Are you a nonprofit/philanthropic professional who is having trouble making the case that your organization needs to bring its technology infrastructure into the 21st century - or at least into the 1990s?

Please allow me to acquaint you with the telephone analogy.

First of all, can you think of a functioning nonprofit/philanthropic organization whose board, chief executive officer, or chief financial officer would ever say...
  • "... we don't need to find or raise the money to install telephones or pay our monthly phone bill."

  • "...we don't need to dedicate staff time to answering the phone or returning phone calls."

  • "...we don't need to orient staff and volunteers about personal use of the phones, about what statements they can make on our behalf to members of the media and the public who call our organization, or about how queries that come into the main switchboard are routed to various departments, or about how swiftly high-priority phone calls are returned."

  • "...we don't need to make sure that when donors, stakeholders, constituents, and clients call our main number they can navigate the automated menu of choices."

  • "...we don't need to show staff members how to put callers on hold, transfer calls, or check voice-mail now that we have an entirely new phone system."
Apparently, most mission-based organizations have resigned themselves to the fact that telephone systems are an operational necessity.  Somehow, the leadership finds the money, time, and motivation to meet the organization's telephony needs.

If only we could get the same kind of tacit assumption in place for every mission-based organization's technology infrastructure!

I propose two possible strategies, either of which would of course need to be tailored your organization's culture:
  • Encourage your board, CEO, and CFO to see your technology infrastructure as analogous to your telephone system. 

  • Persuade them that your telephone system is an information and communication techology system - and then encourage them to regard other components of the system (such as computers, networks, and web sites) with the same kind of tacit support and acceptance.
I look forward to hearing from anyone who has tried this strategy - or developed one that is even more persuasive.

N.B.:  I need to warn you in advance that all analogies eventually break down, but this is a pretty useful one, especially since a telephone these days really is the front end of an information and communications technology system.