By Woodrow Rosebaum
Tech for nonprofits has been overlooked for decades, lagging while governments and businesses found ways to streamline, coordinate and scale. With outdated systems and siloed data, nonprofits are not keeping up with the basic demands of modern digital infrastructure.
That era is on its way out and a genuine opportunity has finally arrived.
Increased collaboration and innovative infrastructure solutions are creating the conditions for transformation. These advances are positioning the nonprofit sector for a leap forward into a new era of efficiency, resilience and impact.
Nonprofit tech professionals aren’t less committed or capable than their counterparts in other sectors, but their tools are often outdated, fragmented, and under-resourced. They have been operating in silos, independently solving the same problems and rebuilding the same systems over and over. Rather than pooling resources and data, we’ve been treating our knowledge like hoarded treasure, failing to realize that a well-developed infrastructure could act as a springboard to amplify our efforts to solve the world’s biggest problems.
There has been some real progress in nonprofit tech in recent years. The contribution of GivingTuesday Data Commons has made to increasing sector collaboration and improving the enabling environment for nonprofits has been significant. We’re only just beginning to see what’s possible when we embrace an ecosystem approach.
There is now a real opportunity to build a connected, collaborative infrastructure that fuels collective problem-solving and innovation. We just have to embrace that possibility.
People in the private sector have long recognized that for commercial enterprises to succeed companies need access to fundamental, industry-level systems — a shared digital infrastructure. That’s why we have internet standards that support the seamless flow of information.
If finance and telecommunications companies can collaborate to build infrastructure that benefits their industries, why not the nonprofit sector? The technology exists. We need the will to organize and the resources to make it happen.
The Vision: A Shared Nonprofit Toolbox
At the core of this vision is the need for an interconnected set of resources, data platforms, and dissemination channels that staff at nonprofits of all sizes can use and adapt.
Imagine a basic framework that makes sense of the messiness of incompatible data and disparate systems and relieves individual organizations of the heavy technical load required to manage them. This framework wouldn’t just add flashy tech for the sake of “modernizing” the sector. It would create the flexible infrastructure this sector needs to do our jobs more effectively.
The pieces of this broader ecosystem are already taking shape. The 990 Data Infrastructure coalition — a joint effort by GivingTuesday, the Aspen Institute, the Urban Institute, Charity Navigator, ProPublica, Candid, and Citizen Audit — is a great example. This coalition is already demonstrating what’s possible when separate groups align their data efforts. The Philanthropy Data Commons is another example of sector-wide data sharing that could serve as a model for future collaboration.
These initiatives have done more than eliminate duplication of effort and free up time and resources. They’ve improved organizations’ ability to conduct research, measure impact, and design new programs and interventions. Working this way also results in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Instead of each player solving problems in their own way, we benefit from comparing notes and collectively finding solutions we would not have come to on our own.
These individual projects are only the beginning of what’s possible. True transformation will come when we move from scattered collaborations to a comprehensive platform that supports the entire sector. That kind of shared toolbox will provide a new foundation that lets us leverage shared resources at scale, connect across silos, and solve big problems together driving impact.
The Value of Shared Tools
Let’s talk about what a shared infrastructure can achieve. Without it, individual nonprofits and the sector as a whole waste precious resources trying to cobble together fragmented systems that simply don’t play nicely with each other.
Let’s be real. Most nonprofits don’t have the resources to develop advanced systems on their own. With a shared infrastructure, the entire sector gains an edge.
Imagine a system where individual organizations can connect with ease, share insights instantly, and make decisions based on communal data. This won’t just make operations easier. It will transform what nonprofits can achieve.
This creates more than mere efficiency. This creates an environment that enables actual innovation. Actual impact. Perhaps more importantly, a shared toolbox will level the playing field for organizations of all sizes.
Large nonprofits with dedicated tech teams might be able to develop their own data systems and infrastructure now, but they would be better served by the ability to tap into a robust digital network that enables them to develop novel solutions to their problems.
Small and mid-sized organizations often struggle to afford even basic software. By creating a data infrastructure that’s accessible and adaptable and by enabling a diverse constellation of tech, data, and measurement services, we can make sure that everyone has access to high-quality tools and resources.
A Digital Public Goods Network
In the nonprofit sector, we need this to be a public utility: a Digital Public Goods Network. This will require building a blueprint, a shared infrastructure that is accessible to nonprofits, funders, and partners alike.
This blueprint and the network that will use it is the key to breaking down the walls that have kept our sector fragmented and inefficient. And, we’re finally ready to build it.
A Digital Public Goods Network will provide a central space where different groups and organizations can connect, share resources, and build on each other’s successes. Instead of wasting time reinventing solutions for individual problems, we’ll have the freedom to innovate, improve, and make real progress on the issues we care about.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all model. By creating an infrastructure that can grow and change with the sector we can build something that serves everyone, making this transformation sustainable.
Investing In Digital Public Goods
None of this will happen on its own. Building this shared digital ecosystem will require a commitment not just of ideas but of actual capital. Creating a backbone for the entire sector will require working with funders, companies, and nonprofit leaders.
This will only happen if we have a dedicated fund that supports the development of these shared tools and resources — a resource pool that ensures that even the smallest nonprofits can access the systems they need to succeed.
We must think of digital infrastructure not as a luxury but as an essential service. When funders back this vision, they’re doing more than simply donating to a cause. They’re investing in a future where nonprofits can drive real, systemic change.
The Cost Of Sticking To The Status Quo
The alternative to this vision is clear, and it’s not a pretty picture. Without this investment in shared infrastructure, nonprofits will remain locked in a cycle of missed potential.
The cost of inadequate data infrastructure is real human suffering. When research lacks the data necessary to inform interventions, when experimentation is too difficult, when we cannot accurately observe the effects of our efforts, vital aid isn’t sent where it’s needed, programs fail to lift people out of poverty, and organizations don’t get the resources they need, we are doomed to repeat ineffective approaches to the most important issues in our society.
We can’t continue to pour time and money into workarounds and stopgap measures for faulty technology and bad data. We can’t keep spending valuable resources on piecemeal approaches to sector-wide problems. We’re holding the entire sector back from achieving its full potential by failing to address the infrastructure gap.
Yes, progress has been made in recent years. And yes, we have an opportunity to enable the nonprofit sector to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.
We must build on that progress.
The stakes are high, and the choice is ours: perpetuate the status quo or invest in a future that allows us to reach our full potential. For the first time, we have the tools, the knowledge, and the collective will to make a real difference in how we work together. The only thing left is to act.
Let’s seize this moment and make it happen.
*****
Woodrow Rosenbaum is chief data officer at GivingTuesday.
The post Commentary: An Opportunity To Reform appeared first on The NonProfit Times.
Source From Non Profit Times
Commentary: An Opportunity To Reform
By Woodrow Rosebaum
Tech for nonprofits has been overlooked for decades, lagging while governments and businesses found ways to streamline, coordinate and scale. With outdated systems and siloed data, nonprofits are not keeping up with the basic demands of modern digital infrastructure.
That era is on its way out and a genuine opportunity has finally arrived.
Increased collaboration and innovative infrastructure solutions are creating the conditions for transformation. These advances are positioning the nonprofit sector for a leap forward into a new era of efficiency, resilience and impact.
Nonprofit tech professionals aren’t less committed or capable than their counterparts in other sectors, but their tools are often outdated, fragmented, and under-resourced. They have been operating in silos, independently solving the same problems and rebuilding the same systems over and over. Rather than pooling resources and data, we’ve been treating our knowledge like hoarded treasure, failing to realize that a well-developed infrastructure could act as a springboard to amplify our efforts to solve the world’s biggest problems.
There has been some real progress in nonprofit tech in recent years. The contribution of GivingTuesday Data Commons has made to increasing sector collaboration and improving the enabling environment for nonprofits has been significant. We’re only just beginning to see what’s possible when we embrace an ecosystem approach.
There is now a real opportunity to build a connected, collaborative infrastructure that fuels collective problem-solving and innovation. We just have to embrace that possibility.
People in the private sector have long recognized that for commercial enterprises to succeed companies need access to fundamental, industry-level systems — a shared digital infrastructure. That’s why we have internet standards that support the seamless flow of information.
If finance and telecommunications companies can collaborate to build infrastructure that benefits their industries, why not the nonprofit sector? The technology exists. We need the will to organize and the resources to make it happen.
The Vision: A Shared Nonprofit Toolbox
At the core of this vision is the need for an interconnected set of resources, data platforms, and dissemination channels that staff at nonprofits of all sizes can use and adapt.
Imagine a basic framework that makes sense of the messiness of incompatible data and disparate systems and relieves individual organizations of the heavy technical load required to manage them. This framework wouldn’t just add flashy tech for the sake of “modernizing” the sector. It would create the flexible infrastructure this sector needs to do our jobs more effectively.
The pieces of this broader ecosystem are already taking shape. The 990 Data Infrastructure coalition — a joint effort by GivingTuesday, the Aspen Institute, the Urban Institute, Charity Navigator, ProPublica, Candid, and Citizen Audit — is a great example. This coalition is already demonstrating what’s possible when separate groups align their data efforts. The Philanthropy Data Commons is another example of sector-wide data sharing that could serve as a model for future collaboration.
These initiatives have done more than eliminate duplication of effort and free up time and resources. They’ve improved organizations’ ability to conduct research, measure impact, and design new programs and interventions. Working this way also results in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Instead of each player solving problems in their own way, we benefit from comparing notes and collectively finding solutions we would not have come to on our own.
These individual projects are only the beginning of what’s possible. True transformation will come when we move from scattered collaborations to a comprehensive platform that supports the entire sector. That kind of shared toolbox will provide a new foundation that lets us leverage shared resources at scale, connect across silos, and solve big problems together driving impact.
The Value of Shared Tools
Let’s talk about what a shared infrastructure can achieve. Without it, individual nonprofits and the sector as a whole waste precious resources trying to cobble together fragmented systems that simply don’t play nicely with each other.
Let’s be real. Most nonprofits don’t have the resources to develop advanced systems on their own. With a shared infrastructure, the entire sector gains an edge.
Imagine a system where individual organizations can connect with ease, share insights instantly, and make decisions based on communal data. This won’t just make operations easier. It will transform what nonprofits can achieve.
This creates more than mere efficiency. This creates an environment that enables actual innovation. Actual impact. Perhaps more importantly, a shared toolbox will level the playing field for organizations of all sizes.
Large nonprofits with dedicated tech teams might be able to develop their own data systems and infrastructure now, but they would be better served by the ability to tap into a robust digital network that enables them to develop novel solutions to their problems.
Small and mid-sized organizations often struggle to afford even basic software. By creating a data infrastructure that’s accessible and adaptable and by enabling a diverse constellation of tech, data, and measurement services, we can make sure that everyone has access to high-quality tools and resources.
A Digital Public Goods Network
In the nonprofit sector, we need this to be a public utility: a Digital Public Goods Network. This will require building a blueprint, a shared infrastructure that is accessible to nonprofits, funders, and partners alike.
This blueprint and the network that will use it is the key to breaking down the walls that have kept our sector fragmented and inefficient. And, we’re finally ready to build it.
A Digital Public Goods Network will provide a central space where different groups and organizations can connect, share resources, and build on each other’s successes. Instead of wasting time reinventing solutions for individual problems, we’ll have the freedom to innovate, improve, and make real progress on the issues we care about.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all model. By creating an infrastructure that can grow and change with the sector we can build something that serves everyone, making this transformation sustainable.
Investing In Digital Public Goods
None of this will happen on its own. Building this shared digital ecosystem will require a commitment not just of ideas but of actual capital. Creating a backbone for the entire sector will require working with funders, companies, and nonprofit leaders.
This will only happen if we have a dedicated fund that supports the development of these shared tools and resources — a resource pool that ensures that even the smallest nonprofits can access the systems they need to succeed.
We must think of digital infrastructure not as a luxury but as an essential service. When funders back this vision, they’re doing more than simply donating to a cause. They’re investing in a future where nonprofits can drive real, systemic change.
The Cost Of Sticking To The Status Quo
The alternative to this vision is clear, and it’s not a pretty picture. Without this investment in shared infrastructure, nonprofits will remain locked in a cycle of missed potential.
The cost of inadequate data infrastructure is real human suffering. When research lacks the data necessary to inform interventions, when experimentation is too difficult, when we cannot accurately observe the effects of our efforts, vital aid isn’t sent where it’s needed, programs fail to lift people out of poverty, and organizations don’t get the resources they need, we are doomed to repeat ineffective approaches to the most important issues in our society.
We can’t continue to pour time and money into workarounds and stopgap measures for faulty technology and bad data. We can’t keep spending valuable resources on piecemeal approaches to sector-wide problems. We’re holding the entire sector back from achieving its full potential by failing to address the infrastructure gap.
Yes, progress has been made in recent years. And yes, we have an opportunity to enable the nonprofit sector to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.
We must build on that progress.
The stakes are high, and the choice is ours: perpetuate the status quo or invest in a future that allows us to reach our full potential. For the first time, we have the tools, the knowledge, and the collective will to make a real difference in how we work together. The only thing left is to act.
Let’s seize this moment and make it happen.
*****
Woodrow Rosenbaum is chief data officer at GivingTuesday.
The post Commentary: An Opportunity To Reform appeared first on The NonProfit Times.
Source From Non Profit Times