Workforce development for the nonprofit tech professionals of the future: It will be a consortium, not a building with a dome!

 

It’s been about a year and a half since I starting agitating for a Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology, an initiative that will kick off by training the nonprofit data analysts of the future.

The concept has morphed and evolved a great deal in that time, thanks to all the great input from Massachusetts stakeholders, but also from a team of ELP fellows from the Center for Collaborative Leadership.

One thing that is quite clear is that there is no need to create a new institution, or raise up a building with a splendid dome.  (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology can rest easy, without fear of competition, or brand encroachment.)  I believe that all of the necessary institutions exist already here in the Bay State.  What is needed is a consortium that can knit them together for this purpose, some funding, and some candidates.

It’s a pipeline, or perhaps a career ladder that the consortium needs to build – not an edifice.  Although I love the splendid domes of MIT, we can simply admire them, and hope that eventually some of the people who work and study under those domes will become part of the consortium.

Here’s what I think we need:

1.  Allies from workforce development, job readiness, and college readiness programs.  These are the folks who will raise awareness of the coming need for technology professionals who can provide data analysis and other data services to nonprofits, and guide them to the next rung of the career ladder. Examples include Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath), Shriver Job Corps, International Institute of New England, JFYnet, Jobs For the Future, National Fund for Workforce Solutions, SkillWorks, Boston PIC, YearUp, and Massachusetts Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
2. Allies who provide relevant training and education to candidates who aspire to careers in data services and data analytics for nonprofits.  Examples include Bunker Hill Community College and Tech Foundry.
3. An organization that is able to place, mentor, and coach candidates in entry level data services positions at local nonprofit organizations.  That’s TNB Labs.  These entry level workers will be known as “data support analysts,” or DSAs.
4. Allies from local nonprofit organizations who are willing to host (and pay for the services of) a DSA for a period of one or two years.  TNB Labs will be the official employer of these workers, providing them with a salary, benefits, a modest sum for further professional development, coaching, and mentoring.  The DSAs will be working on site at the nonprofit organizations and dedicating themselves to tasks assigned by the nonprofits.  Examples of distinguished nonprofits that could play this role are Community Servings, Saint Francis House, Community Catalyst, Health Care For All, Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, Perkins School, City Year, Jewish Family & Children’s Services, Cambridge Health Alliance, Family Service of Greater Boston, Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, Greater Boston Food Bank, the Boston Foundation, AIDS Action Committee, and the Home for Little Wanderers.  (Not that they’ve actually signed on for this, but that they would be great members of this consortium.)

At the conclusion of the one or two year placement at a nonprofit organization, I think that any of the following outcomes would count as a win:

• The host nonprofit hires the DSA (with a raise and a promotion) as a long term regular employee.
• The DSA lands a job providing data services at another nonprofit organization.
• The DSA lands a job in a different field or sector that is congruent with his/her/their career aspirations.
• The DSA is able to apply to a four-year degree program, transferring course credits, on the job experience, two-year degrees, or certifications that he/she/they have earned.

The latter scenario – of advancing in higher education – brings us to the final category of allies needed for our consortium.  The best example of this kind of ally is UMass-Boston, which has programs in related areas, such as:

• Information Technology (undergraduate degree)
  
• Nonprofit Management (graduate degree)
  
• Human Services (graduate degree)
  
• Public Administration (graduate degree)
  
• Program Evaluation (graduate level certificate)

In addition, our consortium has a great ally in an individual UMass-Boston faculty member, Michael Johnson, whose research focus is decision science for community-based organizations.  He has expressed a generous desire to be a mentor to community college students in this career ladder, and to encourage those who are qualified to apply to be Ph.D. students in this field.

And that’s just UMass-Boston!  I’m not as familiar with the offerings of other distinguished colleges and universities in the area, but the Boston University program in nonprofit management and leadership , the Nonprofit Leadership program at Wheelock, and the Institute for Nonprofit Practice at Tufts come to mind immediately as potential allies.

So here we are. The need is there for data service providers who can serve the missions, programs, and operations of nonprofit organizations.  If we can weave all these allies together into a network, we can meet these needs.

All that we require is:

• Allies who are ready, willing, and able to pitch in.
• Public awareness that this career ladder is available.
• Funding to assist candidates cannot afford tuition for college coursework and other forms of training.
• Funding to assist nonprofits that would like to host a data service analyst from this program, but lack the (modest) funding to support one.

Let’s do this!

“Don’t tell anyone what we’re doing”

 

Back in the 20th century, when I first started working in Massachusetts in the field of nonprofit technology, it seemed to me that the unofficial motto of every nonprofit was “Don’t tell anyone what we’re doing, because if you do, they’ll know what we’re doing.”

I wish I could tell you the story of my first experience with this tacit rule, but the people involved are still living, and they would never want me to mention their names or give anyone any information about the programs that they ran.  So please use your imagination.  All I can say is that all of the relevant facts about this organization’s programs are freely available to today on this organization’s web site, for anyone who cares to look it up. As far as I know, providing the names and phone numbers of the people directing the sites at which the programs are offered has not led to any catastrophes.

We’ve come a long way in the Massachusetts nonprofit sector, thanks to leadership from folks at organizations such as the Boston Foundation, the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, and the Caring Force at the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers.  They have done some hard work in fostering collaboration, and with collaboration comes more freely shared information about what each nonprofit is doing.  (In my opinion, sometimes information sharing is the cause, and sometimes it’s the effect.)

I’m much obliged to people who have taught me a lot about the importance of nonprofit collaboration, such as Tom McLaughlin (who does a great deal of hands-on work to make it happen), Heather MacIndoe (who is doing academic research on the interplay of nonprofit collaboration and competition in the Boston area), and Susan Labandibar (who is pioneering some important new ideas about how nonprofit technology assistance providers can support organizations in collaborating for greater mission success.)

However, the new spirit of openness is much more than a regional phenomenon; it is an information age phenomenon.  As Beth Kanter and Allison Fine have explained in their groundbreaking book, The Networked Nonprofit, we are living an age where every stakeholder is a free agent online.  People who have strong ties or no ties at all to a nonprofit can use any number of social media channels to make facts and opinions about the organization available to everyone. While the privacy and security of client data is still an extremely high priority, nonprofits have already lost most of the battles in the war against transparency.  So they might as well embrace the practice of sharing information with other organizations and start looking for ways to make their programs, operations, and missions complementary.

Transparency, accountability, and collaboration in the nonprofit sector are mostly positive developments – especially when compared to obsession with control, covering up wrongdoings, and stonewalling. As Louis Brandeis said, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Even if it were not, it’s clear that greater openness is now a fact of life in our culture.  Our focus should not be on fighting the information age, but in balancing between its imperatives and the need to respect the privacy of the innocent and vulnerable.

 

The Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology: Let’s Do This!

 

We need a Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology, and I can tell you what degree program we need to establish first:  Bachelor of Nonprofit Data.

The inspiration for this comes from many conversations with many people, but I’d especially like to credit Susan Labandibar, Julia Gittleman, and Laura Beals for pointing out, in their different ways, that one of the most pressing real-life challenges in nonprofit technology today is finding people who can bridge between the outcomes / impact assessment / evaluation / research team (on one hand) and the information systems team (on the other hand) at a nonprofit organization.

Not that I’m a professional full-time data analyst myself, but if I were, I’d find the numbers, and start doing the math:

• How many brilliant computer scientists are graduating right here in Massachusetts every year from our best high schools, colleges, and universities?
• Of those graduates, what percentage have strong skills in database design, database development, database management, or data analysis?
• Of those who have strong data skills, what percentage would be eager to use their geek skills for good, if they were offered an attractive career ladder?

That’s our applicant pool for the Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology.  (Or MINT, if you prefer.)

Now, let’s figure out the absolute minimum of additional knowledge that these computer science graduates would need in order to be the kind of data analysts who could bridge between the outcomes / impact assessment / evaluation / research team and the information systems team  at a nonprofit:

• Outcomes measurement
• Outcomes management
• Impact assessment
• Evaluation
• Social research methods
• Knowledge management
• Organizational cultures of nonprofits
• Nonprofit operations
• Organizational cultures of philanthropic foundations

That’s our basic curriculum.

If we want to expand the curriculum beyond the basics, we can add these elective subjects:

• Nonprofit budgeting
• Group dynamics
• Ethics
• Etiquette
• Negotiation
• Project management
• Appreciative inquiry
• Meeting facilitation

All of these electives would pave the way for other degree programs, in which they would also be extremely useful:

• Bachelor of Nonprofit Systems Engineering
• Bachelor of Nonprofit Web Development
• Bachelor of Nonprofit Help Desk Support
• Bachelor of Nonprofit Hands On Tech Support
• Bachelor of Nonprofit Social Media

I already have my eye on some great local colleagues who could be the faculty for the Bachelor of Nonprofit Data program.  In addition to Susan, Julia, and Laura, I’d want to recruit these folks:

• Kim Diorio, Tech Networks of Boston
• David Gleason, Tech Networks of Boston
• Tuan Pham, Tech Networks of Boston
• Ellen Bass, Capacity Institute
• Noah Schectman, Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Boston
• Stefanie Archer, 501Partners
• Michael Johnson, University of Massachusetts-Boston
• Roberto Cremonini, GivingData
• Georges Grinstein, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
• Catherine Dun Rappaport, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley
• Nicole Shiner, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley
• Andrea Ryan Farina, Saint Francis House
• Kara Sabalauskas, Home for Little Wanderers
• Jennifer Dobruck Lowe, Crittenton Women’s Union
• Jessica Martin, Boston Indicators Report / Boston Foundation
• Marc Baizman, Salesforce Foundation
• Gavin Murphy, Annkissam
• Holly St Clair, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
• Dan O’Brien, Boston Area Research Initiative
• Patrice Keegan, Boston Cares

Please note that three members of the TNB team top the list of potential faculty members.  Why?  Because I work there, and because TNB has set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal of developing the careers of 1,000 technology professionals. This undertaking would be very congruent with its vision!

However, setting up the Massachusetts Institute of Nonprofit Technology must be a collaborative effort.  It will take a strong network of colleagues and friends to make this happen.

Do you think that this is needed?  Do you think my plan needs a lot of work?  Do you have any ideas or resources that you’d like to suggest?  Please feel free to use the comments section here to share your thoughts.

Data Day 2013 in Boston

 

I’m excited about Data Day at Northeastern University tomorrow, which is being co-hosted by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Indicators Project.

I’ll be offering pro bono strategic tech consults at this event; my time is being underwritten by Tech Networks of Boston. If you’re planning to attend, please come say hello to me! Just look for this sign.

 

A community garden as a use case for interoperable capacity mapping and resource matching tools (Redux)

This is yet another article that I’ve salvaged from my now-defunct first blog, with help from the Wayback Machine. It was written in the run-up to the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, DC.  We were then preparing for the first-ever open door meeting of our informal group of colleagues who are interested in online tools that assist nonprofits and philanthropies with capacity mapping and resource matching. As I look ahead to the 2013 NTC, I’m also remembering our conference session in 2011, and asking myself whether we’ve made all the progress that was possible.  There have definitely been some victories – such as the convergence of IdeaEncore and Capaciteria.  There have also been some defeats, such as the decision of the Boston Foundation and Third Sector New England to shut down the Nonprofit Management Resources project.  I invite you to post comments about how we can move forward, and how we can do better.

Wed 01 Dec 2010 07:10 PM EST

Now that we have an open-door meeting scheduled at the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference, I’ve been working on explaining why multiple online tools for capacity mapping and resource matching should converge.

I keep coming back to a hypothetical community garden as a good use case.

Let’s say that you belong to a neighborhood group that wants to turn a vacant lot into a community garden.  This is an unincorporated community group with no employees or funding.  You need a lot of information and resources from different knowledge bases:

• Are there already groups within a ten mile radius that have experience in creating community gardens?·
• Are there established organizations that are looking for neighborhood-based partners?
• Would it be advisable to incorporate as a nonprofit?
• Would it be advisable to seek a fiscal sponsor, and how would we find one?
• Is there an individual or organization within a five mile radius that would let us use their rototiller twice a year?
• Is there a hardware store within a five mile radius that will donate wheelbarrows and seeds to community gardens?
• Is there an urban entrepreneurship program in our town that will help us sell produce from the garden?
• Is there an expert in biohazards who will help us certify that this vacant lot, which used to be an industrial site where toxic chemicals were processed, has been converted from brown space to green space?
• Is there a squad of volunteers who will help us weed the garden once a week during the growing season?
• What sort of liability insurance will be needed?
• Will we need any permits from the city?
•  Is there a soup kitchen within a ten mile radius that would accept some of our produce?
• Is there an individual or organization that will allow us to use their van on weekends to transport volunteers and supplies to the garden?
• What sort of memorandum of understanding would we need with partners or others who share their assets, expertise, resources, or capacities with us?
• Is there an individual or grantmaking organization that can donate $5,000 to cover services and supplies that we cannot otherwise procure?

Now, there are a lot online tools out there that might help your group.  The tools aren’t interoperable, but they exist.  Some are national or even international:

• Craigslist. For information about surplus supplies, job openings, available office space, and a thousand kinds of resources on offer.·
• Freecycle. Also for sharing surplus goods.
• IdeaEncore.  For sharing best practices in the form of templates, white papers, slide decks, and other documents.
• The Extraordinaries (also known as Sparked) and Groundcrew. For deploying volunteers whose efforts are available on a remote basis through mobile devices, rather than through traditional channels.
• Social Actions. For search and aggregation by issue of a range of opportunities to take effective action – including jobs, volunteering, petitions, micro-loans, and donations.
• Great Nonprofits.  For help in deciding which organizations are most likely to use resources well and to be good strategic partners.
• Capaciteria.  For help in deciding which consultants and service providers are most likely to help organizations achieve their goals.
• InterEthos.  For help in obtaining anonymized data sets from other nonprofit programs, in order to establish baselines and formulate appropriate goals.
• Open Indicators Consortium.  For WEAVE, the free data visualization platform , which will help nonprofits, philanthropies, and their many stakeholders understand community trends before creating action plans and setting goals.
• Pledgebank.  For gathering commitments to take an action or give a donation, on the condition that others make complementary commitments to the project.

Some tools are more local.  Since I’m in Massachusetts, it’s easy for me to point to some great examples from the Bay State:

• Nonprofit Management Resources.  For search and aggregation of  answers to questions frequently asked by nonprofit managers.·
• Massachusetts Nonprofit Database.  For information about all of the nonprofit and philanthropic organizations across the state.
• Massachusetts Philanthropic Directory.  For information about the state of giving and philanthropy.
• NPO-Connect.  For sharing expertise in the form of mentorship.
• Mass Nonprofit Network Training Calendar.  For access to information about professional development opportunities.
• MetroBoston Data Common.  For help in obtaining data from regional planners, in order to understand the needs of the communities to be served.

In the best of all possible worlds, we will need to mash-up this information – not just in terms of mapping where the resources are, and not just in terms of mapping where the unmet needs are, but in providing some sort of tool that will help individuals and organizations capture various kinds of information and put it to use in fulfilling a mission.

It would be highly desirable for your community garden group to be able to use a single login for all of the online tools that might supply information to answer your questions, so that you can put the pieces of the puzzle together and save the results of your searches.  What I envision is that you would have something like an online project worksheet, in which you created a wish list of components needed for success in your initiative, and then filled in the blanks.  This worksheet would be password protected, and you would be able to invite potential donors and partners to view it and to offer assets, expertise, capacities, or other resources to help make the vision a reality.

The power of bringing all of this together through an online suite of tools is especially clear in these tough economic times: the tools are out there, the impact of each would be multiplied by making available through a project worksheet, and it looks very likely that scarcity of funding can be overcome by clever use of currently under-used information and resources.

Measuring what we value, and presenting the findings more interactively than ever

First of all, a personal resolution:  I will not whine.

The Boston Indicators Project, which is an initiative by the Boston Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, relaunched its web site in November, and I was not invited to the event.  I will subdue my inclination to pout, and move on to praising the new web site.

Fortunately, a fellow Boston Technobabe, Kat Friedrich, did attend; you therefore have the option of skipping my blog article and going straight to hers.  Kat’s focus is on “How Nonprofits Can Earn News Coverage Using Data Visualization,” which is certainly a great take-away for mission-based organizations.

My interest is slightly different.  Here are a few things that are especially striking:

• Measuring what we value.  This principle is prominently displayed on the relaunched web site, and is one that I learned in 2002 from the Boston Indicators Project’s co-founder and director, Charlotte Kahn.  (I worked on the 2003 indicators report, which was the very first to be webified.) The version I heard from her own lips is “we should measure what we value, rather than only valuing what we can measure.”  It’s not enough to throw together a lot of data about our region, simply because it’s available.  We have to think about what it means, why it’s important, and it helps us understand the most effective strategies for positive change.
• Democratizing the data.  This is a principle that I learned both from Charlotte and from Barry Bluestone; the latter is a professor at Northeastern University and has been enormously influential in the evolving Boston Indicators Project.  Democratizing the data means more than making canned reports available; it entails a constant effort to increase the interactivity of the web site, so that anyone concerned about the future of our region can slice and dice crucial data, and thereby go beyond the Boston Indicators Report to conclusions and initiatives of his or her own.  For that, we must thank not only Charlotte and Barry, but two of my other great favorites:  Tim Gassert, the Boston Foundation’s director of web communications, and Georges Grinstein, a professor of computer science at University of Massachusetts at Lowell and one of the trailblazers in the creation of the Weave data visualization tool.

The new Boston Indicators web site is great example of nonprofit technology in the service of a mission that is much greater any one community foundation or specific region.  I happen to live in the greater Boston area, so I’ve been more easily drawn to it than I would be if I were living elsewhere.  But it’s an example to any individual or organization, of the power of the universal access to the significant data, and the importance of analyzing it in ways that benefit the community.

A word of gratitude for an online community: Mission-Based Massachusetts

Today is Thanksgiving, so I want to express some gratitude to a community of colleagues here in Massachusetts.

I started the “Mission-Based Massachusetts” (MBM for short) email list in 2005, in order to provide a forum for people who care about nonprofit, philanthropic, educational, community-based, grassroots, socially responsible, and other mission-oriented organizations here in the Bay State.

My inspiration for starting the MBM list (and several other projects) was a series of conversations with Tim Gassert of the Boston Foundation, starting in about 2003.  We agreed that nonprofits in Massachusetts needed some sort of online tool that would help them stay current with each other about upcoming events, best practices, and available resources.  At the time, I hoped that a highly reputable institution, such as TBF or Third Sector New England, would take on the task, but neither was able to espouse the cause.  (Later, when the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network was organized, I hoped that MNN would sponsor it, but had no luck there either.)

It didn’t seem to me that an individual should take on such a critical task, but in 2005, I hunkered down to the task of creating, moderating, recruiting members for, and maintaining the MBM list as a lone volunteer.  Fortunately, my friend John McNutt (then living in Massachusetts, but now teaching at the University of Delaware) kindly volunteered to be the alternate moderator, thus allowing me to take some urgently needed breaks.

I’m deeply grateful for the way that MBM members have coalesced into a peer network, a group of people who are helping each other make the world a better place.  People constantly tell me in person or email me how much they have benefited from participating in this community.  They thank me, but the truth is that it weren’t for each of them, the Mission-Based Massachusetts group would not be thriving in this way. I also believe that as a community, they have greatly benefited the nonprofit sector in Massachusetts, and the many people served by the sector.

It takes a lot of effort to maintain the MBM list, but I’m not really a lone individual anymore.  In addition to John (to whom I’m deeply grateful), and Tim (who continues to inspire me) I have more than 1,400 colleagues in group who are helping me and each other.  It is indeed an occasion for gratitude!