Below are excerpts at my planned presentation at next week’s NY Fundraising Summit, where I will be speaking in the session Online Fundraising: Harnessing Technology to Build and Maintain Relationships:

When developing online strategies for your nonprofit, be careful if you hear any of these ‘assurances’ from your colleagues:

• Everything is being done over the Internet, we don’t need much Information Technology staff. – Whatever vendors or products you decide to choose, you still need someone to not only select the best product for your organization’s needs, and then once it’s implemented, manage the relationship with the vendor.  Expecting any online product to just ‘work’ without some ongoing tweaking is a recipe for disaster.
• We can get a better deal if we hire web designers from overseas – While it’s a good idea to hire the best web person you can find wherever they are, be careful about basing a decision strictly on economics.  Working on a web site overhaul involves much give and take during the design and implementation process, and email isn’t always sufficient to insure that the deliverables match the goals.
• We don’t need to do a formal evaluation – I’ve worked with this person / vendor before. – What works for one nonprofit may not work for another.  In addition, making a decision based on a personal contact may backfire if that person suddenly leaves for a new opportunity.
• Vendor says we can connect our online and offline systems and they will help us to do it. – As I’ve discussed in my recent post, Reporting Across Multiple Systems, integration can be a mine field.  Beware of any vendor that says this is easy.  Ask to speak with other clients who have already connected their systems successfully – and are using the same products your organization is.
• Vendor suggests we should do things differently – Before speaking to any vendor, make sure you’ve outlined your requirements.  If you’ve done this, and the vendor questions your specifications and recommends a different approach, ask why.  Unless they can give you a satisfactory explanation – and provide alternatives that have worked well for other clients, find a different company to work with.

I will post my presentation after next week’s summit, which will take place Wed, June 3 and Thu, June 4 in New York City.  Hope to see some of you there.