CASE STUDYThe New
Standards
for Nonprofit
Technology
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CASE STUDYThe New Standards for
Nonprofit TechnologyW

hen Hanna Thomas started asdigital director at the climatechange advocacy organization
350.org in February of 2018, she
was surprised by what she found.
Suddenly she was in chargeof just about everything thatplugged into the wall except thecoffee maker — plus a plethoraof software, like the group’s databases and website.
Digital tools are in every part of the nonprofit
workplace today, yet many organizations have notput much time or thought into understanding how
those technologies differ and the ways they can bet he ne w s ta nd a r d s f or nonp r of i t t e c hnol ogy

most effectively managed. Thomas, for example,
was given responsibility for everything from IT
support to social media, customizable tools for fieldorganizers and even video production.
“I’d get a lot of questions,” she says. “I’d haveto explain that it is not my job to fix your printer.”Take Stock of Your Technology
That situation is not uncommon in nonprofit
organizations says Sam Dorman, principal andconsultant at The Build Tank, a technology
consulting firm that works with social-changeorganizations. He says that too many nonprofits3

have an outdated view of technology and thinkof it as the domain of the IT department. “Theworld is going through a digital transformationand social-sector organizations have to keep up
with that by putting smart people in the rightroles,” he says.
Nonprofits can benefit greatly by dividing up
responsibility for various types of technology
and taking different approaches to managing
those systems. The kinds of things that are
relatively static — that either work or need to be
fixed but can’t be customized like desktop computers or email — belong in an IT department.
But technology systems that are most closely
tied to helping an organization achieve its strategic goals, products that can be customized andcan evolve over time to meet an organization’schanging needs, must be treated differently, says
Dorman. They need more ongoing attention
and leadership.

Francisco Bay area, wanted to enlarge its techplatform five years ago, it knew it couldn’t doit alone. It would need financial support. The
group digitally linked hundreds of clients withsocial services, but its platform needed serious
upgrading.
“We needed a scalable outreach guide,” says
Rey Faustino, chief executive at One Degree.
“Our whole premise has been to move people
from paper to digital. But we needed to do a better job of monitoring clients after they received
digital referrals to make sure they actually got
those services.”
The project the organization had in mind—an
expanded platform called One Degree Pro—
would manage service referrals and provide
social workers and other professionals withinformation on the services their clients werereceiving
Faustino sought out small grant makers andpersuaded them that One Degree needed better
technology to grow larger and reach more
people. A grant from the UniHealth Foundation
supported training guides for professionals.
Since the new tech was put in place, the grouphas expanded its services to include 20,000 clients who are now linked with more than 10,000
social workers and other practitioners.
“We’ve grown every year since the upgrade,”
Faustino says. “That wouldn’t have happened if
we had tried to rely on our own resources.”

Get Your Leaders to Buy In
The often-high cost of new digital tools canleave boards, executive directors, and presidents
reeling from tech “sticker shock,” says Ananda
Robie, CRM product manager at the Center for
Action and Contemplation, a spiritual groupbased in Albuquerque that aims to inspire
thought and meaningful action in the world.
The sweeping change in operations that tech canentail also represents uncertainty for many leaders. But it’s imperative that they fully commit toa tech project.
When Robie took her job three years ago, atech consultant told her bosses that he wouldn’t
work with them if they didn’t fully get behind
implementing new technology.
It’s the kind of jolt many organizations needto move forward, Robie says. Getting leaders
excited about a tech project, keeping them informed about progress, and reminding them why
they wanted to take the plunge in the first placeis imperative.
“If you’re getting pushback from your leaders,
you won’t be progressing as fast as you shouldbe,” Robie says.

“If you’re getting pushbackfrom your leaders, you won’t
be progressing as fast as you
should be.”Other organizations have similar stories.
College Forward, an organization in Texas thatprovides coaching and other support services
to 7,000 new first-generation college students
each year, sought out and received a $250,000
anonymous grant in 2012. It used the money
to buy the tech platform offered by Salesforce,an IT company, and develop a student services

Find an Innovative Funder
When One Degree, an organization thatserves the poor in Los Angeles and the Sant he ne w s ta nd a r d s f or nonp r of i t t e c hnol ogy 4Early On, Implement an “MVP”

database that allowed it to take on many more
students as clients.

Often, staffers see new tech as a challenge. To
make them feel more at ease, product managers
suggest starting a tech upgrade with a “minimally viable product,” or “MVP.” Translation: Rollout a program or feature that is easy to use, but
makes staffers’ jobs easier immediately.

Start a Product Team
More organizations are starting to put
together product teams to manage this kind oftechnology. These teams include staff members
who spend time with the employees who use theproducts to understand their needs, who help totrain staff on the full capability of the technology, and who can help to strategize about the best
platforms to use and how the technology canfurther an organization’s strategic goals.
Nonprofits don’t need to go on a hiring spree
to staff a product management team, Dorman
says. Often, with a little training, existing
employees can do many of the jobs required. A
deep understanding of an organization’s mission,
relationships with people across departments,
and insight into how they use technology can be
far more valuable than any particular technological expertise.
“In every organization we work with there is
at least one, sometimes maybe more, diamondsin the rough, people that could be amazing technology product managers,” says Dorman.

t he ne w s ta nd a r d s f or nonp r of i t t e c hnol ogy“Organizations need to move fromseeing technology as something
they need to figure out tosomething that can be used tofurther the mission.”
When the Center for Action and Contemplation was looking for ways to use tech that would
improve things for its overburdened customer
management team, it made sure that timesaving

5

communications tools were included in its initial
Salesforce upgrade.
“We made a decision to choose upgrades earlyon that had a high ROI for the staff,” says Robie.
“That goes a long way toward creating excitement, buy-in, and optimism about the future
you’re building with the help of technology.”

Thomas tried to reimagine the managementof digital technology as if the organization wasstarting anew, not one that layered technology
over an older organization with traditional siloed
departments. Many for-profit companies areahead of the nonprofit sector when it comes totaking this product management approach says
Chris Zezza, also a partner and consultant at
The Build Tank. Manufacturing companies pioneered it, then it was adopted by tech companies
and now financial-services firms are investingheavily in the approach, he says.
The age of an organization can also play a
big role in how it approaches technology, says
Jenny Friedler, head of product and design at
New York Media. Prior to that she was thesenior director of the digital product lab atPlanned Parenthood Federation of America
and had other private sector positions. Olderorganizations often see new technology as athreat, or a burden, or a necessary evil, shesays. New technologies are often layered overexisting structures that don’t make muchsense for how a business or organization operates today. Those groups may have the biggest challenges in developing product teams,
but also may have the most to gain, she says.
“Organizations need to move from seeing
technology as something they need to figureout to something that can be used to further the
mission,” Friedler says.

Assign Responsibility
Thomas quickly realized that 350.org needed to change its approach to technology. She
started with an organization-wide assessmentof how digital work was managed. And then,based on her recommendations, the organization restructured. An IT support position was
created to manage things like Gmail and Slackand to help with hardware problems. And thatjob became part of operations. Social media
and video production moved under communications. Then she looked for the kinds oftechnology that need to be managed and could
evolve to help really advance the mission of theorganization.
She found technologies like the customer
relationship management or CRM software,tools used for organizing, campaigns, the website, and other systems that needed to evolveand change over time. These systems help theorganization with its most fundamental work —“We found new ways of following
our donors throughout their life
cycle, and developed new ideasof cultivating them, by breaking
down the walls of all those silos
we previously had in place.”

Don’t Put Your Tech in Silos
When the National Resources Defense
Council needed to replace its customer databasevendor two years ago, it took a larger look at its
overall technology strategy to learn whether it
could improve its digital operations. The environmental group realized it could do more byconnecting its business and fundraising operations with that database.
“Our product team was able to look at various parts of our operations. It saw similarities
in the ways different staff teams were handling
data about donors and prospects,” says Kate
McKenney, senior director of data and digitaltechnology. “We found new ways of following
our donors throughout their life cycle, anddeveloped news ideas of cultivating them, bybreaking down the walls of all those silos wepreviously had in place.”reaching people with its message and organizingthem to act. She put those technologies under
the product team and soon had a new title: chief
product officer.

t he ne w s ta nd a r d s f or nonp r of i t t e c hnol ogy 

6Understand How People Use Systems

That is not uncommon, says Dorman. Whenhe works with companies, he begins by watching
how people use technology. He talks to them
about what works and what doesn’t and the kindsof changes they would like to see. “There are 20
different ways to make a significant impact thatis going to save them time or increase the reachof the organization,” he says.

At 350.org, the organization had a lot togain from making such a change. It is a vastorganization that has staff in 26 countries. It
actively organizes in 70 countries and works
with partner organizations and networks in
188 countries. Its volunteers and partners use
dozens of languages. It is very important thatpartners and volunteers can organize their own
events, develop their own contact lists, and that
there is feedback and tracking of how many
people stay engaged.
“For that to work on a global scale, it’s such a
mad task,” Thomas says.
When Thomas started, the systems that theirfield organizers used were managed by very junioremployees who could devote only a small amountof their time to helping people work throughproblems. These systems were fundamental tohelping the nonprofit achieve its mission — organizing people around the world to push for
reducing carbon emissions. But junior employees
didn’t have the power to ensure the systems were
responsive to the needs of organizers. They barely
had time to help fix problems. “There was a lot offrustration on both sides,” says Thomas.

t he ne w s ta nd a r d s f or nonp r of i t t e c hnol ogyInclude Product Managers in Planning
At 350.org, Thomas has a product team of
13 — soon to be 18. Her employees work closelywith the people that use the technology andlearn about their frustrations and how theywould prefer to use the technology. They pilot
software and work to customize it and also
conduct trainings to make sure people are using
the software to their best advantage. And, mostimportantly, members of the product team arepart of the planning process when campaigns orother projects are being developed.
Product team members are involved fromthe start. That way the group won’t find itself
rolling out an organizing strategy only to learn
that the technology doesn’t work the way thegroup needs. “We’re planning a big mobiliza-

7

tion for the end of this year, and we’re really inthe loop from day one,” says Thomas. “We’rethere giving guidance and letting them know
our options for the tool sets and what isn’t what
isn’t possible.”
One example: 350.org’s #AfrikaVuka campaign to halt the development of fossil fuelinfrastructure in Africa. The organizationneeded a system that would allow people incountries across the continent to organize,
promote, and track anti-fossil fuel protests thattook place at the end of May. The product team
tested the technology system before the launchof the campaign and identified several problems.
That early testing allowed the product team to
improve the mapping of events and the ability
to search for events and to fix fields on certain
forms that were not working properly — all be-fore the system went live. The changes ensured
a smoother launch and helped 350.org’s volunteers and organizers be more effective.
Thomas is also part of the leadership teamwhich allows her to both get support from theorganization’s other leaders and have the authority to make significant modifications. “It’s a lotharder to make large-scale change if you are notat that level,” she says.
Others in the organization have been more
open to these changes because her team members are ambassadors for the new approach.
“It’s a hard concept to sell,” Thomas says. But
as they have more conversations and learn more
about how technology can be put to work forthem, more people are excited about the benefits.
“They are like, ‘Oh my God, can you do this andthis and this. This is so helpful.’”

TAKEAWAYS• Nonprofits need to categorize the types of technology they use anddevelop a plan to manage them.

• Charities should prioritize systems that have the biggest impact on their
mission.

• Product teams are an effective way to manage technology that can becustomized.

• Groups can often identify existing employees to staff a product team.
• To ensure technology works smoothly in new projects, product managers
should be part of planning and decision making.

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