Community IT Innovators. Established 1993. Serving social mission organizations with integrated technology services you can trust.

Kafi Waters, Daniel Frishberg and Andrew Pendleton worked with Wiley Publishing on this add-on to the Society for Plastics Engineers site, in Drupal http://www.plasticsengineering.org/home
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Monica-Lisa Mills, Terry Brady, Ray Gurganus, and Brian Dunn helped on this new site for the Lutheran Volunteer Corps .

There are a lot of interesting nonprofit technology events coming up in DC in the next few weeks:

• Wednesday, Jan. 27, InsideNGO Technology Update: Inside NGO will be presenting a full day course detailing four technologies. CITI’s Matthew Eshleman will be presenting on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).  Virtual collaboration and training, Windows 7 deployment, and WAN optimization will also be covered.

• Wednesday, Feb. 3, CITIzens’ Forum: The Value of a CIO Perspective: The second forum in our series asks, who is managing technology at your organization? Do you have one person  who takes a big picture view, or are different people responsible for managing your network, website, databases and applications?  What’s the difference between a CIO and a CTO? Join in an open discussion to share what you’re doing and how other organizations address similar challenges.

• Monday-Tuesday, Feb. 8 – 9, Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects: Our second conference partnering with Aspiration to help you better manage technology projects in your nonprofit.  See this post for additional details

• Wednesday, Feb. 10, NTEN Webinar: Greening Your Nonprofit’s IT: Find out what all the green IT buzz is about and get practical information for greening your IT infrastructure.  Matthew Eshleman will be presenting with Peter Campbell on virtualization; other breakout sessions will cover green IT strategy, hardware and software, case studies, and sustainable design and printing.

• Friday, Feb. 12, Nonprofit 2.0: This unconference will let participants shape the agenda around how nonprofits use the latest technology to communicate, fundraise, and organize and advocate for their issues.  The event is already sold out, but there is a waiting list, and there may be a conversation or two to follow on Twitter…

• Wednesday, Feb. 17, CITIzens’ Forum: Salesforce: Learn how organizations are using Salesforce as a powerful CRM to manage contacts, campaigns, and related data; find out how Salesforce could be helpful for your organization, and share your story if you’re already using it.

We’re starting a new series of informal gatherings to discuss topics important to nonprofits. The idea is to bring people together to talk about your ideas, successes, failures, needs, and best practices.

Our goal is to create closer community ties, connecting you with other nonprofit professionals. We want to create an atmosphere where you can feel empowered to talk openly about your challenges at work and what we, as a community, can do to address them.

CITI will be hosting these events, but we’ll be learning as much from these events as anyone there. We hope you’ll join us for an evening of exploration and sharing.

Register now for the first forum on January 20 to discuss Social Media.  Many of you are likely already familiar with and using tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to spread your message and gain supporters.  Come share your story and learn more about how other organizations are using social media.

Save the dates! The CITIzens Forums will be on the first and third Wednesday evening of every month, each one discussing a different specific topic of interest.

• Jan 20 – Social Media
• Feb 3 – The Value of a CIO Perspective
• Feb 17 – Salesforce
• March 3 – Nonprofit Capital Markets
• Mar 17 – Raiser’s Edge
• Apr 21 – Post NTEN Conference Wrap-up
• May 19 – Data Management, Cleansing, & Conversion

We’re a little late with our Best of 2009 list, but here are the most popular CITI Blog posts of last year. Thanks for reading!

1. Up Close Review: Blackbaud’s NetCommunity

2. Twitter/Netflix Integration

3. You are Authorized to Virtualize

4. Advocacy vs. Direct Service

5. Almost All Things Are Equal When Accepting Donations Online: Tools Comparison

6. Greening Your Office: Measuring Carbon Footprint

7. Cloud Computing: What’s It Good For?

8. Project Management Tips from Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects Event (2009)

9. William James Foundation: Helping Sustainable Start-ups

10. Online Communications Takeaways from NTEN

The following article, by Washington Business Journal Associate Editor Timothy Burn, appeared in the December 11th, 2009 issue of the Washington Business Journal.

Exec helps nonprofits do more with technology

Like a true entrepreneur, Rob Jackson has used his career to identify a need and find ways to fill it. After spending some time at the See Forever Foundation/Maya Angelou Public Charter School, Jackson realized nonprofits need help making the best use of technology. Now he is vice president of business development for Community IT Innovators (CITI), where he helps nonprofits use technology to fulfill their social missions, and do it in a sustainable way.

What’s at the top of your ‘to do’ list?
First, build greater awareness for the strategic value of IT in social-mission organizations. Right now, IT is considered to be a cost center that plays several different tactical roles as opposed to a strategic business driver for the entire organization that requires an informed investment. That needs to change. Second, in order for IT providers like CITI to help social mission organizations make the transition into strategic IT, we need to spend more time talking about the organization’s business objectives with leadership. Third, build greater awareness internally among the staff about the business value of IT.

What’s the biggest challenge CITI clients face right?
Learning how to become more efficient in order to mitigate the well-publicized funding challenges. According to the Foundation Center, giving in 2009 will most likely finish down about 10 percent from 2008, and it’s expected to be down a little more in 2010. So, for the smaller organizations that we serve who have traditionally been asked to do more with less, it will be even more difficult to provide the administrative and professional services capabilities necessary to perform their work.

Many area nonprofits have had to tighten their belts. Has that hurt CITI’s business?
Our growth slowed earlier in the year, but we have been able to diversify our client base and identify new opportunities so that the effect of the downturn has not been catastrophic.

What do you think will be the next must-have IT capability for nonprofits?
With scarce resources and greater accountability standards, social-mission organizations will request information systems that can provide real-time, on-demand access to management information. So, defining the organization’s performance metrics, collecting the data, aggregating, analyzing and publishing the data using Web-based technologies is definitely going to be a must-have.

Can you explain CITI’s “triple bottom line” business model?
People. Planet. Profits. We measure the health and wellness of the organization by measuring individual goals, employee morale, and the company’s carbon footprint in additional to the traditional financials. Everyone at CITI has a coach (a CITI staff member) that helps define individual, quarterly goals that we track. These individual goals, team goals, business unit goals, and company goals get scored by our peers at the end of each quarter.

Your web site says CITI is employee-owned. How is that structured?
In an effort to ensure long-term success of CITI, the company established an employee stock ownership program. The impetus for this came from our staff who wanted to establish a participative, socially responsible, worker-ownership culture. So after one year of service, an employee becomes eligible for shares of company stock. The goal is to increase ESOP ownership and transfer up to 45 percent of the ownership to staff.

Seems like the nonprofit world is a finite market. Has CITI thought about how it can grow?
Ultimately, our growth is dependent upon our ability to leverage technology to make a significant impact for our clients. One way to grow is to serve more clients and play in a larger sandbox. This is possible, but the challenge becomes scaling our services so that we are providing consistently to a growing number of clients. Another way to grow is to provide more IT services to the clients we already have. This is also feasible, but then the challenge becomes offering technology services that are “just right” for the organization rather than being determined by an internal growth number. If we are successful in making a significant impact that dramatically accelerates the progress on our most urgent social issues, would our clients require more technology support or less?

Adoption USA: A Chartbook Based on the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents. And here’s coverage in NPR’s health blog of the Chartbook.

CITI worked with Child Trends and the Annie E. Casey Foundation on the State Child Welfare Policy Database. This site displays data on child welfare financing, kinship care, and older children in foster care on a state-by-state basis. CITI helped capture much of the information in the database in earlier projects using Adobe Acrobat Forms. CITI’s team on the project was Kafi Waters, Terry Brady, Danielle Feldman, and Duncan McHale, working with design partner Cheryl Springfels.

We’ve also launched a number of content management system (CMS) driven websites:

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, developed by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Terry Brady, Danielle Feldman, and Phil Jones, again with design partner Cheryl Springfels.

Arlington Community Foundation, by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Ray Gurganus, and Phil Jones. Design by Payne Ross.

United States International Council on Disabilities by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Danielle Feldman, Ray Gurganus, and Phil Jones. Design by byrdhaus.

Chevy Chase United Methodist Church Preschool a Wordpress site by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Danielle Feldman, Phil Jones, and Sean Speer, with design partners Zilyen.

Good work, everybody!

Each year on October 15th, Blog Action Day brings together the world’s bloggers to spread awareness on a single subject in a united social action. This year’s topic is Climate Change.  As a sustainable company, we’ve posted frequently on being green and green IT practices, covering ways to reduce your carbon footprint as an organization, with particular focus on improving your computer network’s efficiency.

Our CEO David Deal will be on a panel on an upcoming Green Success! event October 22nd, joining several other local businesses and organizations to discuss operating sustainably and green trends.

Some highlights from the Climate Change-focused blogosphere today:

• CITI client 1 Sky focuses on addressing climate change everyday.  You can check out their blog The Skywriter for news and information on climate change science and policy.  Just a few of their posts from Blog Action Day include the impact small businesses can have on the climate change issue, the Global Security Challenge of Climate Change and the Organizing Power of a Slogan.  To crowdsource a concise, powerful message supporting strong climate legislation, 1Sky has recently launched a Twitter campaign #1Climate, working with CITI to create a twitter tracker.  The best climate slogan will be chosen by popularity as measured by “retweets” (or RT’s).

• CITI client Sojourners, who focuses on “articulating the biblical call to social justice,” blogs about the Theology of Ecology and the need to pay attention to climate change.

• Social media and nonprofit blogger Amy Sample Ward discusses the importance of knowing your audience. If you really know them, you can find a way they can connect with any issue or event, even one that might seem peripheral to your main focus.

• Beth Kanter wishes everyone a Happy Blog Action Day 09 from her nonprofit social media blog.

• If you use an iPhone, you may be interested in TUAW’s (”The Unofficial Apple Weblog”) post on five iPhone apps to save the world.

NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) brings together nonprofit technology staff and consultants (loosely defined – if you use a database, social media, or send mass email, you’re an nptechie) for conversations, networking, learning, and having a great time.  NTEN has opened up the planning process for the 10NTC, April  8-10 in Atlanta, to the nonprofit tech community.   You can rate and vote for your favorite sessions, submitted by the community.

Community IT Innovators has submitted a batch of session ideas that we hope will provide some great information and discussion for the nonprofit community.  Follow the links below to see more details and rate each session individually.  Feel free to also tweet about and otherwise spread the word about your favorite session ideas! Voting closes October 16th.

THE 21ST CENTURY NONPROFIT: THE UNLIMITED POSSIBILITY OF THE FUTURE
What does the new, 21st Century Nonprofit look like? This session will explore the new ways in which cutting edge nonprofits are using technology to advance their cause and what these trends mean for the nonprofit sector.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: IT BUSINESS DRIVERS AT NONPROFITS
CITI is partnering with the Groundwork Group (OH) to determine the IT business drivers that will give smaller social mission organizations the ability to use IT more strategically. What conditions are changing and how are organizations changing to take advantage of evolving circumstances?

THE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER: WHY YOUR NONPROFIT NEEDS SOMEONE IN THE CIO ROLE
What does it mean to have a fully developed CIO capability at your organization? This session will discuss what the CIO role looks like and how taking a strategic, holistic approach to IT can help an organization by opening up new opportunities for efficiency, operational integration, and mission success.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO INTEGRATING CLOUD SERVICES INTO YOUR NETWORK
We’ll look at some of the most popular cloud services such as Salesforce, Google, Amazon S3 and others. Through case studies and sharing from audience members, attendees will get a sense of how to setup policy and procedures that ensure that an organization understands where its data is and how to manage it effectively.

REDUCING ENERGY CONSUMPTION
What does it take to reduce your organization’s energy footprint? This session will cover implementing green IT practices that can lead to a reduction in energy consumption from a leadership perspective.

GREEN IT FROM PROCUREMENT TO IMPLEMENTATION TO RECYCLING
This session will cover how choices about your IT infrastructure can reduce your direct hardware/software costs, lower your carbon footprint and improve staff productivity. We’ll also discuss how your old computer equipment can continue to provide value to others when the technology has reached the end of its useful life to you.

PERSONALS FOR PROFESSIONALS: HOW TO WRITE A WEBSITE RFP
You want a new website (who doesn’t?). You’ve got some ideas for the website and you’ve got (maybe) a budget. Now what? How do you communicate what you need to the community of developers? And how do you choose among all the potential firms and freelancers?

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF YOUR WEBSITE?
In this session we’ll propose and examine a model for assigning monetary value to website outputs. This model helps frame decisions to invest in user testing, marketing, and other methods of increasing website usage and conversions.

GROUPS OF GROUPS: THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZING
The Powershift Conference drew over 40,000 participants who gathered in DC to tell their representatives that Climate Change was the most important issue the U.S. – and the world – was facing and to demand immediate action. We’ll look at the Zanby organizing platform they used, the plan for rolling it out to the masses, how the platform performed and what lessons to draw.

Of course, there are a lot of great session ideas in addition to ours, so please take a look at the other sessions and rate your favorites!  Session materials from the conference will be online afterwords for everyone to access, so even if you’re not sure if you’ll be attending 10NTC, you can tell NTEN what topics will most help you and your organization.

If you are an artist interested in learning more about leveraging web technologies such as RSS feeds, Twitter, and traditional web channels, join Senior Developer Phil Jones and the Hamiltonian Artists for an interactive discussion on web and tech challenges relevant to you.

Phil will be speaking Thursday, October 1^st, as part of the Hamiltonian Artist Speaker Series presented by the Hamiltonian Gallery.

The series is “a succession of lectures given by established artists and art professionals to aid in the artistic and entrepreneurial development of our So-Hamiltonian Fellows and other emerging artists… Hamiltonian Artists is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing professional development opportunities for creative artists in their early careers.”

Phil has a passion for the arts and is excited to be sharing his experience in web technology to support the local artists’ community.  The lecture is at 7 PM, at the Hamiltonian Gallery at 1353 U St. NW, Ste. 101 (across the street from the CITI office!). Free and open to the general artist community.  Local blog DCist mentioned the lecture briefly in their weekly round-up of talks around town.