[Editor's note: The following first appeared in the March 2011 issue of NTEN:Change. Read the complete issue of NTEN's new quarterly journal for nonprofit leaders by subscribing to the journal for free!]

By Grant Howe, VP Research and Development, Sage Nonprofit Solutions

Want to create a more rewarding environment to retain and grow your techies? Reap some quick improvement with these easy four tips!

1. Say “Thank you”—often and for little things.

In technology roles, often the only feedback we get is negative and when something has gone horribly wrong. Thank people for jobs well done that no one notices but that are important and impactful.

For many nonprofit organizations, as with the wider public and private business sectors, the last couple of years have been impacted by a general economic downturn. Did we see evidence of this in our annual Nonprofit IT Staffing & Spending survey conducted at the end of 2010? Well, yes and no.

Compared to previous years (this is our 5th year of conducting the survey), certain areas of investment did seem to drop. However, for the most part, investments in IT staffing and other areas stayed remarkably steady, and we even saw some year-over-year growth in some areas.

> Download the Report for Free Here

[Ed. note: This is the second in a fantastic series of guest posts by the authors of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission. This one comes to you from Kevin Lo of Techsoup Global.]

New applications and technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. This brave new world of touchscreens, aggregated data, and pastel AJAX-based social networking sites, is partly fueled by consumers' desires for faster, lighter, and often cheaper (if not free) technologies.

For hardware, the time that differentiates what is "new" and "passé" is becoming shortened. Your new iPhone is becoming old faster; your familiarity of the popular social networking app du jour may soon become obsolete. How, then, should a nonprofit professional learn about -- and selectively embrace -- new technologies, when it's hard to keep basic systems running?

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

[Ed. note: This is the first in a fantastic series of guest posts by the authors of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission. For more of Steve's thoughts on the book, check out his blog: he's writing about each chapter over 11 weeks. Of course, we also don't want you to forget to register for the ONTC, where you can hear more from all the authors.]

Let's say you have a friend who talks to you about a race they're running in soon. You might ask them about how they're training, where the race is, are they running alone, or how many races they've run before. Then, since you know some things about running, you might offer some training advice, nutrition ideas, or cool clothes to wear.

And you may help them run the race faster. How cool is that?

But, unless you have a relationship with that person, you may never know if they're running the race to raise money for a cause, not to win. They may be running to help raise awareness, fight an illness, or stop some injustice. So, while you might have helped them run faster, you didn't help them accomplish their goal.

Technology is often a solution that does the same thing.

Every so often, Holly walks by my desk, says, "You need to read this article", and drops the latest Stanford Social Innovation Review on my keyboard. Since I have to move my hands out from under it anyway, I read the recommended piece -- and then the rest of issue. There's just something about the feel of paper and the heft of well-written, insightful articles -- complete with references -- that warms the cockles of a liberal artist's heart.

Yes, SSIR is great, and I'd recommend it to anybody working in nonprofit technology even if they weren't running a new promotion giving a free copy of our book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, to new and renewing two-year subscribers. (If you're unfamiliar with SSIR, visit their web site, where they offer a number of articles for free.)

To take advantage of this offer:

And when I say "we", I mean the NTEN community. Fourteen NTEN Members contributed to the 11 chapters in Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders.

Now that it's been released, we're pretty sure you'd like to:

> Buy the Book!

We've also made a wiki to support and extend the book. Check it out. Notice how it doesn't look entirely like a wiki? Yeah, that's just how we roll. We're currently soliciting tips on how to manage technology when budgets are tight.

> Add your suggestions to the wiki today.

In support of the launch, we had a virtual release party. Ten of our authors joined us on the line to talk about their chapters and answer your questions. And we recorded it, so:

> Attend our party after the fact. At least it's Free!