Thanks so much for mentioning Change Gangs: Virtual Giving Circles in your article. I’ve learned a lot from you about making sure our donations make a difference, and I really appreciate your work. Thanks so much for all you do!
Sharon,
Very thoughtful and deep article on technology. However, I am less sanguine.
Technology is an incredible tool to communicate and collect, analyze, or disseminate information. Specialized technologies need specialists to utilize them, and as you note, these tech folks are often more expensive than a nonprofit can afford.
We ask our social service agencies to operate with low administrative costs. Low administrative expenses are a measure of efficiency! High salaries are frowned-upon. The alternative, volunteer or pro bono help, is not the same as a full-time staff person who understands the programs and agency work. The “help” is often not helpful and training and much oversight are needed before anyone would allow a volunteer to launch any endeavor of technical import. Also, any administrator would give great pause to allowing a volunteer access to crucial and sensitive donor data-bases. Social media tools, as we know, have backfired and caused trouble when a message is inarticulately or irresponsibly sent. Tech volunteers require training and guidance….on the subject matter, various relevant issues, cultures, and on the professional codes of the helping professions.
Size makes a difference. Technology is often a complicated and expensive distraction. Upgrading or adding new technologies often means having to upgrade infrastructure and software programs….even when free, none are cheap. New technologies come along each year, each requiring knowledgeable assessment for utility and adaptation to existing systems. Large nonprofits with specialized IT and tech staff, are insulated from rapid tech changes and demands and actually can dominate a service field. However, I have seen many midsized community nonprofit managers pulled from their critical fundraising and program work to take on Facebook, Twitter, and the myriad now defunct social media technologies to engage donors. As you note, these efforts often came to naught. Smaller nonprofits are able to level their playing field with technology as their size and outputs are commensurate.
What is measured counts. Much of what donors and public demand funnels down to front-line workers required to checklist and code each client interaction. The process detracts from important interactive and qualitative work. And, although we can collect a ton of data, much of it is useless and/or the agency doesn’t have the capacity, $$$, to mine the data.
Research studies (academia and large foundations) have funding for this technical and statistical capability but not the nonprofit down the street. The social problems or personal change we would like to see cannot come from brief interventions but more so from systems of supports and many interventions.
Yes, technology has great potential. But it depends upon the tool, the purpose, and the end-user capacity on how these instruments can be utilized. Unfortunately, not everyone is in a position to use them…or even should be. Rather than creating more redundancy, in a time of financial constriction for our social service nonprofits, I see great potential for one agency to utilize GIS mapping to coordinate services and create collaborative projects for communities using census data and other freely available data.
But who has the financial resources and vision to create this infrastructure? Which partner has the ability to coordinate the sector(s) to maximize outcomes? The technology is there, but the leadership and specialists with the vision, have not come forth.
Eriko, Your comment was addressed to me, but I think you meant to leave a comment for the author Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. I do want to address one item in your comment and that was the link you made between low administrative expenditures and efficiency.
Unfortunately, that has been a short cut many donors have used to decide what charities are worthy of donations, and it is only recently that voices like Laura and my own have been re-educating the public on that important issue. It’s far more important to evaluate what impact a charity is having than how much they are spending on admin salaries. As you point out, it’s expensive to run a charity and well-trained staff are critical to make a non-profit effective.
Good luck running your non-profit and wishing you make the biggest impact possible!
The silver component of philanthropy’s commitment to education is not individual progression; rather, it is reflexivity, a readiness to examine the obligation that accompanies opportunity. To be genuinely reflexive, philanthropy orders an ethic of administer to the less blessed. Truth be told, regardless I discover a meaning of philanthropy to be truly indistinct. The word is wrapped up in mythos and begins from Prometheus Bound. The idea of mythos frequently conveys a negative implication, yet only on the grounds that a story is not by any means genuine does not mean it can’t contain truths.
COMMENTS
BY Sharon Lipinski
ON February 22, 2015 08:39 AM
Thanks so much for mentioning Change Gangs: Virtual Giving Circles in your article. I’ve learned a lot from you about making sure our donations make a difference, and I really appreciate your work. Thanks so much for all you do!
BY Eriko Kennedy
ON February 25, 2015 02:58 PM
Sharon,
Very thoughtful and deep article on technology. However, I am less sanguine.
Technology is an incredible tool to communicate and collect, analyze, or disseminate information. Specialized technologies need specialists to utilize them, and as you note, these tech folks are often more expensive than a nonprofit can afford.
We ask our social service agencies to operate with low administrative costs. Low administrative expenses are a measure of efficiency! High salaries are frowned-upon. The alternative, volunteer or pro bono help, is not the same as a full-time staff person who understands the programs and agency work. The “help” is often not helpful and training and much oversight are needed before anyone would allow a volunteer to launch any endeavor of technical import. Also, any administrator would give great pause to allowing a volunteer access to crucial and sensitive donor data-bases. Social media tools, as we know, have backfired and caused trouble when a message is inarticulately or irresponsibly sent. Tech volunteers require training and guidance….on the subject matter, various relevant issues, cultures, and on the professional codes of the helping professions.
Size makes a difference. Technology is often a complicated and expensive distraction. Upgrading or adding new technologies often means having to upgrade infrastructure and software programs….even when free, none are cheap. New technologies come along each year, each requiring knowledgeable assessment for utility and adaptation to existing systems. Large nonprofits with specialized IT and tech staff, are insulated from rapid tech changes and demands and actually can dominate a service field. However, I have seen many midsized community nonprofit managers pulled from their critical fundraising and program work to take on Facebook, Twitter, and the myriad now defunct social media technologies to engage donors. As you note, these efforts often came to naught. Smaller nonprofits are able to level their playing field with technology as their size and outputs are commensurate.
What is measured counts. Much of what donors and public demand funnels down to front-line workers required to checklist and code each client interaction. The process detracts from important interactive and qualitative work. And, although we can collect a ton of data, much of it is useless and/or the agency doesn’t have the capacity, $$$, to mine the data.
Research studies (academia and large foundations) have funding for this technical and statistical capability but not the nonprofit down the street. The social problems or personal change we would like to see cannot come from brief interventions but more so from systems of supports and many interventions.
Yes, technology has great potential. But it depends upon the tool, the purpose, and the end-user capacity on how these instruments can be utilized. Unfortunately, not everyone is in a position to use them…or even should be. Rather than creating more redundancy, in a time of financial constriction for our social service nonprofits, I see great potential for one agency to utilize GIS mapping to coordinate services and create collaborative projects for communities using census data and other freely available data.
But who has the financial resources and vision to create this infrastructure? Which partner has the ability to coordinate the sector(s) to maximize outcomes? The technology is there, but the leadership and specialists with the vision, have not come forth.
BY Sharon Lipinski
ON February 26, 2015 05:53 AM
Eriko, Your comment was addressed to me, but I think you meant to leave a comment for the author Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. I do want to address one item in your comment and that was the link you made between low administrative expenditures and efficiency.
Unfortunately, that has been a short cut many donors have used to decide what charities are worthy of donations, and it is only recently that voices like Laura and my own have been re-educating the public on that important issue. It’s far more important to evaluate what impact a charity is having than how much they are spending on admin salaries. As you point out, it’s expensive to run a charity and well-trained staff are critical to make a non-profit effective.
Good luck running your non-profit and wishing you make the biggest impact possible!
BY Corey Ross
ON May 4, 2015 02:13 AM
The silver component of philanthropy’s commitment to education is not individual progression; rather, it is reflexivity, a readiness to examine the obligation that accompanies opportunity. To be genuinely reflexive, philanthropy orders an ethic of administer to the less blessed. Truth be told, regardless I discover a meaning of philanthropy to be truly indistinct. The word is wrapped up in mythos and begins from Prometheus Bound. The idea of mythos frequently conveys a negative implication, yet only on the grounds that a story is not by any means genuine does not mean it can’t contain truths.