Hi friends ππ»
This week, a reading recommendation for any nonprofit folks out there struggling with finding the right set of tools.
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Are you looking for the right "tech stack"? You might be looking for the wrong thing ...
I had a conversation recently with a few team members at a fairly small nonprofit β more than a startup, but a long way from being ready for a big, multi-tens-of-thousands π°π°π° donor CRM platform.
This team had a website that started out as a DIY project, and have cobbled together an email marketing platform, an online giving tool, Google Analytics 4, paid ads, and a whole bunch of spreadsheets. And they have no donor CRM (that's where the spreadsheets come in).
I recap this with zero judgment! With low budgets and team members pulled in a thousand directions, finding "the right tech stack" is a huge challenge. And the starting point for this conversation was exactly that: how to ditch the current set of broken, unsatisfactory tools for a better tech stack.
There's plenty of advice out there, most of it from nonprofit tech vendors. Try googling "nonprofit tech stack" and you'll see what I mean.
For anyone struggling with this situation, I have a reading recommendation for you before you go any further.
Go read "Nonprofits donβt need to spend a quarter million in tech to succeed", a guest post for NTEN from Tim Lockie. He's also a good follow on LinkedIn.
The core message β in my reading, at least β is that successfully solving nonprofit tech challenges isn't about selecting the right tools. There isn't some magic combination of tools that will solve all your problems.
The key is in paying attention to what the humans using those tools need. And paying attention to what the process of implementing new tools will actually look like.
A shiny new "tech stack" isn't always the answer.
That's all for this week.
Until next time β¨
β Ed Harris (your digital strategy guide)
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