerical, administrative or other general purpose position and wound up doing technical work. Many full-blown techies start their careers accidentally like this. The NTEN discussion has wonderfully run the gamut. Robert Weiner, a well-known NPTech consultant, started things rolling with “Going From Accidental Techie To Technology Leader“, a… Read More »Accidental Technology
An award-winning friend of mine at NTEN referred me to this article, by Jeremy Reimer, suggesting that Word, the ubiquitous Microsoft text manipulation application, has gone the way of the dinosaur. The “boil it down” quote:
“Word was designed in a different era, for a very specific purpose. We don’t work that way anymore.”
The credit card industry is doing the right thing by consumers and enforcing proper security measures regarding the handling of credit card information. You might have heard about this – a number of the popular vendors of donor databases are recommending upgrades based on their compliance with these regulations. The “Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard”, commonly known as PCIDSS, is a set of guidelines for securely handling credit card information. The standard has been around for about four years, but early enforcement efforts focused on companies with a high volume of credit card transactions. Now that they’re all in compliance, they’ve set their sites on smaller businesses and nonprofits. So, what does this mean?