Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joni Podolsky is the founding program director of Wired for Good, a program of the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits in San Jose, California. As program director, she helped Silicon Valley nonprofits use technology strategically to improve their effectiveness by leveraging the community expertise and resources necessary to assist them in the development and implementation of strategic technology plans.

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Wired for Good is a nuts-and-bolts guide to strategic technology planning for nonprofit organizations― no matter how large or small. This book leads nonprofits through a planning process that will help them align their technology use with their mission and strategic goals, determine what the appropriate technology tools are to meet those goals, and how the technology will be implemented and supported over time. This essential guide also shows how to win support for a strategic technology plan within an organization, evaluate a plan's effectiveness, and help staff and other stakeholders adapt to the changes new technology will bring about.
Wired for Good shows nonprofit professionals how to

• Get their organization ready for the strategic technology planning process
• Dispel the myths surrounding technology planning
• Understand the benefits of strategic technology planning
• Overcome organizational resistance to strategic technology planning
• Define the roles and responsibilities of staff and other key stakeholders in creating a successful plan
• Make the best use of volunteers and consultants
• Find the funds to support technology implementation

"Few issues are more challenging for nonprofit executives than aligning mission, strategy, and technology. The comprehensive strategic approach and excellent tools for technology planning presented so clearly in this book should help resolve this challenge for both small and large nonprofits alike."
― Dave Thornton, president and CEO, YMCA of Santa Clara Valley

"The detailed how-to approach provides an excellent roadmap for the largely neglected task of technology planning. Any organization that wishes to use technology strategically would benefit hugely by following the process presented."
― Susan Packard Orr, chairman, David and Lucile Packard Foundation

"Too many IT projects fail. The blueprint for technology planning presented by Joni Podolsky will help you build a solid system and derive real benefit from the money and effort you invest in Information Technology."
― James M. Patell, Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Aus dem Klappentext

Wired for Good is a nuts-and-bolts guide to strategic technology planning for nonprofit organizations— no matter how large or small. This book leads nonprofits through a planning process that will help them align their technology use with their mission and strategic goals, determine what the appropriate technology tools are to meet those goals, and how the technology will be implemented and supported over time. This essential guide also shows how to win support for a strategic technology plan within an organization, evaluate a plan's effectiveness, and help staff and other stakeholders adapt to the changes new technology will bring about.
Wired for Good shows nonprofit professionals how to

• Get their organization ready for the strategic technology planning process
• Dispel the myths surrounding technology planning
• Understand the benefits of strategic technology planning
• Overcome organizational resistance to strategic technology planning
• Define the roles and responsibilities of staff and other key stakeholders in creating a successful plan
• Make the best use of volunteers and consultants
• Find the funds to support technology implementation

"Few issues are more challenging for nonprofit executives than aligning mission, strategy, and technology. The comprehensive strategic approach and excellent tools for technology planning presented so clearly in this book should help resolve this challenge for both small and large nonprofits alike."
— Dave Thornton, president and CEO, YMCA of Santa Clara Valley

"The detailed how-to approach provides an excellent roadmap for the largely neglected task of technology planning. Any organization that wishes to use technology strategically would benefit hugely by following the process presented."
— Susan Packard Orr, chairman, David and Lucile Packard Foundation

"Too many IT projects fail. The blueprint for technology planning presented by Joni Podolsky will help you build a solid system and derive real benefit from the money and effort you invest in Information Technology."
— James M. Patell, Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business

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Wired for Good

Jossey-Bass

Preface

For nonprofits, having access to appropriate IT tools is critical to their success in this new environment. Faced with a volatile economy, changing demographics, shifts in governmental and private funding priorities, swings in the political climate, and influential-sometimes explosive-world events, nonprofits are being called upon more and more to adapt to change-and to do so quickly. The community services that nonprofits offer are as critical as ever, but limited resources are available to deliver them. Thus, although other sectors have been relatively quick to incorporate tools that enable them to adapt to the shifting landscapes, the nonprofit sector has not had the resources to adapt as quickly.

Clearly, one of the most important tools in this necessary adaptation is technology. The purpose of this book is to provide nonprofits with a framework for planning the strategic use of technology to support the organization's mission. The following chapters are intended to supply enough information so that a nonprofit can embark on a process that will

Align its technology use with its mission, goals, and strategies.

Determine what technology will be implemented and how it will be implemented.

Define how the technology will be supported over time.

At the same time, this book is not meant to be all inclusive. You will likely also need to consult with technology experts who can guide your nonprofit in its technology decisions and assist with portions of the design work, but this book will prepare you to work effectively and efficiently with these experts.

Intended Audience

Wired for Good: Strategic Technology Planning for Nonprofits has been written to assist any nonprofit interested in strategically implementing technology in order to substantially improve the way it provides services to its community. The contents of this book will be of use to executive directors, operations managers, IT managers, board members, technology committee members, and any other key individuals looking to better implement and manage technology in their organization. (I would note, however, that even though individuals from educational institutions-K-12 or universities-and governmental agencies may well find the material in this book useful, they will also find they have specific technology planning issues that are not addressed here and that will have to be researched separately.)

This book will help organizations that intend to implement new technology to do so in a way that supports their mission and carefully targets their resources. Organizations that already have technology in place but are facing challenges managing it and finding it too costly to support will also find this book useful. This guide will help them take a step back from their technology woes and focus on what they want to accomplish. With this understanding, they can select the appropriate technological tools and infrastructure to accomplish their goals.

In addition, this guide is ideal for organizations that have an excellent and well-running technological infrastructure but want to document it so that internal and external stakeholders can gain both a current and a historical understanding of it. These organizations will find that going through the technology planning process documented here will help them communicate about technology issues with current and new staff, consultants, vendors, board members, funders, and others.

Finally, the strategic technology planning process outlined in this book is designed for organizations that are seeking to engage in in-depth organizational improvement. It is not intended for nonprofits that want a quick and easy technological solution. The concepts discussed here apply to nonprofits of any size. However, small nonprofits may find their needs less complicated than those of medium-sized and large nonprofits. (For the purposes of this book, a small nonprofit is defined as having a fiscal year [FY] budget of $500 thousand or less and fewer than ten full-time equivalent [FTE] staff. A medium-sized nonprofit has a FY budget of $500 thousand to $3 million and ten to thirty FTE employees. A large nonprofit has a FY budget of more than $3 million and more than thirty FTE staff.)

Let me explain. Organizations may choose to use technology in one or both of two ways. First, organizations may use technology to make their existing operational processes more efficient. For example, paper files may be replaced with electronic data that are more easily stored and updated, or accounting processes may be streamlined. Many nonprofits may feel comfortable implementing this aspect of technology by going directly to an operational plan, such as a needs assessment or technology audit, because their basic organizational strategy is not being changed. Often small nonprofits will opt to create this kind of a plan rather than a strategic technology plan because refining existing processes is all they need at the time, and the effort can more easily be led by an IT consultant, thereby putting less strain on staff time and resources.

Many organizations, however, may decide to use technology as a tool to change their processes, fundamentally altering the way their organizations operate and meet their missions, and thus changing the way they provide services to clients. In this case, a strategic technology plan is essential, no matter what the size of the organization.

Although nonprofits of any size will need to consider all the issues covered in this book when developing a strategic technology plan, size does make a difference in how some of these issues are addressed. For example, because a small nonprofit has fewer staff, the processes it examines may have fewer steps-one person hands something to another person and the other person does something with it and the process is complete-whereas a large nonprofit may pass something through many hands before the process is finished. Therefore a small nonprofit may be able to chart a process on only one page, whereas a medium-sized or large nonprofit may need several pages. Likewise, when developing the computer network's logical diagrams, a small nonprofit may be able to combine diagrams (putting the LAN and WAN diagrams on the same page), whereas a larger nonprofit will need to keep each diagram separate. Thus a smaller nonprofit's strategic technology plan may be less complex and have fewer pages than a larger nonprofit's plan. Throughout this book there are indications where these differences between small and large nonprofits may occur. Further, the technology plan examples presented here are representative of nonprofits of all sizes.

Overview of the Contents

The materials and approach in this book are based on the content of...