As readers of my blog know, I've been working on a project to create an online tool that searches, aggregates, and delivers answers to frequently asked nonprofit management questions. The founding partners are Third Sector New England and the Boston Foundation, and the Social Actions team is heading up the technical development with the very able assistance of the Ronin Tech Collective.
This project, which has now been dubbed Nonprofit Managment 101,* has started out very modestly. At the prototype level, we are focusing only on serving nonprofits in Massachusetts, and working with content provided only by the two founding partners and by the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. The scope of work for the prototype was very sharply defined, as was the time line. Later on, it will be possible to talk about adding more features, more content partners, and more information that will be pertinent to nonprofit managers in other states - but what right now, what we are aiming for is a proof of concept.
Imagine my amazement and glee when, having been told that the working prototype will be ready by March 5th, I received an email from Peter Deitz of Social Actions on February 26th, with a link to the working prototype. Not only has it been delivered ahead of schedule, but it works, and it even looks and feels just like I had hoped. Kudos and whuffie points to both Social Actions and Ronin Tech Collective!
I can't give you the web link to the working prototype yet, because it hasn't been formally reviewed and approved by the founding partners to date. But I hope to do that soon, and I hope that others will be encouraged by the demonstration of industriousness and mission focus. We are now living in a nonprofit sector that doesn't just speak wistfully about online tools for mapping capacity and delivering resources. We're actually creating these tools!
* The keyword or tag for this project will be npmgmt101.