Implementing truly gorgeous online maps still requires some custom code and technical know-how – but, the cost and learning curve involved has dropped considerably.
Deciding how you will build your site, how you'll maintain it, and how you'll host it, are three separate, but related, decisions. Will you do everything in-house, everything outsourced, or a little of each?
It's been two years since we released the first Nonprofit Data Ecosystems Survey report, which provided a look at not only what particular technology tools and vendors the NTEN community uses for the different data management functions across their organization (from email to volunteers), but also the grades they assign to those tools and vendors on criteria such as after-sale support and usability. Unique about that report was that we also asked survey participants to grade their data ecosystems, which is what we call that network of tools organizations use to carry out their work.
In 2009, we learned that while respondents tended to rate individual systems as generally successful for managing specific parts of their organizational work (in the B to A range for most criteria), they graded their ecosystems as unsuccessful (generally C's and lower).
With a sell-out crowd coming to DC for the Nonprofit Technology Conference, we bet some of you are excited enough that you're looking for even more you can do! There's plenty on the calendar and we want to be sure that two special events make it to your calendars, too: Innogive and Penguin Day. Get the full details about these events and how you can participate below.
With a sell-out crowd coming to DC for the Nonprofit Technology Conference, we bet some of you are excited enough that you're looking for even more you can do! There's plenty on the calendar but we want to be sure that a few special events make it to your calendars, too: Innogive, CiviCRM Training, and Penguin Day.
This month's NetSquared Boston Meetup is modeled on speed dating -- set up to match altruistic techies in Boston with the nonprofits who need their cutting-edge skills. Learn more »
I haven't found an open source tool for predicting the future (yet), but we can get a sense of where things are headed by looking at recent trends in the open source space. Clearly, we're long past the days when people asked if Linux was safe to depend on for business.
What should non-profit tech folks be doing to prepare for the opportunities of "the future"?
Those are the values President Obama cited last December in his Open Government Initiative. Are those words you usually associate with your government? Even non-conspiracy theorists would likely have a hard time summoning up "transparent" as one of the top three adjectives to describe our government. We would all likely agree that it's a shame: our government should be transparent.
Now let's think about our sector.
Transparent. Participatory. Collaborative.
What do you think? Do those words describe the nonprofit sector? How about your nonprofit?
Gregory Heller, CivicActionsNot long ago, open source software was seen by most as the choice of fringe geeks with political motivations. Either the Grammys and the White House are now run by fringe geeks, or there's been a groundswell of open source adoption. Gregory Heller and I know it's the latter. Grammy.com and Whitehouse.gov are Drupal sites. CiviCRM got great scores in NTEN's Data Ecosystem Report.
The data ecosystem is the collection of tools
we use to manage all the ways we interact with donors, volunteers,
activists, and supporters. We wanted to find out how happy organizations are with each of the tools they use,
but also what tools make up their ecosystems, and how happy they are
with those ecosystems as well.
We hope that, by broadening our
view of the software question, we can acheive two things. First, we
hope it gives you a resource for helping you make better software
selection decisions. Secondly, we hope it helps software vendors better
understand the challenges and needs of our sector so that they can
address these issues.
So download the report, and share with us what this report means to you and your organization. We love to hear from you.
The data ecosystem is the collection of tools we use to manage all the ways we interact with donors, volunteers, activists, and supporters. We wanted to find out how happy organizations are with each of the tools they use, but also what tools make up their ecosystems, and how happy they are with those ecosystems as well.
In 2008, NTEN began asking the community to tell us what they thought of the tools they use. We conducted vendor satisfaction surveys for the Constituent Relationship Management, Content Management Systems, and the Donor Management Systems nonprofits use. The results help organizations understand what software is in use by their peers, and how happy they are with the service, support, usability and overall value of the software.
Still, these reports were only shedding light on a small slice of the software pie. In summer 2009, we went looking for a better way. Our great friend Paul Hagen suggested that we ought to be looking at the larger picture -- at the data ecosystem.
By Dave Greenberg, 
