For years and years
-- basically, as long as software has been purchased by nonprofit
organizations -- the basic model has been: a nonprofit organization
pays a fee (sometimes rather large) to a software maker for a copy of
software to install on your desktop or server to do a particular task,
whether it be tracking donations and constituents, tracking clients,
running campaigns, or the like.
What this meant was that each individual organization spent thousands -- or tens, or hundreds of thousands -- of dollars a year to implement software for their organization. The economics of that form of IT investment are hard to manage in a climate where the survival of nonprofits is increasingly endangered, and many are closing or merging. But other models exist -- namely implementing, investing, and collaborating in open source software.
Open source software provides the nonprofit sector the chance to "Live Together": to benefit from the work of others, to collaborate on software development that will provide the kinds of software nonprofits can use every day for mission-critical tasks. It can provide a healthy ecosystem of open software that is truly community-driven and community-owned.
All software costs
money and/or time to implement, whether it be proprietary,
software-as-a-service, or open source. Software that is "free as in
beer" -- whether it be open source, or proprietary software donated to
organizations -- still takes time (and often money) to implement. The
major focus in comparing Open Source vs. Proprietary options has long
been what's called "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO): how much does it
cost in total to implement one or the other.
But using just TCO
doesn't take into consideration two other factors: Total Value of
Ownership (TVO), and what I'll call "Total Synergy of Ownership" (TSO).
What are these?
Total Value of Ownership takes into consideration factors other than sheer cost. It includes the strategic value of a software package, such as measuring the impact on staff productivity or on the quality of services delivered to clients. It takes into consideration the strategic value of having open data, allowing it to flow easily between systems. It takes into consideration the philosophical values of open source (or open data).
Total Synergy of
Ownership -- a totally new term I just made up -- moves outside a
single organization to look at how one organization's investment in a
project benefits everyone, and how that ecosystem benefits that
organization. You could argue that the more nonprofits buy a particular
proprietary package, the more revenue it provides to a vendor, thus
providing the possibility for the vendor to provide new documentation
or features. But all of that is out of any organization's control. In
open source software, single organizations or groups of organizations
can directly influence and take part in the support and development of
open source tools, spreading the benefit widely.
Synergy means that the investment of organizations into open source software will benefit more organizations down the road.
When taking these three measurement into consideration, proprietary software -- which sometimes already loses the TCO battle, although quite often it's a wash -- comes out far behind open source software in providing overall value to nonprofit organizations. And in these tough economic times, this might be the right moment to take a careful look at the overall strategy for software investment. It's not just about lowering costs -- it's also about increasing value, both for single organizations and for the whole sector.
Of course, there is
always the balance between the immediate pragmatic vs. the long-term
view. A nonprofit organization may immediately need a particular kind
of software. Often the features they need immediately are not present
in the open source tools. Sometimes they can't wait the time it would
take to develop what they need collaboratively.
This is where
foundations can provide enormous leadership. Fund collaborative open
source software development. Fund projects like CiviCRM and other
nonprofit-focused open source software. (There are a few funders who do
already do this, but they are few and far between.) Encourage
nonprofits to consider open source when you're funding software
development projects.
Eventually, open source projects will have the full set of features needed. It has already happened in some kinds of software spaces, such as CMS (Content Management Systems), where open source software can right now handle all of the CMS needs of 80-90% or more of nonprofit organizations.
"Live together, die
alone."* It's time to stop thinking about just your own immediate
software needs. Think more broadly and more collaboratively -- and
understand that your investment can have broad impact and still benefit
your organization later down the road. This is not to say that
proprietary software doesn't have a place. It does. But it behooves us
to start thinking outside the box. Have a need? Find other
organizations with the same need and collaborate to build (or build
upon) open source tools.
It will take guts and some elbow grease, but you all will get more than you possibly could have gotten alone.
(* That's a popular culture reference. For those of you who are not "Lost" aficionados (the TV series), it's the phrase used often in the show that brings people together for survival.)