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Donation Dollars Don't Flow to IT
For most of the country's 400 largest charities, 2005 was a good year. In 2004, public charities had nearly $1.1 trillion in total revenue and roughly $1 trillion in total costs.
The largest charities saw donations increase 13% over 2004 for a total of more than $62 billion, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy survey.
Yet the survey also reveals that these increases didn't often benefit IT. "Nonprofits are trailing behind the corporate sector in operational areas like infrastructure, and technology just isn't up to par," says Laura Quinn, director of Idealware, an organization that provides nonprofits with Consumer Reports-style information about software.
Mark Bolgiano, vice president and CIO of the Council on Foundations, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association that serves charitable foundations, says that IT's lack of prominence in nonprofits reflects the stature of the sector's IT executives. "CIOs are not always viewed as key to formulating an organization's strategy," he says. "Often we're turned to at the production end of those decisions."
Bolgiano spends lots of time promoting technology adoption among foundations that his organization serves. "CIOs are not at the table, but they are making decisions that have profound implications" for organizational mission, he says.
If Bolgiano's take on CIOs is right, John Rhon is an exception. At LifeLink Foundation, a Tampa, Fla.-based nonprofit that's charged with the recovery and transplantation of organs and tissue, VP of IS Rhon serves a critical role in helping his organization achieve its mission. He and his 12-person department devote much of their time to keeping the organization's 40 servers, 350 devices and numerous custom applications running 24/7. Rhon recently deployed software from Persystent Technology Corp. that automates IT support previously handled by its call center.
While automating support may not seem like strategic use of technology by private-sector standards, it's critical for LifeLink. With divisions in multiple states, Rhon has to muster lean resources to facilitate matters of life and death. With many surgeons and nurses working remotely, "we can support all of our users throughout the organization," he says.
But Rhon is hampered by the fiscal limitations inherent to nonprofits. He wrestles with how to adopt emerging technology "without breaking the bank," he says.
Quinn says that one of the biggest challenges for nonprofits, whose lifeblood is donors and volunteers, is managing the databases that track donor dollars and the processes for contacting participants.
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