Highlights from Nonprofit Leader Interviews

Our new strategic plan calls for a more intentional process to determine the challenges facing the nonprofit sector, and work to find technology-based solutions. As part of that process, we conducted several interviews with non-profit leaders, (Executive Directors, Presidents, Deputy Directors and Information Technology Managers) from mid-November to mid-December 2010 to determine the most pressing needs of sector. We contacted a diverse range of leaders in an effort to reach a broad cross-section of organizations, focusing primarily on our current clients and including additional community partners and capacity-building organizations. Thirty-five organizations were contacted, and ten interviews were completed. Here are the major findings:

What Are Your Most Important One- to Three-Year Goals?

1. Financial stability and growth - All said that they need to secure funding, create more sustainable business model and earned revenue sources.
2. Capacity-building and organizational planning - Half of the organizations interviewed need to create or update strategic plan. The others had goals around tracking their annual plans to strategic plans. All organizations mentioned the need to add staff, develop and train current staff or expand consultant resources. Downsizing of staff and facilities has occurred at almost all organizations, some have cut services as well.
3. Communications and marketing - All mentioned the goal of optimizing their use of technology to better communicate with their clients, supporters, funders and volunteers as well as to raise community awareness about their organizations.
4. Network-building - Nearly all of the organizations have goals of building partnerships or expanding their current networks to better leverage resources. These networks included other nonprofits in their segment, the nonprofit sector as a whole, the government and (in some cases,) for-profit service providers.
5. Sector leadership - In a third of the organizations sector leadership was a goal. This encompassed education, advocacy and outreach to promote support for nonprofit services and raise awareness of client needs as well as fundraising.

What Technology Constraints or Obstacles Does Your Organization Face?

1. Lack of technology funding - All organizations mentioned the challenge to raise or even allocate the funds they feel they need to devote toward technology. Many had received one-time contributions to build technology infrastructure but did not have ongoing support for keeping their ongoing technology needs met.
2. Lack of technology planning - Two-thirds of the organizations had no formalize technology plans. Some of these had annual goals or projects that included technology but did not have a strategy or road-map to achieve them. The other third had prioritized technology, integrated tech planning and earmarked some funding within their multi-year strategic plans.
3. Outdated technology tools or systems - All of the organizations acknowledged that they had at least one major technology system (hardware, databases, websites, phone systems,) that was outdated or a process (tech support, remote access, web conferencing,) that did not meet their needs and demanded to be addressed in the next year. The needs most mentioned were, in order of importance, databases, websites, hardware, software, web conferencing, and phone systems.
4. Lack of technology training - All of the organizations had staff with a wide range of skill levels and acceptance of technology, which caused them all to need some ongoing training for current systems. Two thirds of the organizations also said that they had upgraded systems and did not have the in-house expertise to optimize the use of their databases, websites or social media tools.

What's next?

These findings will inform our work on innovative solutions, and our service offerings for nonprofits. Thanks so much to the nonprofit leaders who participated in the interviews!