You know you need to invest in technology. Everyone knows an organization of any size runs more efficiently when their computers are up to date with current software, and hardware.
Despite this, many in the nonprofit sector are hesitant to heavily invest in their technology. Many nonprofits allow the paralyzing fear of not effectively utilizing the technology permanently delay the investment. Often citing their ROI is difficult to understand to deliver upon.
Here is the only 4 step guide to a successful nonprofit tech implementation you’ll ever
need. How did your nonprofit handle its last tech implementation? Let us know in the comment section below.
Step 1: Prioritize Objectives
Fundraising technology helps you fundraise faster. A cloud provides flexibility in your IT budget, and offers reliable and effective on-demand computing power. A CRM helps you track constituent relationships, and communicate with those constituents more effectively.
Your objectives should be laid out on paper, along with a realistic timeline for when you want those goals to be accomplished.
In this step, you need to understand what exactly you expect to accomplish through your investment. Ask yourself what processes you want to improve, what department you want to save money in, and what overall purpose of the investment is for.
Step 2: Define Success
Contingent upon your list of prioritized objectives, defining success ensures there is a end-game goal for the entire project. Whether it is to help you accomplish your mission sooner, or save a little bit of money, an investment’s purpose needs to understood, before success can be achieved.
With your expected timeline in mind, make sure you have specific metrics defined for what success looks like. Assign a dollar amount to what costs should look like in 5 years, or know a process that took 15 hours to do, now, only takes 10 hours as a direct result of your technology investment.
Step 3: Establish Authority and Accountability
The military is designed around a singular word. Accountability. This idea can be extrapolated, and applied to any number of civilian applications as well.
In this step, imbue individuals within your organization with the power to make decisions regarding your new technology. Whether they are counting the number of entries being made into a CRM, or holding someone responsible for calling your vendor’s tech support line, giving someone responsibility to carry out the implementation on the ground floor is essential to success. Make sure their responsibilities are meaningful, measurable, and the individuals have a strong understanding of the team they’re helping implement.
Step 4: Communicate, communicate, communicate
Tech is so ingrained with our working lives, making any major tech change or implementation at an organizational level will be life changing for a lot of people. This is where maintaining a high level of efficient communication at all levels and stages is imperative to the success of your implementation.
Ensure everyone knows exactly what the prioritized objectives are of the switch. Make sure the entire team who is using the new technology, knows exactly what success looks like. And make sure your team leaders who’s on the ground responsible for the team’s implementation has been told what his authority is, and is being held accountable for that position of authority.
Take these 4 steps, be able to answer and deliver on all 4, and your next tech implementation is guaranteed to be a success!
Image courtesy of Innovation Management
