I’ve been involved in nonprofit organizations all of my life. Since a tender young age, I have been subjected to the good example of my parents. I believe that people should contribute time, talent and money to the charitable and/or community endeavor of their choice. I am a strong proponent of “When in need, ask for help. When not in need, offer help.”
Because of this, I have often written about nonprofits.
Because I am a scientist at heart, I also study nonprofits. I observe the factors that differentiate successful events from flops. I’ve been part of more than my share of flops, so I have plenty of data. I can see why people give money to this cause, while ignoring another cause. I can understand why that event keeps happening, year after year, while this event slowly fades away. I see what works and I see what doesn’t.
Because of my skill with technology, for many nonprofits and groups, I have been asked to create fliers, send emails, develop websites, write press releases, schedule workshops, edit videos, start social media campaigns, integrate payment processes, track registrations, manage volunteers and handle financials. I find these tasks very easy to do and enjoy doing them. Because of my always-overflowing schedule, I can’t devote that much time to any one group, so I end up flitting from group to group during those rare moments when I have a break from the crushing pressure of being a university professor, running a business and managing my own nonprofit organization.
More than a decade ago, I started noticing a negative effect when I, or anyone with technical skill, would take over these tasks for a group. When the technically adept person had to stop doing the task, sometimes there would be no one with enough tech savvy to take over, and the group would be stuck. I felt for them.
When they don’t have someone who is able to handle today’s technology, what is a nonprofit to do?
A few years ago I started working on a solution to this problem. I’ve written a few articles sharing bits and pieces of my plan, and there are now several – 25 at current count – groups and nonprofits waiting for me to launch CIRWEP, which stands for contact, invitation, resource, web, event and payment management. I’d say that after five years of spending all my free time on the project, I’m more than halfway there. This summer, my plan is to go on retreat for more than a month and focus all of my attention on finishing the design so that the requirements will be ready to hand over to programmers. So it will be a few more years until we get past the beta testing stage.
In the meantime, I encourage all small groups and nonprofits to utilize websites and tools that are available, free of charge, as much as they can. Here is a list of a few that will get you started:
Google Calendar for shareable calendars.
Google Contacts for sync-able contacts.
Google Gmail for free email.
Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and forms.
Google You Tube for posting videos.
DialMyCalls to call volunteers to remind them of meetings, or attendees to remind them of events.
MailChimp to send out emails to members, volunteers, friends and potential friends. Unlike its closest competitor, Constant Contact, which does not have a free option, Mailchimp is free for up to 2,000 contacts, and I think is easier to use, to boot.
Wix, Weebly or GoogleSites, which are all free web-development tools.
Doodle to help people figure out a good time to meet, when they are not sharing the same calendar.
Eventbrite, a really great tool to track registrations for free events, because they don’t charge anything for free events and charge only a small percentage for online registration for fee-based events.
Dropbox for sharing files, which is unbelievably easy to use, easier than Google Drive, and relatively reliable.
Paypal for accepting credit-card payments without paying for a merchant account.
Freeconference to have multiple-people conference calls for planning meetings, though callers may have to pay long-distance charges if they don’t have free long distance on their phones.
Screenleap to allow people to watch your screen, with the agenda, or a document, or slide presentation or anything else, while everyone is talking on your conference call.
Skype to meet with people and see their faces. Skype can also do text chatting, screen sharing and audio calls. As long as everyone has a Skype account, it is free. You pay to call a landline or cellphone not using Skype.
There is a complete list of tools on my company’s website, though the complete list includes for-pay tools. Go to www.bit.ly/20RKwM1.
The goal for CIRWEP is to replace all of these nonintegrated and difficult-to-use web tools with an integrated system of easy-to-use web tools.
What do you think? Pipedream, or coming reality? Stay tuned.
Dr. CJ Rhoads is founder and CEO of HPL Consortium Inc. She speaks and writes about business strategy, leadership development and health care. She is also a professor at Kutztown University in the College of Business.
