Category Archives: project management

How Does Your Nonprofit Use Your Database?

Heller Consulting recently surveyed over 30 nonprofits to ask how they’re using their CRMs (constituent relationship management systems).  You can download the report free, but here are some interesting takeaways:

  1. Fragmented, non-integrated data in many places is a problem everywhere
  2. CRM can be viewed as a system, a way to provide customer service or a strategy for engaging with constituents (the most progressive nonprofits do all three).
  3. Having a central database helps in being able to segment your audience and in managing major donor relationships
  4. Silos between data, people and departments get in the way of connecting with constituents
  5. Most nonprofits now use social media to connect with supporters, but these conversations need to be included in your database.
  6. When bringing in a new CRM, bring in stakeholders from many areas, engage them early and involve them throughout the project.
  7. Documentation, help screens and training is essential, no matter how ‘user friendly’ the database may seem.

My take – your success also depends on your organization culture.  The best CRM software won’t help if staff don’t consistently enter information about interactions with constituents because they prefer to keep it ‘in their head’ or in personal files that only they can access.

This is a thoughtful report and is well worth a read, whether you’re in the process of selecting a new database or if you want to get more of the CRM you already have.

Back to the Basics – Tips on Managing Projects

Whatever your job title, you probably are a Project Manager at least some of the time.  Here’s some ideas on how you can be most valuable to your organization:

  1. Take the time to define requirements – don’t just dive in and hope for the best.  Figure out what resources you’ll need and arrange for their time, whether it’s in house staff or outside consultants.
  2. You don’t need a fancy tool like Microsoft Project to develop your project plan;  MS Excel sometimes will work just as well.  Whatever you use, provide an online site where everyone can review current status.
  3. Send agendas in advance for meetings, and send minutes afterwards to recap what you’ve covered.  And keep meetings short and focused.
  4. Be respectful of team members’ time (usually they are only working on your project part of their time), and make sure their managers are aware of work they’ll need to do for your project.
  5. Scope creep is still the most frequent cause for project failure.  After you decide on what you will do, don’t promise to add more work unless there is also a change in schedule and/or resources
  6. Keep it simple;  use an agile approach by taking a ‘phased’ approach to work in small increments rather than trying to do everything at once
  7. Keep all stakeholders informed by a variety of communication techniques.  Don’t rely on team meetings and especially don’t over use email – sometimes one-to-one in person or phone conversation is best

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

A Software Fable

Suppose you join a small nonprofit organization with one office.  As the new IT person, you decide to build a software application to help the office to work more efficiently.  Everyone is anxious to see your results, so you push through the requirements gathering stage and come up with a reasonably good solution.  Your colleagues are pleased.  Management praises your work and all is well.

A short time later, your organization decides to open a second office, which has a different business focus than the first location.  But they ask if you can adapt your application for their needs, saying that they would like to go live in a month.  You try to get specific details about what they would like to see in the new system, but everyone is frantically busy and you end up having to make certain assumptions to revise the application for their needs.  But you push forward, and somehow are able to finish by the deadline.  Again, everyone is pleased.  Management again applauds your efforts.

Before you can savor your latest success, the first office asks if you can add some reports to the application which they hadn’t included in the original specifications.  (You had asked about reports, but were told that they would deal with that later.)  When reviewing their request, you realize that much of this information isn’t collected by the application, so you have to go back and revise some screens before creating the new reports.  And because of the tight deadline, you don’t have time to develop a front end interface to run the reports, but you say that’s OK because as the IT person, you can run them when requested.

You roll out the new reports and application changes, but then realize that your edits have broken something that is used by the first office.  So you need to go back and tweak the code a bit more and do more testing so that the application will work properly for both locations.  Due to some personnel changes at both locations, you also realize that you need to schedule user training.  And when they ask for user documentation, you realize that this was not done due to the rush to get things finished.

Eventually, your nonprofit keeps growing, and so does the use of your application was you originally designed for one office.  You keep making modifications, but these changes end up making the code increasingly complex.  (When you hire a new programmer to help you, it takes him months to figure out how everything works.)

Now your small application is in use by over 10 offices, all which use it a bit differently.  You’re now getting many requests for user support, and your tech support team can’t always help because they don’t fully understand how the application works.  When you speak to users from some of the earliest opened offices, you find out that many have established parallel systems in Excel and Access to handle situations that your software can’t accommodate.  Apparently, the business needs of your offices have changed so much that your application will need to be redesigned.

Finally you decide to have a meeting where you invite representatives from all of your offices to discuss what to do next.  Everyone says that their needs are unique and that they should receive special priority.  Many staff seem happy to continue using their personal spreadsheets and databases since it allows them to more easily manipulate and report on their data.  But your research department, which is trying to prepare organization wide reports to show the effectiveness of your work, is increasingly frustrated, saying that the data that they pull from your application is no longer accurate.

What to do next?  My recommendations:

  1. Evaluate hosted solutions.  Unless your business need is very unusual, there’s probably something else out there that will meet at least 75% of your needs.
  2. Look for the commonality between your offices’ work.  Even if you do end up having to build something yourself, there’s probably much functionality that will work for all.
  3. Decide up front what reports will be needed, and in what format.  Give users the ability to manage their own data, otherwise they’ll again be tempted to enter data again in a parallel system.
  4. Find out how other nonprofits of your type are handling similar requirements.  You may be able to learn from others’ experiences.
  5. Sometimes you will need to say no when you don’t have the time to do the job right, or if you’re not getting the cooperation from stakeholders in defining requirements.  Better to be unpopular in the short run than to be blamed later for a system which doesn’t work as expected.
  6. Use agile project management techniques to focus on short term deliverables.  This will allow you to more effectively respond to changing organization needs
  7. Provide ongoing training for both new and experienced staff members.  Most systems aren’t easy enough for people to easily ‘figure out’ how they work
  8. Get top management support, especially when you have to remind colleagues that not every request for program customizations can be handled.
But I’m sure this situation has never happened to you.  Right?

Reviewing 5 Years at Nonprofit Bridge

Next month will mark my fifth year since beginning my blog at Nonprofit Bridge.  Since my first post on Jan 23, 2007, I’ve expanded my focus well beyond technology and providing a place for ‘positive thoughts.’  Below is part 1 of my favorite posts (to be continued next week):

More highlights from past posts next week.  Meanwhile, thank you for reading my thoughts for the past five years.  I wish you a wonderful 2012!

Are You Working Between the Holidays?

I’ll be in the office next week, as I suspect many of you will be (especially if you are wrapping up your year-end fundraising campaign).  Here’s some ideas to contemplate for for 2012:

  1. Ask some friends (who aren’t familiar with your organization) to critique your nonprofit’s website.  Are they able to quickly understand what you do?  Is it easy to donate or sign up for your email list?
  2. Analyze your website analytics, Facebook insights data so you know what’s working best with your constituents.  And don’t forget to segment your audience.  Debra Askanase explains more
  3. Go back to the basics – find new ways to build your email list (via Idealware)
  4. Encourage your staff’s professional development by supporting their participation in organizations such as Nten, which will have its annual conference in April and sponsors informational webinars and live 501 Tech meetings throughout the US throughout the year.
  5. Saying thank you to donors is always an good idea, but it’s also crucial to make sure your staff and volunteers feel appreciated for their hard work.  As my friend Shana Masterson recently tweeted, “You might not be in a position to reward someone (financially), but u can always acknowledge the work they’ve done.”
  6. To make your meetings your effective, make sure an agenda goes out to participants in advance and a summary is sent shortly afterwards – it’s a simple project management technique that can insure that everyone’s on the same page
  7. Help someone who is in transition.  While unemployment figures seem to be dropping a bit, there are still many people who are struggling.  Reach out to colleagues who need encouragement and support.

Have a healthy and peaceful holiday and a wonderful new year.

Recap of Nten Webinar – Project Managing New Drupal Website at NYPL

When I first heard Michelle Misner describe her success implementing a new Drupal website at the NY Public Library at the September Not-for-Profit Webmaster Roundtable Meeting, I thought it would be great to share her experience with others in our nonprofit community.  So Michelle and I presented a webinar yesterday for Nten where she reviewed the project management process, and I asked questions on how things went.

In addition to the tips I provided in my earlier blog post, here’s some additional takeaways from yesterday’s session:

  • Do a content audit before starting a website redesign;  you probably have more content than you think; allow plenty of time for migration into the new CMS
  • Picking the product is easy compared to instilling a culture within your organization so everyone assumes responsibility for online content – if only the communications department has updated web pages in the past, this will be a major shift
  • Training is a continual process – not just when you roll out the new system;  Drupal has a steep learning curve, so make sure you allow the time for internal staff to learn the software, especially the person(s) who will be managing the site
  • Make sure you coordinate what’s on your website with other communication channels, e.g. social media, and use an editorial calendar to plan content updates on all platforms
  • Plan who will be responsible for content updates and then trust your staff to post them; not every piece of content needs to be reviewed before going live, but some parts of your website may need to be more closely monitored than others.  (Drupal does not have a built-in way to notify approvers that content is awaiting review.)
For more details, please listen to the recording from yesterday’s Nten event.  Michelle’s experience offers much wisdom about how to roll out a new website using a content management system, whether or not you choose to use Drupal.

How to Run a Successful Webinar

As many of my friends know, I’m a big fan of online learning, especially by attending  webinars offered by organizations such as Nten. Next Tuesday, I’ll be on the other side of the computer, joining Michelle Misner of the NY Public Library to present How the NYPL Successfully Project Managed a New Drupal Website.  We had our final prep session today – here’s some tips if you’re planning an online event:

  1. Find out in advance who will be attending so you can prepare the most relevant content.  (You can also learn about participants during the event by asking questions with a few short polls.)
  2. Allow plenty of opportunity for audience interaction, preferably throughout the session – not just at the end.
  3. Keep your slides short.  While it’s good to summarize major points, don’t offer so much information that it overwhelms your viewers.
  4. If possible, ask someone to monitor the back channel – it’s a bit difficult to present and to also handle incoming chat questions.  Provide a hash tag so those who couldn’t attend live can easily follow the live tweets.
  5. Be prepared to switch to a web browser to show something that isn’t available in your slides (and practice how to do this before you actually are in the webinar)
  6. Offer to respond after the event to questions you didn’t get to, or for which you want to provide more information for later –  but don’t promise what you can’t deliver
  7. Offer online resources to others in our nonprofit community for attendees who want to go deeper
Please join us live Tue, Nov. 29 at 2 PM EST (it’s free if you’re an Nten member). If you’re planning to roll out a new content management system (whether or not it’s Drupal), you’ll find Michelle’s story very helpful.  If you can’t attend, read my summary of the event in next week’s blog posting.  Meanwhile, I wish you and your loved ones a safe and joyous Thanksgiving.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

If you’ve been wondering when you can build your nonprofit page on Google+, now’s the time.  Heather Mansfield offers help on How to Create a Google+ Page For Your Nonprofit. Also view this video by John Haydon.  Here’s Beth Kanter’s take.  But the jury is still out on whether Google+ pages will prove to be as popular as Facebook pages.

Frustrated trying to keep up to date with Facebook?  Get help in John’s Tactical Guide to Recent Facebook Changes and sign up for next month’s bi-monthly Facebook features update from Common Knowledge.

Planning to roll out a new website with Drupal?  Have you already launched, but finding it difficult to manage how to manage content edits and approvals?  Join Michelle Misner and I on Nov. 29 to learn How the NYPL Successfully Project Managed a New Drupal Website.  (It’s free if you’re a Nten member!).

Speaking of Nten, I’ve just signed up for next spring’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco.  Please register now to lock in the lowest rate.  It’s always the premier event of the year for the #nptech community.

It’s year-end fundraising season again.  Get a jump start by reviewing Farra Trompeter’s online fundraising tips, Convio’s How to Get Your Holiday Appeals Opened and Jeff Brooks’ reminder to Avoid Common Fundraising Mistakes, e.g. remembering that you are not your donor.  And of course, don’t forget to plan a multi-channel campaign.

If you’re in NYC, join us at next week’s 501 Tech NYC event;  this month we’ll chat about Google for Nonprofits.  Also if you manage a nonprofit website, sign up for the next quarterly gathering of the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table, planned for mid-December.

How the NY Public Library Successfully Rolled Out Website Content Management

At yesterday’s quarterly meeting of the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table, we shared a particularly interesting discussion on website content management.  As group founder and leader David Milner pointed out, nonprofits spend considerable time and money to update a website, but not nearly as much effort to keep site content fresh and relevant.

Although there are many great open source content management systems available, I’ve noticed that it’s still a challenge for many nonprofits to decentralize the process of updating website content at our organizations.  But at least one organization at our meeting has figured out how to do it right.  Michelle Misner, Digital Project Manager at the NY Public Library, kindly shared her experience with us yesterday in rolling out Drupal which “revolutionalized” how their website is maintained.  How did they do it?

  1. Setup extensive training both during rollout and on an ongoing basis to familiarize staff with the new software
  2. Recruited senior management to spearhead the process, including the modification of staff roles to include responsibility for website content updates
  3. Using permissions, user rights and specific Drupal content types, entrusted staff with responsibility for specific areas of the website and chose not to use an intricate approval process.  Instead, there is a staff person who monitors site updates.
  4. Encouraged in-house developer to learn Drupal to maintain the system instead of having to continue to rely on the outside firm which assisted with the implementation.

We also took a look at how to optimize web content for specific contents, such as the Boston Globe‘s impressive use of responsive design,  shared tips for getting the most from Google AdWords and debated the latest Facebook news feed updates.

Thanks to David for having kept our group active for several years and to Michelle for sharing her story about how we can better manage content for our websites.  Quoting David, paying attention to your website could make the difference between your organization receiving an online donation, attracting a volunteer – or not.

More Lessons About Project Management

A few years ago, I posted Lessons About Project Management and recently added tips on How To Make Your Projects Successful.  Here’s an update and some new ideas:

  • Get to know your stakeholders.  Especially if you’re in a new environment (as I am now as Technical PM at the Center for Court Innovation), take the time to learn about why the project was initiated, and how committed (or not) your colleagues are to its success
  • Project success isn’t about the technology.  As was pointed out in a recent discussion on the Nten email list, it’s crucial to understand the business processes – how things are done in an organization – before you recommend how technology should be used.
  • Remember that your project team (usually) doesn’t work for you.  As a result, you have to be respectful of their other work obligations, and set reasonable deadlines for project tasks.
  • Participate in person at PM groups like PMI and NY Spin, and online at LinkedIn (try the Project Manager Network).  Don’t just attend meetings to earn PDUs;  ask other PMs what they’re doing to manage projects successfully.  Also review Lou Gasco’s Top 10 Obstacles to Project Success.
  • Don’t forget about training.  If you roll out a wonderful online application without planning for ongoing training and support of your user population, you haven’t completed the job.
Is your nonprofit unfamiliar with the basics of project management?  Learn the basics in my Nten presentation Project Management for Nonprofits.