Nonprofit Technology: If you can't dazzle them with a conference, baffle them with a survey (or book)

I'm feeling kind of jaded at the moment and I need someone to show me the light (and the love). Be forwarned this is a rant and not very analytical.

I came across a Technorati nptech tag in My Bloglines this morning for a project called dotorganize by ScoutSeven. They seem like good folks doing good work and they have some money from from the Surdna Foundation, which funded my previous project. Like many before them, they are gathering information by conducting a survey  on how social change organizations use technology and online tools.

Perhaps the technology is changing fast enough to warrant continual surveying; I have to admit though, I have serious survey fatigue...and I live and breathe this stuff (and yes, I still enjoy it despite this riff). Googling "Nonprofit Technology Survey" I came up with a quick list of organizations and businesses that have conducted similar surveys over the last five years (and I know there are oh so many more):

•     Center for Noprofit Management 
•     Gifts in Kind International 
•     Blackbaud 
•     Aspiration Tech 
•     Groundspring 
•     NTEN 
•     Summit Collabortive 
•     TechSoup 
•     Idealware 
•     Pew 
•     USC Annenberg School of Communciations 
•     Independent Sector 
•     AFP and Telosa Software

Additionally, over the last several months there have been a handful of publications and reports on nonprofit technology (and again, there have been many similar publications before these):

• Civil Technologies: The Values of Nonprofit ICT Use 
• Accidental Techie, The: Supporting, Managing, and Maximizing Your Nonprofit's Technology by Sue Bennett
  
• The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change by Jonathan Peizer

And then of course there are the nptech conferences coming up in the next couple months (both of which I will probably attend):

•     Nonprofit Technology Conference 
•     Net Squared

I am a hypocrite, I have no delusions about it. I dig all this...I get it...I feel it...I am among my people debating strategy and sharing tech toys.  Yet, while all this outpouring of vision, value and quantification is well and good, it remains very "inside baseball" and seemingly doesn't touch most organizations nor the many front-line staff people - who, I would contend, are positioned to gain the most from it.

With a lot of talk about Web 2.0, hosted applications, social networking, mashups, and packaging of the like, the effective use of technology - IMHO - has always come down to People, Money and Strategic Alignment (yes i know, I'm grossly over simplfying the issue): Without the "Right People on the Bus" with the necessary resources and leadership support, all our efforts in search for the nptech silver bullet(s) will be for not. Right now, we are simply preaching to the converts.

In an effort to not dig the hole any deeper, here are the lingering questions I'm stuck with:

• Where are the impact metrics of the nptech movement (not the tag)? 
• Are surveys truly telling us something we don't already know?
  
• Where is the coordination between all these efforts? 
• Why are we still going to conferences under the guises of professional development for networking and sales pitches? 
• Why are books on nonprofit technology still being published exclusively on paper (buying a chapter from one of the afformentioned books would be valuable to me, the whole book...no)?
• Where are the dot.com genesis millionaires that are flipping start ups left and right and could be an incredible source of money and ideas?

• Am I in the dark on this? Are there missing pieces of this puzzle I'm not seeing? What are you questions and thoughts?

Technorati Tags: nptech, rant, nonprofit, surveys, conferences

Comments

[David Geilhufe]

I'm with you Sonny. In a very general way, I think the nonprofit technology sector needs to spend less time thinking and more time rolling up their sleeves and doing.

At the same time I do appreciate the marketing & education impact of survey results and conferences. How else do you get through to the 1m+ nonprofits in the US and far more organizations overseas to explain the opportunities avaliable to them?