Building a Better Nonprofit Software Selection Process

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Welcome to our webinar for November 2020, presented as a partnership between Build Consulting and Community IT Innovators.

In this webinar, to of Build Consulting’s experts will be answering the questions you submitted regarding how to best select software for your organization. We’ll be covering questions about software selection project leadership, change management, stakeholder involvement, what to consider when evaluating multiple platforms, business process design, and more!You can read more information about this topic in our blog – a link will be provided near the end of this webinar – and if your specific question wasn’t addressed during today’s session, please contact us for an answer—links for contact methods also to appear near the end of this webinar.

Now, a little bit about Build Consulting and Community IT.

We both work exclusively with nonprofit organizations to help them make information technology and information system decisions that support their mission.

We have a collaborative approach, empowering our clients to make informed choices for their organizations.

While Community IT focuses on network management, help desk support, and cyber security, Build Consulting works more on the broad technology strategy and business systems side of nonprofit technology.

All Build’s services are designed to help clients transform themselves to better serve constituents of all types, including funders, donors, program beneficiaries, staff, volunteers, board and committee members, and the general public.

Build Consulting was founded in 2015 to help nonprofits transform themselves using technology. That is our mission, and it motivates us in everything we do!

Our analysis of industry statistics, combined with our direct observation of hundreds of organizations in the nonprofit sector, indicates the success rate for nonprofit technology projects is under 50%.

Most nonprofit technology projects fail because of other factors than technology. What do we mean by that? Simply that in today’s market, nonprofits have access to a broad range of quality technology solutions. There’s a good (or at the least, good enough) solution for the vast majority of needs.

The challenge is often not the technology itself, but organizations do not first identify and make the organizational changes necessary to successfully select and implement new technology.

We show this visual to all our clients. It stands for “Old Organization + New Technology = Expensive Old Organization.” In order to truly take advantage of new tech, your organization must transform itself to work in new, and hopefully better, ways.

My name is Kyle Haines, and I’m serving as the moderator and as a panelist for today’s discussion.

[Kyle’s intro of himself]

I’m happy to welcome my colleague from Build Consulting, David Deal, who will be serving as our other expert for today’s session.

David will you please take a moment to introduce yourself?

We received a number of excellent questions, in advance, from registrants, which we boiled down into 11 that we’ll plan on answering during this session. If we have extra time, we’ll take additional live questions from the audience.

This is an informal, collaborative discussion –if you would like a more comprehensive answer to a particular question, or that speaks more directly to your individual situation, please contact us and we’ll be happy to dialogue with you.

In this question, CRM is emblematic of any complex system used broadly across the organization.

Kyle

This was a question specific to CRM systems, but our answers will largely be applicable to all major system categories.

David

Kyle

David

Kyle

David

Kyle

David

For the purposes of this webinar, we’re using the terms Request for Proposal and Request for Information interchangeably.

Kyle

David

Kyle

For more information about nonprofit technology strategy, including how to select the best systems for your organization, you can visit our Blog and the Learning section of our website – and you can subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest strategy insights in your Inbox.

And you can always reach out to us with your additional questions or needs using one of these methods.

A final housekeeping note: Community IT’s next webinar is a discussion about what trends they expect to dominate nonprofit technology in 2021. It is January 27, from 3-4 PM EST.

Building a Better Nonprofit Software Selection Process - Ask the Experts

Community IT Innovators

Building a Better Nonprofit Software Selection Process - Ask the Experts