Owing it to donors to have effective IT
When you choose a charity to donate to, your decision is usually driven by your heart. Often it’s a personal connection. Losing a family member to heart disease may prompt you to donate to fund research to prevent it, for example. Other times a cleverly positioned television ad that gives you an insight into the reality of someone else’s life or a distressing news report that makes you cry can create a powerful desire to help.
To my knowledge, no one has ever cited "efficient IT" as a reason for giving. It’s probably why many charities have neglected their IT estate.
Neglecting your IT
I can’t blame you – when you are dealing with real life issues at the sharp end – when what you do can literally be the difference between life and death – you may be forgiven for neglecting your IT. In her study Why Rich People Give, Theresa Lloyd claims that wealthy donors are motivated by five factors from belief in the cause to being a catalyst for change. ITIL, practices that align IT services with the needs of a business, doesn’t even come a close sixth!
As one charity CEO told me, “We just don’t have time to fully explore our IT so we make do with what we have. Everyone working at the charity is focused on addressing a need that is growing exponentially. To us, IT is about as sexy as the taxman!”
That last comment hurt! However, according to figures from HMRC, the value of tax relief for charities and individual donors rose to £5.14bn in the year to March 2016! Charities received £1.3bn in Gift Aid!
Maybe the taxman is sexy after all! Maybe your IT can be too.
What if your charity could get more money to the needy, fight disease better through improved allocation of resources or save more lives by eliminating administrative bottlenecks? Will more money make it to the needy if you "make do" when it comes to IT or could recipients actually get better outcomes if your charity adopted IT that is fit for purpose?
Front office excellence
I’m biased. As a donor I want every pound I donate to charity to have maximum impact and I really think that by sorting your back office IT you will maximise your front office excellence.
If you were to "rattle tins" in the street you wouldn’t just randomly turn up somewhere. You’d make sure you chose a prime location, to maximise the number of passers-by and potential donors. You would select a town centre or a shopping centre, and you would choose a day when there was plenty of footfall. You’d have posters with clear messages and a gallery of images that tell your story. You’d brief your volunteers on what to wear and make sure they could answer questions from the public about where the money goes to.
When you buy T-shirts for your fundraising crew you know buying cheap is a false economy and that buying Ralph Lauren may be frowned upon as a tad excessive. So you select accordingly; you go for value for money but of sufficient quality to survive washing and drying.
If you were organising an outdoor event you’d avoid a time when inclement weather might deter attendance. You’d have your fireworks party at night, you’d send raffle prize requests to companies which would donate prizes people would actually want to win.
My point is, you already invest time and resources in "front office" excellence. Both in the metaphorical sense above (how you fundraise) but also the actual professionalism that will be on display were I to visit your office. The treatment I would receive as a visitor would be on a par with that expected from a visitor to a FTSE 100 company and what’s more – your coffee is probably better.
The reality of IT
Between that front office excellence and your beneficiary, between the money you raise and the tangible difference that it makes - sits your IT.
Ineffective IT could be wasting your hard earned income, but it could also have an impact on your future fundraising potential.
I’ve already said that I don’t believe many people select a charity based on how efficient its IT systems are.
It is interesting though to reflect on the findings of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy’s paper on How donors choose charities. Perceptions of charity competence can have an effect on the selection of charitable recipients on the basis of criteria such as being "well run" and "efficient", or "charities which have low overheads".
“There is a general consensus that charity competence” as demonstrated in the efficient use of money and resources “is highly attractive and likely to prompt greater donations”. A most effective way to achieve this perception is through deployment of IT systems that are worthy of your charity’s aims and mission goals.
Getting IT right
The two most common ways of getting your IT right are: 1) Do things yourself; 2) Have a third party advise and create; ... and there are advantages and potential pitfalls to both.
DO THINGS YOURSELF. The most common problem encountered by any organisation but especially a charity, is that it is difficult to sacrifice sufficient time and resources to project manage an IT makeover. Many charities tend to end up with a shiny, new, expensive system that is - to all intents and purposes - exactly the same as the one it has replaced, only less effective because it is less familiar to end users.
Analysing your charity
On the plus side, if you get it right, doing it yourself can make large savings. If you choose the DIY route I would urge you to carry out a gap analysis on your current IT infrastructure versus your charity’s goals and the part you want your IT system to play in these. There are lots of resources on gap analysis online but as a key step guide, you should:
KNOW YOUR GOALS AND THE ROLE YOU EXPECT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO PLAY. These can be broad organisational goals like "improve reporting of fund raising", "reduction of overheads" and "beneficiary satisfaction" or specific goals like ‘increase shop sales revenue by 5%".
SURVEY YOUR CURRENT STATE. Take an honest objective look at how your IT is currently performing in each area you have identified. if you have data – analyse it!
ANALYSE THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR AMBITION AND YOUR REALITY. Don’t just measure how far off you are – actually drill down into the "whys" and the "hows" of your shortcomings. In this phase, really challenge your operation!
COMPILE A GAP ANALYSIS REPORT. Your report should be thorough and understandable to all the stakeholders, especially "non-techie" readers who will need to form opinions based upon your findings. Most importantly each gap should have a thoroughly costed solution that explains how it will bridge the gap you have identified.
ACT QUICKLY. Once you have identified your gaps and agreed upon how to proceed - don’t procrastinate.
AVOID SUPPLIER LOCK-INS. Beware of supplier initiated contract lock ins. You don’t want to be tied to a state of the art solution when a new player enters the market with an even better fit for your charity. Read the small print!
HAVE A THIRD PARTY ADVISE AND CREATE YOUR IT SOLUTION. This could be the better option for you - but when you get someone else to design your IT estate, make sure that you choose someone who will work "on your side". You don't want someone who is getting a nice little commission for providing a product that just about fits your needs - you want it to fit like a glove.
Understanding you properly
Make sure that your partner (and it should be a partnership) will diagnose before they prescribe. It is very important that your partner takes time; I mean REALLY takes time to get to know your charity, your culture and what you want from your IT.
Choose a partner who encourages you to ask "stupid questions". Designing IT is their thing not yours! I bet they couldn't do a fraction of the valuable work that you do! The right provider will have taken time to suss you out so they should already be talking your language but if they slip into jargon, call them on it! If you don’t understand any part of the process the right provider will be happy to explain and not proceed until you do and, if they're worth their salt, you'll find that they answer your questions with passion similar to that with which you talk about the work that you do!
Key services to consider
Finally, look for true end-to-end service. As a guide there are certain key areas that would benefit your charity when considering buying in IT services:
IT ADVISORY. Aligning IT infrastructure to your charity's strategy, advising on potential cost efficiencies through vendor (supplier) management and realising maximum value from existing and future technology choices. for example, cloud, networking, end user computing or telephony.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT. This is where your IT Project comes to life and where Gartner, the world's leading IT research and advisory company, believes a quarter of projects flounder through cost over runs. With robust vendor governance and the right service provider your charity can secure high quality project delivery, often with no net increase in the overall portfolio costs.
IT SERVICE DELIVERY. IT service delivery management can help you improve quality and reduce costs. The right provider will prevent you from getting locked in to costly long term contracts and achieve consistently better IT services through Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators that give you greater transparency.
SUPPORT AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT. After advising, managing and delivering your IT, you want a partner who is going to stick around. A partner who will be there when you need them but who will also keep checking in to make sure everything is being delivered as promised.
Financing the benefits of IT
A lot of research has been done on how charities can maximise the raising of funds and how best to spend those donations to achieve desired outcomes. Similarly, IT has evolved through research to deliver business strategy driven solutions that allow enterprises of all sizes, from SMEs to multinationals, to achieve greater productivity and reduce costs.
We are now at a point in time where such benefits are within the budget of most charities, in fact better IT won’t cost you money – it will save it.
I hope I have given you food for thought.
If nothing else, I hope that you at least think that I am sexier than the taxman.
