Enabling Nonprofits to Accomplish Their Missions through Technology

From Anita Borg Institute Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

NOTE: I was late to this. Feel free to edit to your heart's content!

Location: Torreys Peak III Panelists: Meghan Morrison (Swift River Consulting), Meghan Nesbit (Salesforce.com), Cindy Goral (Anita Borg Institute), Sonja Karkare (NPower NY), Janice Lathen (Powering Potential), Susan Tenby (TechSoup)

Speakers will discuss how different technologies have benefited humanity by enabling non-profits to better meet their missions and improve impact. Topics will include how organizations can apply technology resources to help create healthy, vibrant communities, using Salesforce.com to improve communities, inspire youth to be more successful, and support the world in times of need and promote "compassionate capitalism", and bringing and teaching computers to students in rural Tanzania.

Meghan Nesbit, Salesforce.com foundation:

Non-profits do not have enough technologists; we need to keep in mind the social sector. If we connect with them, the global community is better off in the end.


Sonja Karkare, Portfolio Manager, NPower NY

  • How Sonja got involved
    • Grew up in India
    • Grand-aunt was a social worker
    • Aunt was a human rights officer at the UN focused on women's rights
    • Mother was a college professor
    • Another aunt was a doctor
    • Sister is a doctor
  • Lots of pressure! Sparked interest in volunteering
  • Work
    • Worked at three consulting firms
    • Started own business
      • Technical consulting - No coding or implementation, everything up to that point
      • One of the clients was NPower (Connection!)
  • Technology & Non-Profits - How does tech help?
    • Input
    • Activity
    • Output
    • Outcome
    • Impact
  • Data management (input & activity)
    • Moving away from paper
    • Moving away from old, home grown, inflexible systems
    • Data accuracy - Removal of redundancy and data duplication
  • Outcomes and impact reporting - Output, outcome, and impact
  • Efficient program management - NPower gives support to turn lights on, but also...
    • Children's AId Society (Carrera Program)
      • 165 users, paper based, based across five states
      • NPower implemented SalesForce
        • Enabled to track and report on dosage
    • Center for Alternate Sentencing and Employment Services
      • Wanted to replace old system (FoxPro)
    • Child welfare organization
      • Home grown Access system they outgrew
      • Files literally passed from desk-to-desk
    • After school program in four states (MA, NY, MI, MD)
      • SalesForce implementation
  • NPower
    • Organization does tech consulting for non-profits
    • A non-profit working exclusively for non-profits
    • Helped about 20,000 non-profits since 1999
    • At non-profits, IT is simpler to manage
    • Layers to build to achieve impact
      • Infrastructure
      • Applications
      • Solutions
    • Easier to communicate, simpler to manage, business-class security and reliability, affordable high quality service and support
    • Technology Service Corps
      • Serves 1000 low-income youth and young adults annually
      • Check out web site


Janice Lathen, Powering Potential

  • Tanzania
    • On first visit, when she introduced herself in their language, they burst into applause
    • She felt stunned, deep sense of appreciation, and decided she wanted to feel that again
  • Runs a consulting business
  • Wanted to go home, raise money, buy ten computers, spend a month training
    • When she told them this, reaction was, "That's great!! We'll be getting electricity soon!"
    • Rethought her plan, raised money for laptop with two long life batteries
      • It was charged in the teacher's home that had electricty
    • Installed a computer network in spring 2008
    • Technology Tent
      • In June 2009, will spend a month during their school break holding a computer camp with computers, digital cameras, digital video cameras
        • At end of week, a group of students will hold a presentation with videos, etc
    • Impact
      • In 2007, discovered they were walking 10+ miles to school, raised money for bicycles
      • Janice showed a video: Students from Tanzania say they like the computers, helps provide education
      • Able to give email address of people in the field students want to go into, now that these students have access to email
    • Janice wants to do a computer version of book mobiles
      • Drive around to give everyone a taste of computers
    • Also wants to set up internet access


Q: Have any of you used open source as a way of savings?

Janice: Brought windows laptop; computer network bought from San Francisco is Linux

Sonja: Web development team at NPower started using Joomla, haven't yet noticed any problems with lack of support, readily available, large community of developers available if NPower can't help


Q: When technology is introduced, it's typically not gender neutral. In Tanzania, experience with gender (were there different reaction), and what did you do to address this?

Janice: I haven't noticed a problem. The school is co-ed, and the teachers are committed to girls having equal opportunities even if it's a patriarchal society.


Q: Perspective on "Action Research," do you look to academia for resources?

Sonja: (1) NPower wants to best serve their clients with the products created. How do you develop a product when you don't know what they need. Great research for academia. (2) Measuring outcomes and impact, not easy for organizations themselves or vendors helping them. Ways to determine your outcome and impact. Not just a simple report you run; some impact is long term.

Meghan N: Not just five more kids through school, but through school, impacted salary. More people shoing the importance of non-profits, and tracking the work done.


Q: It's a challenge when implementing technology, and having the people in place to main the technology. How do you address those challenges?

Meghan N: The best way to make sure information is shared and passed on through generations of employees is that things makes sense. Solid implementation, training, and documentation are very important. (Jing allows recording screen casts, hosts on their web site, no worries of own servers.)

Sonja: We insist on talking to end-users. We try the train-the-teacher approach. We also try to show the value of product in process of developing (show prototypes, wireframes), so what comes out is not a surprise.


Q: Volunteers at a volunteers based organization where many of the volunteers are from different cultures, different languages, all have to use same system. Who is working on usability issues (for older, non-computer savvy)?

Sonja: We created a product for a place with older, non-savvy users. We had to train multiple times. Wireframes (sketches of screens, developed or high level, NPower does detailed) are important. If someone is producing a new product, engage vlunteers using the product.

Meghan N: Worked with Learn to Read, which involved different people who spoke different languages. SalesForce supports 16 languages and is built to be customized. For example, the help is customizable.

Retrieved from "http://community.anitaborg.org/wiki/index.php/Enabling_Nonprofits_to_Accomplish_Their_Missions_through_Technology"
Personal tools