Basic Tips for Evaluating New Technologies for Your Nonprofit

This post originally appeared on NTEN's blog. This is the second in a fantastic series of guest posts by the authors of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission.

New applications and technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. This brave new world of touchscreens, aggregated data, and pastel AJAX-based social networking sites, is partly fueled by consumers' desires for faster, lighter, and often cheaper (if not free) technologies.

For hardware, the time that differentiates what is "new" and "passé" is becoming shortened. Your new iPhone is becoming old faster; your familiarity of the popular social networking app du jour may soon become obsolete. How, then, should a nonprofit professional learn about — and selectively embrace — new technologies, when it's hard to keep basic systems running?

Here are some tips to keep in mind: 

• Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Every new phone, new software-as-a-service, or a new program will claim to do many wonderful things that have never been done before — until the next version comes out. As a frugal, belt-watching nonprofit professional, it's not too hard to be skeptical of the latest ads and buzzwords. Be judicious when reading marketing material, and always try things out before investing time and money. Look at what it can deliver for your clients and constituents.
• Take advantage of free information. Once you are comfortable in differentiating what is marketing and what is actionable information, use all the free information that is available. In this age of unfettered access and crowdsourcing, you will find analyses and opinions from bloggers and writers just by using your favorite search engine or a community tagging site like delicious.com. While the community's viewpoint may not be aligned with yours, you will find information to form your own, more informed, opinion.
• Consult your peers. Don't be shy in asking your peers about how they've applied similar technologies in their organizations. Your allies in working on homeless issues, access to healthcare, or wetland preservation are most likely dealing with similar concerns. Use both online and offline means to reach out and ask those nagging questions you've been meaning to ask.
• Recognize the difference between personal and work. It is often difficult to ask nonprofit professionals not to take their work home, or to access and work on work files from a home computer. Likewise, it is important to differentiate that what works for a home environment — or more broadly, a retail consumer — probably doesn't work for an enterprise-level work environment. You may think that the five-person, three full-time equivalent organization you founded is like a home office, but in the eyes of your funders and your constituents, that probably isn't the case. A good example of such technology is the debate on netbooks, where the jury is still out on their appropriateness for the enterprise.
• Have a framework to determine likely costs and benefits. A logic model can only go so far when you are trying to figure out the cost-effectiveness of your upgrade. While hours worked can be translated into cost, user satisfaction may not always be, and very often "the savings is not worth the frustration." At the same time, the long-term ease-of-use of a piece of software may overcome the initial learning curve of a more inferior product. Idealware has a more detailed look at The True Costs of Free and Low-Cost Software, and TechSoup's Nonprofit Technology and Total Cost of Ownership talks more on the factors in understanding costs.

Do you have other tips on evaluating new technologies for nonprofit techies? Got a story on how a new technology worked or didn't? Share it in our forums.

Photo: numstead