Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Technology

Nonprofit strategic planning is a big part of planning for the future of your organization. It’s common to think about mission, vision, general operations, increasing donations, and so forth. What is often overlooked in a strategic plan is technology, leaving too many organizations scrambling for funds with a short deadline and trying to replace or upgrade necessary systems at the last minute. That’s why it’s important to have a technology roadmap. Before you can really set forth to create your roadmap, you’ll need to take a look at what’s currently being used. This starts at the leadership level and you need to answer the following questions:

What?

Before you can begin to include technology in the process of nonprofit strategic planning, you need to know what exists in your organization. When nonprofits work with us, we always want to know what tools are in the mix. We ask clients to take an inventory so we can properly advise them moving forward. There can often be surprises in doing this, such as finding hidden software no one is using, posing a security risk. Here are some questions to get started with the inventory:

• What technology is being used throughout the organization?
• What types of systems are there (CRM, Website, Financial, etc…)?
• Which ones talk to each other and which ones are stand alone?
• Does anyone have a piece of software that only exists on their computer?
• As a leader in the organization, what do you, personally, use on a regular basis

Why?

While you’ll want to eventually look at everything in your inventory to understand its purpose in your organization, we recommend starting with the tools you, personally, use most. Have other leaders do the same and then you can come together to look at more. To determine why you have and use this technology, here are some questions to get you started:

• Why does your organization have it to begin with? Is it because you inherited it? Did you choose it for a specific purpose?
• Why do you, specifically, need this tool or system? What function does it serve every day? What information does it give you? What does it help you do? How do you use it?
• Does the work of other users help/inform how you use it?
• Is it living up to its purpose?
• Is it providing you with the appropriate information to do your job?
• If it isn’t living up to its purpose and/or not supporting you in doing your job the way you need it to, what’s missing?

It’s tempting to let the information you learn here formulate a strategy for that type of technology. However, it’s important to consider the more global use as well.

Who?

That brings us to the “who.” Most likely, you aren’t the only one using this technology. So, who else uses it? It can be helpful to develop different personas. A Program Director may be one persona while the Program Coordinator is another. They each have their own “why.” It can be helpful to start with what you think their why is. Then have conversations with your staff to see what’s true and get a full understanding of their “what” and “why.” Here are a few questions to consider asking them:

What are they using in the software?

Why do they need it for their job? What important function does it provide for their role?
How are they using it compared to other personas?

How Often?

Take some time in the next six months to evaluate all your technology and define the different personas using each one by talking to users. Look for strategic opportunities to optimize or change the systems you are using.

Then formulate your strategy based on what you learn. Often we’ll see there is duplicate work being done in two systems or users have highly customized a clunky system while another does exactly what they need out of the box. In this case the organization can save money by consolidating the two systems. Consider these possibilities while formulating your strategy:

• Look at how each piece is linked together (or not).
• Is there a missing link? Or are there too many links?
• How many spreadsheets are still being used when there is an existing tool doing the same work? A little training could improve adoption.

Start Your Roadmap

Now, you can formulate a technology roadmap to include in your nonprofit strategic planning. You can define what you need it to do for the organization and the importance of each one. You may discover you need to include a timeline in your roadmap to budget for a new system in the future or that you are going to be good for a while. The important thing is to keep checking in. Regularly getting curious and asking questions about what staff is using and why can help you keep your roadmap up-to-date and give you the information needed to keep your strategy moving forward. Of course, we are always here to do a technology assessment for your organization and strategize your roadmap. Contact us for a chat!