A knowledgebase for leaders in nonprofit organisations, on issues related to software technology and its use in community programs. It is based on our experience of working in many such community programs for dozens of organisations over years.
The organisational architecture of community-based or field programs and the data managed by them. It defines some of the fundamental concepts.
Community program using software technology are never fully paperless for cost, infrastructure and anthropological reasons. In this article, we discuss the issues related to designing systems focussed on solving problems and not simply with the goal of going paperless.
Field teams in the social sector projects enjoy working with their communities, servicing community members, meeting their own program targets - but they do not particularly like the idea of entering data into an excel, paper, or a data entry system (aka MIS). Someone having to follow up with the field team to provide data is quite common. Why does it happen and how to solve it?
Choosing the right technology strategy is crucial especially for resource-constrained contexts. Software platforms are an important part of the strategy and one should choose the bespoke application route after eliminating the platform option first. The excessive and incorrect usage of the term platform has also not helped here. We get into all these issues here to help you make the right choice.
Nonprofits face risks of wasted resources, inability to evolve with time, and obsolescence in the long term. Open source products offer a low-risk route allowing nonprofits to thrive in using technology.
Creating personal health records is a noble idea. But it is difficult to implement even for governments. We explain why is it difficult.
As mobile devices get increasingly used by frontline workers the question of what is the best device for such usage gets frequently asked by nonprofits to technology advisers. In this article, we discuss various factors one should consider when procuring these devices for frontline workers.
The term open source often invokes fear in nonprofit organisations about whether it implies a lack of control over data and software behaviour. It is mistaken with open data, open API, free-for-all software. In this article, we explain open-source software from basics from a customer experience standpoint.
More and more nonprofits have to think about, how should they get the software developed for themselves. Should they outsource or have in-house teams or do something else? We go through the challenges in each of the approaches and what are the sustainable options.
About technology and nonprofits publication
The list of topics to be covered in this publication is as follows. The articles already published have been linked. Please feel free to suggest additional topics in the same theme by contacting us - if we understand enough about such issues.
- The architecture of community program organisations and their data systems (this is a foundational article hence slightly abstract)
- Designing systems that use paper and technology together
- Why your community and field team procrastinates data reporting?
- What is the difference between a software platform and a bespoke solution? How should I choose?
- Open-source products offer a technology evolution path and help avoid risks in technology projects
- Factors to consider when procuring mobile devices
- What does it mean to use open-source software?
- The challenge of building software teams in social-sector organisations
- Why data collection platforms are insufficient for frontline programs?
- Why does the data entry person hate your MIS? Why not paying attention to data entry user’s experience is a bad idea?
- What are the challenges in including clients (beneficiaries) as a user in your community program’s digital systems (SMS, WhatsApp, Mobile app)?
- Why we should not obsess over solving for our beneficiary/client’s identity problem and use simple physical+software approaches that are sufficient for most programs.
- What simple processes and tools you should expect from your technology provider?
- Should you host your software yourself?
- Do not clean or manually verify data after collection. Most of these rules can be implemented in the technology solution at the point of entry itself. We will go into the extent to which such validations can be done (which is way beyond checking for mandatory fields, number within range etc).
- Technology as infrastructure or as a strategic tool for organisational transformation
Health specific articles
(Icons thanks to icons8, word cloud thanks to Monkey Learn, image resizing done using ReduceImages)