Idealware Nonprofit Software Knowledge Sharing Initiative
We will use collaborative communication tools to understand the extensive software knowledge that already exists among nonprofit software practitioners and then publish it in summary articles that compare the available software tools.
The technology practitioners working in the nonprofit sector have a vast combined knowledge of what software packages exist, which packages typically work well for various situations, and the key considerations in choosing various types of software. However, this information is not evenly distributed. Literally hundreds of thousands of nonprofits have little access to information about specific software packages. They struggle to understand even what software packages are available, let alone what might be appropriate for them or how to choose.
Without software knowledge, nonprofits are unable to take advantage of the increased innovation, information, efficiency, and effectiveness that good software can provide. This contributes to a growing “organizational divide†in which large and well-funded organizations take advantage of the best in software and Web 2.0 tools while small and mid-sized community organizations are left further and further behind.
Idealware proposes a Nonprofit Software Knowledge Sharing Initiative to understand the extensive software knowledge that already exists in the sector and publish it in a form that will be useful to many nonprofits worldwide. We will start by collecting information from a wide swath of those working with nonprofit software to understand who has knowledge about each type of software. We’ll work with this community to define a set of software topics for which knowledge is available but widely needed, and then use online communication tools to collaboratively create knowledge summaries about these topics.
These knowledge summary articles will be published online and widely distributed through sources such as the Idealware website, the TechSoup website, listserves, and other partners. Possible knowledge topics might include online integrated packages such as Kintera, Convio, and Democracy in Action; collaboration tools; constituent databases; content management systems; event registration tools; and many more.
We are seeking initial funding to create the expertise data repository and write an initial set of articles, but Idealware’s revenue model will allow us to keep the repository and articles up-to-date without additional funding. Earned income strategies such as business partner sponsorship of the articles, and webinars based on the article content, as well as donations to Idealware, will allow us to make updates on a yearly basis. This model has already been successful in allowing us to update similar articles on the Idealware site. In this way, an initial investment in the Knowledge Sharing Initiative will allow us to provide robust knowledge in these areas for years to come.
- Reaching a broad practioner base. It will be important to reach practitioners who have not been a core part of the nonprofit technology community, including those who feel they have only a bit of knowledge to share (in our experience, practitioners dramatically underestimate the usefulness of the software knowledge they hold).
- Combining collaboration with anonymity. Many practitioners are not comfortable publicly comparing specific software packages. We will structure our collaboration process so that we can understand the practitioners’ knowledge without attaching opinions to them personally.
- Funding. We’ll need seed funding to get this initiative off the ground
The key resource needed is seed funding to create the tools to collect community expertise data, to facilitate collaboration, to provide nominal compensation to those practitioners who share their expertise, and then to write up the knowledge. Idealware will commit the staff to oversee the process and write the knowledge summaries. We’ll also outreach widely to practitioners to contribute information about their own expertise.
We estimate the initial collection of expertise data to be an $8,000 project. With this expertise data repository established, we can then facilitate and publish each software knowledge article for $2250 each.
- Expertise Repository. Through a network of partners, we will disseminate an online tool to nonprofit staff and consultants to collect information about their level of expertise in a wide variety of software areas. Ideally, this tool will be structured based on practitioner profiles tagged with software knowledge areas, in a way to make the expertise repository itself useful to a wide audience. We will also ask the practitioners to vote for the software areas for which they would like to see more information. Through this process, we will build a data repository of who has knowledge about what software areas - as well as what software areas are most in need of additional clarity. We estimate that it will take about three months to define, create and widely publicize our mechanism for collecting expertise information, and then collect a robust set of data.
- Determine the Key Software Areas on which to Focus. We will cross-reference the two sets of data gathered to find the most underserved software areas for which extensive knowledge exists. Based on this understanding, we will plan a set of knowledge summaries that can most effectively meet wide nonprofit needs. This will be a short analysis phase of about two weeks.
- Invite Knowledge Holders and Create Summaries. For each software area, we will invite those with extensive knowledge of the area to collaborate on an article which summarizes their advice, software recommendations, and the differences between the tools (this methodology has been used with great success for a number of articles; for instance, see http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php). We will rely on distributed collaboration tools, such as wikis, to facilitate communication. Knowledge holders will be asked to contribute an hour of their time for each article, and will be compensated accordingly. Each knowledge summary will require about two weeks.
- Disseminate the Knowledge Summaries. The knowledge summaries for the key software areas will be distributed widely through the nonprofit sector via sources like the Idealware website, TechSoup, and nonprofit technology listserves.
At the end of this first initiative, a set of software area summaries will be immediately useful to nonprofits looking for software information. In addition, the collection method defined, we can periodically request updated information to keep the expertise data timely and useful to a wide audience.
The vast majority of nonprofits struggle without strong knowledge of what software tools are available or what might be useful for them. However, a great deal of software knowledge exists, spread through the community of nonprofit technology practitioners, most of whom would be happy to share their knowledge if they had an easy way to do so. Idealware proposes a Nonprofit Software Knowledge Sharing Initiative to understand the extensive software knowledge that already exists in the sector, use collaborative communication tools to collect and organize this data, and then publish the knowledge in articles that compare the available software tools, using accessible language that will be useful to hundreds of thousands of nonprofits worldwide.
