Nonprofit Bridge

On Sep. 19 I attended the NYC Project Management Institute’s Professional Development Day.  Below are some of my takeaways:

Donald Gardner, Gardner Project Integration Group suggested that we avoid assuming that project team members and stakeholders are “just like us,” stressing the importance for different styles of communication.  In dealing with virtual teams, he suggested the simple step of posting pictures online to get to know people better who you may never meet in person.  (In my support of nonprofit staff across the US, I may not even say hello to someone when we do have an opportunity to meet because I have no idea of what they look like, only their voice.)  He also suggested we not sayto someone, ‘come back to me if you have a problem.’  Most people won’t – you have to reach out to them.

Lisa DiTullio, Lisa DiTullio & Associates, described her role in restoring Harvard Pilgrim Health Care from the brink of collapse to industry leadership using project management.  This was especially interesting to me, as I’ve previously spoken on how nonprofits can make better use of project management techniques.  Lisa suggested usng simple project tracking tools, using green/yellow/red to quickly summarize a project’s status.  When I asked how to move to a more collaborative organizational culture which allows project management to succeed, Lisa pointed out that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care almost went out of business before they could change their styles of interacting.  Responding to a criticism I sometimes hear about project management, Lisa described PM as not a way to introduce more work, but a way to change the way work is done.

Ronnie Battista, MISI Company spoke on one of my favorite topics – usability.  Ronnie suggested that users be involved in all stages of project planning and implementation, not just at the beginning.  He asked, “When is the last time you talked to a user,” adding that 85% of usability problems can be solved by speaking to five users.  I agree – nonprofits often put too much emphasis on what staff members think, and not enough on interacting with their target audiences.  Jakob Nielsen has long been the authority on this topic.

Why do projects fail?  Lou Gasco, Muto Performance.offered ten reasons why.  A few highlights:

• ’spontaneous requirements’ (a.k.a. scope creep) – adding in more requirements after the project scope has been defined
• ‘invisible’ requirements’ – no one has taken the time to define what the project will specifically achieve
• disappearing sponsor – project sponsor can’t be reached or otherwise loses interest in project
• minimal / nonexistent testing – testing isn’t considered an integral part of project implementation

Thanks to program speakers for their valuable insights and to PMI for putting this event together.

According to the Foundation Center’s Philanthropy News Digest. “some of the nation’s largest charities…have seen only modest gains in online donations…because many of them have been slow to embrace or aggressively market their Web sites as a platform for giving.”  So this may be more a result of a lack of marketing than to a slowdown in the growth of online fundraising.

In Fundraising Success, Steve Kehrli suggests that there’s no such thing as a free donation, The costs of ephilanthropy usually include:

1. e-commerce platform integrated with your constituent database.
2. creative team that creates effective copy, images and video
3. production department that standardizes email content.
4. list of online prospects that eventually become donors
5. consultants and analysis that provide actionable recommendations.

Steve suggests that there are other costs, such as the correspondence team that responds to inquiries and training / developing staff that are also part of developing effective online strategies..

Pew / Internet released a report on cloud computing that estimates 69% of online users are now using hosted applications and/or storing data online, but many are concerned about how this information will be used by online vendors.

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Brand Sharing 2.0 suggests that to make the most of Web 2.0 tools, nonprofit organizations give up some control over their organizational identities and “allowi their strongest supporters to use these organizational brands as an extension of their own personal online branding efforts,” offering examples from the Salvation Army, National Geographic and the World Wildlife Fund.

Finally, marketing guru Seth Godin gave a stimulating talk this week as part of Network for Good’s wonderful Nonprofit 911 series on how to become a ‘purple nonprofit.’

At my current organization, we’ve just rolled out our first week of going live with Convio for our national walks program, which raised over $6 million in the past year.  Having worked with many online services products, below I offer some tips in maintaining a successful relationship with your vendor:

1. Take advantage of any training that is available to learn the product.  This enables you to deal with issues more quickly and avoids the situation where support staff impatiently tell you to ‘read the manual’
2. Develop a rapport with your account manager or whoever has been assigned to handle your relationship.  This includes asking not only what the vendor can do for you, but what your responsibilities are in using the product and dealing with the vendor’s staff.
3. Document problems over the web;  Convio provides a Salesforce enabled support system which allows me to review calls I’ve placed, and add updates.  If your vendor doesn’t provide this, use your own tracking system, as I did in the past with a product like Elementool.
4. Be respectful about prioritizing issues.  If a problem is affecting a major application and / or many of your co-workers, make sure the vendor knows this and use escalation procedures.  (Make sure you specifically ask about how to escalate issues.)  If you make every problem into an ‘emergency,’ then nothing will be treated as a high priority.
5. If you’re dealing with a vendor like Convio that has many modules, learn which products are most actively supported (preferably before you’ve decided on a vendor);  you can find this out by asking which modules are used by the most large clients.
6. When rolling out a new application, be sure to test exhaustively.  We’re dealing with a problem this week that we might have avoided had we tested a bit more extensively.
7. Develop a relationship with other nonprofits that are already using the product and take advantage of any online forums (either promoted by the vendor or not) to learn from others and share your own experiences.
8. Be careful of criticizing your vendor to internal staff.  Even if you’re feeling frustrated on a particular day, don’t vent to your co-workers;  you want them to feel positively about the product you’ve selected despite any occasional glitches that come up.