One of the things that energised me about last year's Netsquared conference was buzz of community activity around Drupal. i had already experimented with Drupal as a basic CMS, but at Netsquared I met Drupal developers who shared a passion for web activism, and social activists who wanted to use Drupal in cool new ways. Looking back, I can see that my experiences of advocating for open source in NGOs seems to have been leading up to the Dot Org Boom that Netsquared represented (see also the blog post Drupal and the Dot Org Boom). However, a comment from David Geilhufe points out that

across the landscape of all these NGOs using open source software, there is no real open source strategy. No strategy for: (1) Ensuring your organization does not bear the maintainence/upgrade burden of your innovations exclusively. (2) Leveraging other groups with similar needs to jointly produce and maintain functionality needed by all.

 
Image by Beth Kanter


As an adjunct to the Second Life / Real Life mixed reality event that TechSoup will be producing on July 18th, the Ethos Roundtable will be holding a mixed reality gathering based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Ethos Roundtable is an informal group of people who are interested in using technology tools to support positive social change.  We meet once a month, usually in the same location as (and just prior to) the Boston 501 Tech Club.

But next Tuesday's meeting will be special:

Image by Beth Kanter

Here's a great new item for the Jargon File:  "mixed-reality event."  When I first saw this term, I thought, "Hey, isn't that what occurs whenever any two sentient beings interact?"

However, it turns out that according to Wikipedia, mixed-reality "is the merging of real world and virtual worlds to produce a new environment where physical and digital objects can co-exist and interact."  For example, a mixed-reality event can take place simultaneously in real life and Second Life.

On July 18th, there will be a mixed-reality mash-up that should be fascinating for all of us who are interested in technology for the nonprofit sector.

In the mix will be:

I just love the idea of a workflow management application, especially one that's integrated  with filing, calendar, email, and all the other systems that keep my worklife in order.

It so happens that one of my esteemed clients is looking for a way to integrate fiscal sponsorship accounting, document management, digital signature, and workflow management into a seamless system - so I spend a lot of time thinking about the human and technological requirements that might be involved.

For my client's purposes, there are basically two kinds of workflow management - a generic kind that helps any group of people coordinate the actions that need to be taken on any project, and workflow management that is tailored to accounting tasks such as initiating requisitions, approving invoices, and cutting checks.  These further sub-divided into those applications that come with document management modules and those that don't.  And of course, one can drill down to distinguish between client-server products and web-based service providers.

The ones that I really like allow the user to log in and see a workflow management dashboard, such as the one that ExpenseWatch provides for accountants, with status reports and task lists laid out in a very clear and appealing manner.  Furthermore, the really good tools make it easy to set up a queue for passing along the work in progress - so that everyone who needs to contribute to, revise, review, or approve a project can do so - in an order that can be edited to reflect a change in plans.  I also like the idea of automatic escalation routines, which alert you if a project has been parked on one person's desk for too long.

The only question is...if you build it, will they use it?

I recently had an experience that shed a little light on this question.  An esteemed colleague who has access to my electronic calendar printed out my task list in preparation for a planning meeting.  I hadn't added (or checked off) much of anything in months. 

I love setting up systems.  I love playing with systems.  But the empirical evidence shows that when it comes to maintaining a simple online task list (never mind one that's part of a sophisticated workflow management system), I'm not necessarily showing up for it on a day-to-day basis.  And if the systems geeks don't do it, how can we expect normal people to be enthusiastic users?  We have to think really carefully about building in incentives to participate, and measuring the positive effects that such an implementation actually has on the amount of time, energy, and money that it takes to get the job done.

One of my favorite projects these days is the "Immigrant Organizers Information Technology Network," which a joint undertaking by the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing and Third Sector New England, and is funded by the Boston Foundation. Right now, I'm helping to put together a databaseclinic for a cluster of immigrant organizing groups in Massachusetts. 

The grassroots workers affiliated with these groups are the best in the world at advocating for immigrants, and they juggle an awe-inspiring amount of information about constituents, donors, policy makers, service providers, activists, and other stakeholders.  Most of this juggling is done in their heads, or on paper, or with Excel spreadsheets - very few of them also have expertise in database development.  What to do?

In June, TSNE offered these groups a "Databases 101" workshop, designed for smart people who are starting from scratch in learning about databases.  This month, the goal is to follow up with a clinic that will enable them to get down to cases about their specific needs. 

We've invited mavens from three local organizations - Database Designs Associates, The Data Collaborative, and Organizers Collaborative - to serve as "clinicians."  These folks all have extensive experience with both database development and grassroots organizing.  So far, so good!

But the remaining challenge is to craft the clinic in such a way that all of the immigrant organizers come away with a feeling of confidence, a practical understanding of how databases can help them, and a list of action items to take back to their offices.

Among adult educators, there's considerable consensus that subjecting people to yet another PowerPoint presentation just isn't the answer, so I am currently on a quest for better ideas.

Now that I've had a taste of a meta feed for nonprofit technology, I feel compelled to create a meta feed of my own.

So of course it has to be a Technobabe meta feed.  You can now go to Feed Jumbler to satisfy your craving for blog articles written by women in the field of nonprofit technology.  The official address of the RSS feed is

Any number of nonprofit 501(c)3 organizations in the U.S. serve as fiscal sponsors (sometimes known as "fiscal agents") to unincorporated mission-based projects or associations.  For example, a 501(c)3 dedicated to saving the whales, might offer to serve as the fiscal sponsor of a project designed to save the sea otters, because their missions are congruent, and it's less trouble than setting up a separate entity.  But they're really in the business of saving the whales, not providing services to other nonprofit organizations.

However, a relatively small number of nonprofit mangement support organizations undertake fiscal sponsorship on a large scale, providing not only a legal umbrella but all sorts of back office services to unincorporated projects.  A well-known example is the Tides Center in San Francisco.

As I've previously mentioned in my blog, one of my clients that also does this is Third Sector New England.  As of this writing, TSNE has 26 fiscal sponsorship clients, and an entire team of accountants, HR specialists, and others who dedicate themselves to the needs of these projects.  It's intricate work, and they are very, very good at it.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to find accounting and finance applications that are up to this sophicated task.  The transactions involve multiple donors, grantmakers, vendors, and contractors - on behalf of 26 different projects, each of which having records that must be segregated as if they were completely freestanding organizations.  The security issues are enormous, and added to that are the challenges of integrating an accounting application with workflow management, digital signatures, and document management.

These days, I spend a lot of time researching applications that will meet TSNE's fiscal sponsorship accounting needs.  This is not a task for the faint of heart, because the specifications are numerous, the solutions are shockingly expensive, and the potential for spending a lot of time, energy, and money without actually improving capacity is very high.

Here are some of the applications that I have been checking out:

I enjoy playing with new permutations of the NPtech tagging project.  The latest one I've found, the NPTech Meta Feed, is based on a great concept, but it still needs a little debugging.

The feed was created by lazytom (whom I do not know) using FeedJumbler.  It draws on all the right sources, plus a few that are new to me:

I worry a lot about the technology infrastructures of small nonprofit organizations.

Even though we hear a lot more about national and international organizations such as the Red Cross, in the U.S.A., most nonprofits have fewer than ten staff members, and annual operating budgets of less than US $500,000.  (It used to be possible to look up the numbers for free on GuideStar and see this for yourself; now, you need a paid subscription to their service.  Alas.)

An amazing number of nonprofit projects are run by one noble soul, working with great dedication from the coffee table in his or her living room.  This person hardly has an information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure - never mind an ICT specialist to maintain it!

The plight of this typical one-person-plus-coffee-table organization worries me a lot, and over the last few years, my friend John McNutt and I have often debated  whether this organization will be able to survive and be effective in the information age.  We both think that the internet is on its way to being the second social welfare delivery system, and that the one-person-plus-coffee-table organization is ill-equipped to do the online collaboration, back office administration, fundraising, and service delivery that will be demanded.

We don't exactly agree about whether it would be a good thing for these small nonprofit organizations to die out, but I won't attempt to do justice to John's point of view here.  However, I will admit that I worry a lot.

I really like small nonprofits, and I don't think that answer is wait for harsh reality to force them to choose between shutting down and being assimilated into the Borg.  (In the latter scenario, they would be consolidated into a much larger nonprofit entity with a substantial technology infrastructure.)

Surely there's some way for small nonprofits, especially those of the one-person-plus-coffee-table type, to consolidate their technology infrastructures and back office administrative processes, even while each organization retains its hand-tailored (or even quirky) approach to services and programs?

For example, here in Massachusetts, Third Sector New England offers its fiscal sponsorship clients a very full complement of accounting, business planning, and human resources services.  One of my other clients (who is not yet ready to unveil its plan) is working on new model for delivering remote technology services to small nonprofits in the region.  Naturally, I have taken great cyber-yenta joy in bringing folks in these two organizations together to talk about how their plans can dovetail.  The timing may be especially auspicious here in Massachusetts, since another project in progress is the formation of our state's first association for nonprofits.  The folks who are thinking about the shared needs and interests of the nonprofit sector in our area are starting to mobilize.

But this isn't just about Massachusetts.  It's about best practices throughout our profession.

Globally speaking, I'd like to see those noble souls in very small nonprofits focus their efforts on what they do best - which could be saving the whales, feeding the hungry, organizing youth soccer leagues, ensuring access to health care, or keeping German opera alive in Montana - rather than on tasks such as contract management, accounting, or maintaining a file server.  I'd also like to see employees of one-person-plus-coffee-table organizations enjoy some of the benefits that Red Cross staffers can take for granted - such as membership in a group health plan, access to professional development opportunities, and use of up-to-date information and communication technology. 

Let's make it happen!

I have a delightful client who dreams of an entirely open source web-based version of the Organizers Database.  (The current version, which has many avid fans, is open source, but runs on a Microsoft Access platform, which is proprietary software.)