{"id":1308,"date":"2014-07-25T12:55:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T12:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/new\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2014-10-27T12:29:33","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T12:29:33","slug":"its-time-to-revamp-the-nten-staffing-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/?p=1308","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Time To Revamp The NTEN Staffing Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1313\" style=\"padding: 2px;\" src=\"http:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small-300x232.jpg\" alt=\"cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small\" width=\"150\" height=\"116\" srcset=\"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small-300x232.jpg 300w, https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small-297x230.jpg 297w, https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cover_techstaffingreport_2014_small.jpg 310w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><a title=\"Nonprofit Technology Network\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nten.org\">NTEN<\/a>&#8216;s annual Nonprofit IT Staffing survey is out, <a title=\"2014 NTEN IT Staffing Survey\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nten.org\/research\/download_it_staffing_2014\">you can go here to download it<\/a>. \u00a0It&#8217;s free! As with prior years, the report structures it&#8217;s findings around\u00a0the self-reported technology adoption level of the participants, as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Stuggling<\/strong> orgs have failing technology and no money to invest in getting it stabilized. They have little or no IT staff.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Functioning<\/strong> orgs have a network in place and running, but use tech simply as infrastructure, with little or no strategic input.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Operating<\/strong> nonprofits have tech and policies for it&#8217;s use in place, and they gather input from tech staff and consultants before making technology purchasing and planning decisions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Leading<\/strong> NPOs integrate technology planning with general strategic planning and are innovative in their use of tech.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The key metrics discussed in the report are the IT staff to general staff ratio and the IT budget as percentage of total budget. \u00a0The IT-&gt;general staff metric is one to thirty, which matches all of the best information I have on this metric at nonprofits, which I&#8217;ve pulled from CIO4Good and NetHope surveys.<\/p>\n<p>On budgets, an average of 3% of budget to IT is also normal for NPOs. \u00a0But what&#8217;s disturbing in the report is that the ratio was higher for smaller orgs and lower for larger, who averaged 1.6% or 1.7%. In small orgs, what that&#8217;s saying is that computers, as infrastructure, take up a high percentage of the slim budget. \u00a0But it says that larger orgs are under-funding tech. \u00a0Per Gartner, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gartner.com\/technology\/metrics\/\">cross-industry average is 3.3% of budget<\/a>.\u00a0 For professional services, healthcare and education &#8212; industries that \u00a0are somewhat analogous to nonprofits &#8212; it&#8217;s over 4%. \u00a0The reasons why we under-spend are well-known and better ranted about by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danpallotta.com\/\">Dan Palotta<\/a> than myself, but it&#8217;s obvious\u00a0that, in 2014, we are undermining our efforts if we are spending less than half of what a for profit would on technology.<\/p>\n<p>What excites me most about this year&#8217;s report is what is not in it: a salary chart. All of the prior reports have averaged out the IT salary info reported and presented it in a chart, usually by region. \u00a0But the survey doesn&#8217;t collect sufficiently detailed or substantial salary info, so the charts have traditionally suffered from under-reporting and averaging that results in misleading numbers. \u00a0I was spitting mad last year when the report listed a Northeastern Sysadmin salary at $50k. \u00a0Market is $80, and the odds that a nonprofit will get somebody talented and committed for 63% of market are slim. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/2009\/08\/05\/compensating-for-chaos\/\">Here&#8217;s my full take<\/a> on the cost of dramatically underpaying nonprofit staff. NTEN shouldn&#8217;t be publishing salary info that technophobic CEOs will use as evidence of market unless the data is truly representative.<\/p>\n<p>I would love it if NTEN would take this survey a little deeper and try and use it to highlight the ramifications of our IT staffing and budgeting choices. \u00a0Using the stumble, crawl, walk, run scale that they&#8217;ve established, we could gleam some real insight by checking other statistics against those buckets. Here are some metrics I&#8217;d like to see:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Average days each year that key IT staff positions are vacant.<\/em> This would speak to one of the key dangers in underpaying IT staff.<\/li>\n<li><em>Percentage of IT budget for consulting.<\/em> Do leading orgs spend more or less than trailing? How much bang do we get for that buck?<\/li>\n<li><em>In-house IT Staff vs outsourced IT management.<\/em> \u00a0It would be interesting to see where on the struggling to leading scale NPOs that outsource IT fall.<\/li>\n<li><em>Percentage of credentialed vs &#8220;accidental&#8221; techs.<\/em> I want some data to back up my claim that accidental techies are often better for NPOs than people with lots of IT experience.<\/li>\n<li><em>Who does the lead IT Person report to?<\/em> How many leading orgs have IT reporting to\u00a0Finance versus the CEO?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What type of IT staffing metrics would help you make good decisions about how to run your nonprofit? What would help you\u00a0make a good case for salaries, staffing or external resources to your boss? I want a report from NTEN that does more than just tells me the state of nonprofit IT &#8212; that&#8217;s old, sad\u00a0news. \u00a0I want one that gives me data that I can use to improve it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NTEN&#8216;s annual Nonprofit IT Staffing survey is out, you can go here to download it. \u00a0It&#8217;s free! As with prior years, the report structures it&#8217;s findings around\u00a0the 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<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/?p=1308\">+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[259,142,88,135,101,274],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nptech","tag-budget","tag-compensation","tag-management","tag-metrics","tag-nten","tag-surveys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1323,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions\/1323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}