Nonprofit Nerd

This seems like such basic information. Isn’t this all common knowledge? Why would I even write about this?

I did a presentation in front of a college class recently, talking about the tech needs of small nonprofits. Now, this is a computing class, so the students know all about web hosts, databases, cloud computing, and most of the other things I write about here. The other presenters, who also work in the nonprofit sphere, made it clear that there was limited understanding of even very common office and communications technology. One person thought the best way to pull information from a database was to print it all out and search through it manually!

This is not because they are stupid, by the way, but because they have skill sets that have little to do with using technology. Nonetheless, they are the people in their organizations who work with the web site, the databases or the computers. This is so common in the nonprofit world that I have stopped being shocked by it. Small nonprofits often can’t afford to hire trained techies as staffers. Tech chores often fall to the least technophobic staff person, who may still know very little about how it all works. Those of us who work with technology sometimes forget that a great many people still have jobs that don’t involve sitting at a computer all day long.

These are the people Nonprofit Nerd is written to help. I know firsthand how difficult it is to be thrown all kinds of technical tasks without actually knowing much about the way they work. What got me through those situations was the availability of online user forums, f.a.q. pages and wikis that discussed the tasks I was basically teaching myself to do. I hope that this site can be an easy-to-use resource for people in similar situations.

As the archive grows, I hope that visitors will let me know about software that they have found useful but do not find listed here. I am always looking for new ways to expand my organization’s capacity, and I am sure other visitors to the site will feel the same.

- Robert Porter

Questions or comments? Email me at: ro (dot) porter (@) gmail (dot) com