Bayer Center Nonprofit Technology Survey

One of the few open-ended questions we ask on the survey is:

What is your orgnization’s technology dream or next big step?

The answers cover a large spectrum of ambition, but many of them target simple steps or states of technology that one would have thought (oh, 8 years ago in the summer of the first survey) that we would have solved by now. A sampling:

• new hardware, better software, ample website and tech troubleshooting support
• Getting a better computer network, getting more training for staff
• Our own website
• New client management database

These responses, in fact, overlap with the kinds of responses we got in 2002, the first time we asked the question. A besetting problem – e.g. no centralized information system – may be solved by one agency but still loom as a barrier for 10 others. The final report will include a more quantitative analysis of the technology dream responses, but the theme of prosaic, enduring “dreams” definitely persists.

As long as the basic tools – PCs, network infrastructure, databases, web sites – are the next thing, nonprofits will continue to lag in adopting other technologies that create opportunities to reach more people and make change now.

We are so very close to one of our internal goals for this project: 300 survey responses. In prior surveys, we have received as many as 286 responses, and we really want to break that 300 barrier. So if you’re a Western PA nonprofit that hasn’t responded yet, please help us make our goal by responding online or in PDF form now!

My coworkers will tell you this: I neurotically check all of the avenues by which surveys are received during this project. I sweat the mail delivery every day. I looked at the stats of visits to our survey blog page, oh, hourly. I look at our online survey site multiple times a day, hoping to see that total number of surveys received climb.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when the blog hits started climbing, for no apparent reason. Yesterday and today represent the second argest 2-day volume of visits during the project. The only larger 2-day volume followed an intimate email blast to 1100 of our closest friends. Imagine my excitement when the online surveys started rolling in at a surprising rate. I stalked the office trying to figure out if someone had sent a message that would drive new traffic. I inspected the incoming surveys to make sure they were legit. They were. And there was no discernible pattern among respondents; they work in every mission category and around the region.

Clearly, someone linked to us somewhere. The blog stats don’t tell me which site is responsible for all the new traffic, but we’ll take it. If you can explain our sudden burst of traffic, please leave a comment.

The data analysis purist in me hates to put out early information on a data set that is not even fully collected, let alone checked and cleansed. Still, I thought I would toss data junkies a bone in the form of an early finding for 2008. It appears that the number of nonprofit job descriptions containing tech skills is growing.

Question: For what percentage of staff positions are technology skills listed in job descriptions and included in employee evaluations?

__None __1-33% __34-66% __67-100%

Answer: (early returns, n ~ 200 for 2008 )

The number of organizations with tech skills in no job descriptions has decreased from 19% in 2006 to 15% this year. That continues a downward trend from a quarter of organizations in 2004. Most of the decline in that bracket is balanced by an increase in organizations that include tech skills in 34-66% of their job descriptions.

From these figures, we estimate that the overall rate of tech skills in nonprofit jobs has increased from 36% in 2006 to 43% in 2008.

All of these figures are subject to change before the final report, but the law of large numbers would predict that the final numbers will hew close to these.