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Online Nonprofit Technology Conference: Beth Kanter on ROI

A Very Brief Primer: Measuring the Return on Investment of Nonprofit Technology

Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog

ROI -- or Return on Investment -- is a pre- and/or post-evaluation process and analysis of three factors: benefits, costs, and value of a specific technology purchase over time. ROI can help your organization avoid a technology purchase that is a huge mistake -- or avoid not investing in a technology that could return many dividends.

But if you approach ROI as a just a financial analysis, you're missing the point.

SXSW Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam

Four great panelists, three funny judges, and the incomparable Beth Kanter put on quite a show. Oh, and we tried to learn a few things along the way. Some of the issues our poets raised:

Combining qualitative and quantitive data
Proving ROI to your managers
Using measurement as a learning tool
Whether or not online mom communities are mean

I didn't get to capture all the great discussion, but I did get some great video of the poems, thanks to Jordan Viator. So if you missed it, here it is!

The Three Dimensions of Social Media ROI

Flickr Photo: zadro

Flickr Photo: zadro

Beth Kanter and NTEN have spent almost a whole year working on the We Are Media project, and we've learned a few important things. Chief among them: return on investment is really hard to determine. It's a three-dimensional picture, but we've been trying to render it in two-dimensional tools.

If you've worked on any sort of campaign, you know there are three key pieces to creating change:

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission

I'm an Executive Director now, so I have a new-found (and acute) understanding of just how complex that role is.

At a small organization like NTEN, a leader has to be ready to do just about everything, from fundraising to janitorial services. I'd been at NTEN for five years before I took the ED job, so I was lucky enough to know what I was doing -- mostly. But there are giant swaths of the job description I've had to learn from scratch.

Fortunately, the technology part wasn't one of them, but I can relate to the nonprofit leaders out there facing crucial decisions about technology everyday, and who have little idea how all this stuff works.

That's why we're so excited about our book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders. The book was written by NTEN members for nonprofit leaders struggling to find technology sea-legs.

The book will come out in March 2009. You can pre-order your copy on Amazon or purchase a copy from us for only $30 with your NTC registration, starting next week. We'll drop it in the mail to you when it's released.

What's the Return on Your Social Media Investment?

Flickr Photo: Felix IdanLast week, I got some evaluation results back from a social media training I did last month in DC. My favorite comments was:

Holly talks too fast.

That came up at least a half a dozen times. Point taken: in the future, no coffee before my session. But my second favorite comment was this:

Holly said we have to demonstrate the value of social media tools to our bosses. But how do you show that blogging leads to donations, or volunteers?

How Do You Get Your Piece of the Budget Pie?

Flickr Photo: matuko_aminiRaise your hand if getting funding for your tech projects takes longer than implementing the projects themselves.

Halfway through the year, most organizations are starting to think about budgets for the next year. The lobbying, pleading, persuading, and cajoling begin early, as every one of your departments vie for a piece of the budget pie.

How do you get yours?

Are You Measuring Success?

Flickr Photo: NCBrianChris Brogan is one of my social media heroes. I really respect his approach to the power of these tools and how we should use them. (And you can learn more from him at our Ask the Expert session on May 5th -- free for NTEN Members!)

Chris has a great post today about Online Community Management in which he shares how he would measure a community manager's performance:

Bleeding Edge Tools - What's the ROI?

Ali Levine, NTEN Fellow for Special Projects

Working "on the bleeding edge" is exhilarating, but it can be nerve wracking too. Staff time and money are in perpetually short supply and ensuring the most efficient and effective use of resources is one of the most important tasks a nonprofit manager must undertake. Deciding to put those scarce resources into a new idea or tool can be a tough call. New ideas are, by their nature, largely unproven, and there is usually little data to go on.

Even when data does exist, it rarely tells you what you want to know. Most available data is captured by a single organization and tends to stay within that organization, where it's useful but doesn't offer a big picture look at the trends. And just because several organizations are using the same tool doesn't mean that they have the same goal.