Leaders at nonprofit organizations struggle to adopt technology in meaningful ways, and this can be due to many factors. Cost is a big one. But research (https://bit.ly/3QIutmN) tells us the training, configuration, and resources necessary to ensure products can be used in a nonprofit environment also serve as persistent hurdles in this arena.
At the same time, there is an opportunity to develop digital solutions that meet the needs of nonprofits that require less translation or configuration. This produces a different set of problems:
* How do organizations assess these solutions?
* Especially if they are made by a small company or volunteers or other nonprofits, rather than a traditional, large technology company?
* And, how do these non-traditional digital makers get access to the resources to gather core needs, structure data in ways that serve civil society, and describe and measure impact?
What’s the best approach to building public good technology? It’s a framework that supports both groups — nonprofits and digital makers — can be a tool to create common ground, build out resources for both groups, and importantly, allow both groups to determine what is and is not important to them in their own work. All of us — nonprofits, makers, funders — need to work to build out this framework together.
Meeting Everyone’s Needs
Nonprofits deserve tools that are built to meet their specific needs. This is what’s meant by public good technology. However, producing these tools can be hard for digital makers, and evaluating their appropriateness can be challenging for the organizations that seek to use them. In fact, research conducted on the digital maker community — a literature review (https://bit.ly/45XS3Ah ) and qualitative research (https://bit.ly/3FNdhpZ) — has revealed that both the makers of public good technology tools and nonprofit decision makers needed support in talking to each other about the benefits of digital solutions.
A common framework can support these conversations. This would provide a structure both for digital makers to demonstrate aspects of a digital solution and for nonprofit decision-makers to understand what is important when choosing to adopt a new piece of technology. Thinking about a framework is, so far, based on the structure defined in Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank’s Power to the Public (https://bit.ly/3QP8WZT). This is augmented with what was found was needed via interviews with the makers of digital solutions and what was learned from quantitative research on the readiness of civil society organizations to develop technology.
The goal of a framework for building public good technology is not to evaluate the quality of technology. The goal is to provide a framework to help makers decide what is important to them in describing their products and civil society decision makers to decide what is important to them in selecting a product and to have a common framework for having that conversation.
A Possible Framework
A framework of this kind provides a set of questions that both sides can ask, using a common set of reference points. Rather than being a de facto evaluation, it can be used to guide groups in determining what they want to invest in (on the side of the makers) and to guide assessment questions (on the side of the nonprofit decision-maker).
Over time, and with use, this could become an index, think of something like the Healthy Eating Index (https://bit.ly/465tOAl). This model withholds judgment but acknowledges the need for balance.
Of the five areas of questioning listed below, three were taken from Power to the Public: Design, Data, and Delivery. Over the course of our engagement in this work, TechSoup has added Impact and Community. Together, these comprise a comprehensive foundation from which a framework for building public good technology can be built.
Design: Civil society does not often have a chance to make their needs explicit as tools are being developed. Tools made for them should include them. Is the solution developed with the needs of civil society in mind? How were those needs determined? Was there an opportunity for civil society to have input in the design process?
Data: Wealth goes to the holder of aggregate data. Civil society might have different needs for insights and data sharing than other sectors. How and where is the data stored? What is done to protect the data, particularly if it involves vulnerable populations? How is the data aggregated? Who is able to benefit from and get insights from the data?
Delivery: Often tools are developed without a clear structure for support over time. How is the solution supported? How is it upgraded? Is there a way to get ongoing help from a support desk? Is there a roadmap to improve the tool over time?
Impact: Describing impact is important to the makers — it helps them get customers and funding. It’s also important to nonprofits — it helps them understand how a piece of software might be different from other available solutions. Is there a theory of change associated with the solution? Is there a way to use data to talk about the progress? How do organizations describe the tool to their board, funders, or others who may have to weigh in on the decision?
Community: Civil society decision makers and the developers of civil society solutions may be out of the mainstream of technology development conversations. How do they come together to support one another in value driven community settings?
Where We Go From Here
This is just one of many possible frameworks that can be used in our collective approach to equipping organizations with the next generation of digital tools to be used in service of our communities. It can also be seen as a baseline structure for future collaboration. But either way, we need to work on this cooperatively, because a public good technology framework must, by definition, belong to all of us.
Together, we have the opportunity to develop a public resource that’s used to bring digital makers and nonprofit decision-makers into a common understanding of what tools can be developed, and what’s most needed by our sector.
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Marnie Webb is the Chief Community Impact Officer for TechSoup and leads Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup. Her email is [email protected] Author’s Note: While this has a single name on the byline, it is the product of thinking by colleagues, past and present, at TechSoup, especially Stephen Jackson, Billy Bicket and Darin Harrison.
