Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

As I write this, I’m hurtling through small towns and big cities on the train home. We’ve passed through Baltimore - which reminds me of a project I did once, way back when, to work with a group of mostly small and medium-sized organizations on technology planning. In those days, the buzzwords were “internet connectivity,” “networks,” “websites,” and “email.” This was in the solidly web 1.0 world where many organizations still weren’t even networked, still used dial-up internet connections, and had websites written in the earliest version of Front Page, or were done by the CFO’s nephew.

I’ve emerged from this week’s frenzy of buzzwords like “blogging,” “open API,” “e-advocacy,” “municipal wireless” and “social networking” not surprised at how much things have changed, really, but how much they have stayed exactly the same. From the stories I’ve heard this week, nonprofits of the size that I’m most familiar with (small to medium-sized) still don’t have in-house technology expertise to make evaluations about what directions to go in. They sometimes deal with vendors and developers that don’t really understand their mission, don’t speak their language, and don’t tell them the truth (whether intentionally, or by a lack of self-examination.) They struggle mightily with software, no matter whether it’s free/open source or proprietary, shrink-wrapped or custom-built, on their desktops or web-hosted, which they generally spend extraordinary amounts of time and/or money on. The buzzwords have changed and the technology has gotten more sophisticated - but the problems many nonprofits are facing are exactly the same. So I hate to throw cold water on the whole enterprise - but if the core issues that most nonprofits are facing haven’t changed, and the situation isn’t getting better, how is it that have we helped?

I also saw the conference with some different, post-seminary eyes. I was looking for the deeper purposes behind the implementation of technology. I was looking for the discriminating approach to adopt technology appropriately. I was looking for the big conversation - why are we doing this anyway? Is it still just in the pursuit of “efficiency”? Is it all just TCO arguments? And I also looked at this with post-implementation eyes. I spent 8 years implementing technology “solutions” for nonprofit organizations. I wrote thousands of lines of code and designed more databases than I can count. I think I truly did some good, and I know I made mistakes along the way. Mistakes I hope to learn from, now that I won’t be doing implementation anymore.

Sometimes, the forward march of technology seems like this train I’m riding on - inexorably traveling down the track of capitalist profit while nonprofits are hanging on to those little hand-powered trucks that we, the people who serve them in this realm are working really hard to pump up and down, so we can try and gamely keep up. And while they watch really large organizations zip by them in bigger, better vehicles, looking exactly like they know where they are going. But no one seems to be asking “why are we on this track in the first place?” “Is being on this track going to really help me save the whales/feed people/organize/save the planet?”

And it’s making me think a lot about what I’m going to start calling “Nonprofit Technology Consulting 2.0″ (and yes, I’m subverting the dominant paradigm.) I don’t know yet whether I’ll actually start practicing it, but I’d like to think about it more. What would it be like if we could help nonprofits with the following:

• Asking whether technology implementations in their organization in the past have really facilitated their mission? In what ways have they not?
• Asking whether technology played a beneficiary, damaging or neutral role in internal organizational dynamics and staff morale?
• Asking, before implementing a new technology - what problem is really attempting to be solved? is it a problem that can be solved in any other ways?
• How does increasing use of networking technology, on-line presence, and internet communications facilitate or hinder work that is done face to face?
• Making choices about technology not just based on cost/TCO or feature set - but to bring in issues of the effects on staff, organizational dynamics, and the role of factors such as organizational determination of data destiny, source and ownership of software, and environmental impact.
• Being mediators between vendors and nonprofits - to look at issues that are technological, and issues that are about personality, behavior and organizational structure and dynamics (on both sides)
• Looking at the bigger picture - how does what an organization does with technology affect the larger community, and the planet?

I’m looking for ways that it might be possible to practice nonprofit technology consulting with head and heart, with a view to the bigger picture of our society and our planet, and the precarious place we are in as human beings at this time, and with a view that reflects my emerging belief that increasing human touch and human contact will do more, in the end, than many of our attempts to increase efficiency by using technology.

When I re-started this blog 6 months ago, I named it Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology for a good reason. I want us to pay attention. I want us to pay attention to what we are doing, and how we are doing it. I’m very clear that there are technology implementations that are completely appropriate, mission-facilitating, and even good for the greater community, and good for the planet. I want to make sure that every single technology implementation is like that. My bet is that we might do a lot fewer of them if that were so.

As I keep thinking more about this, I’ll be blogging about it. I welcome any feedback and conversation, either by email, or on comments and trackbacks on this blog.