At NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in mid-March, as usual I came across a few great finds. At this year’s conference, I was wearing two hats -- the technology consultant hat that I have been wearing for over a decade, and another hat reflecting a new position of volunteer coordinator with a locally-based nonprofit organization. I kept one consultant eye open, but was also looking for solutions to help me manage volunteers and assist the organization overall. In this article I will focus on the things I found that will likely benefit the organization I have become affiliated with.
Google Docs - Shared Conference Notes
One enterprising NTC attendee (Jodi Sperber @jsperber) set up a set of shared Google Documents so that people attending the various sessions could add their notes -- the result being a shared post-conference write up.
Zerista - myNTC
The NTC used an "app" (really, just a mobile device optimized website) called Zerista. My colleague Lisa describes it in more detail here. My favorite aspect of the Zerista app was that once I had chosen sessions that I wanted to attend, I could look at "my agenda" to see which sessions were coming up next -- and if the one I wanted was full, I could easily see my second choice and head to that one. It was a lot easier than paging through the program book. I also liked the built in chat, which was sort of an internal Twitter feed -- but it also pulled in tweets that used the conference hash tag.
Tree Saver
The first technology of interest I came across during a session was Tree Saver. Treesaver is an open-source, cross-platform framework that enables one to produce slick-looking, very readable articles, magazines, or even books online. Because Tree Saver is standards-based (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), it requires no applications to run. It also looks great and adjusts to whatever device you are using, be it a desktop widescreen, a laptop, iPad, or smartphone.
Tree Saver intrigued me because the organization I am involved with has lots of stories to tell. I can imagine those stories and images being laid out in Tree Saver and having the high quality of the layout being preserved on whatever platform is being used to view them. No more expensive app development just to read something!
To get started quickly, there are several templates ("grids" in Tree Speak) available for download. There is a wiki for most of the Tree Saver how-to documentation and the JavaScript framework can be downloaded here and you can follow them on Twitter (@trsvr). There is a nice example of how See3 published an interesting story about the Egyptian rebellion that affected the organization personally at: egypt.see3.net.
Volunteer Rally
As I walked around the NTC Science Fair (exhibit hall), I asked multiple vendors about the volunteer management capabilities of their systems. There were many well-known vendors, showing all the bells and whistles of their systems. However, for most of them the focus was on CRM and donor management. Volunteer management was usually an afterthought – if a thought at all. So, at the end of the evening I was a bit discouraged and wondered whether I might have to build a customized solution – something that I would be glad to share with others once done, but with the current workload and the need to have a system ready soon, that option was unappealing.
I mean, really, my needs were simple. All I wanted was an online system where I could post volunteer opportunities, have people sign up for them, be able to communicate with the volunteers, and manage the schedules for various volunteer sessions.
The next day I went to a workshop on open-source software for fundraising and volunteer management. And when the volunteer management product was highlighted, I could not believe my luck. A couple of guys from OpenSourcery were presenting their product called Volunteer Rally, which is built on the Drupal core and requires the core for installation; however, it is not necessary to run Volunteer Rally as a Drupal module, although that seems to be one option.
For those interested in donor management, OpenSourcery has also released an open source product called Donor Rally. Donor Rally allows fundraisers to set up individualized campaign pages; however, I did not review it in detail.
Technology in Times of Disaster: The Important Role of Social Media in Disaster Response and Awareness
This session was a discussion of tools and how they had been used in disaster response. I came away from this session with a list of tools -- and the responders seem to know which tools are best for specific situations. However, there did not appear to be an overarching technology framework. The experts used specific tools for specific tasks and relied on their own networking, communications, and expertise to coordinate responses and actions.
Tools mentioned included:
Additionally, the Red Cross blogs about crisis response here: http://newsroom.redcross.org
I went to several other sessions, but those were more strategy-based discussions and not specifically tool-related. Of course, it seems that everyone is using Facebook and Twitter to get their messages out and to engage with stakeholders. It seems like those approaches will continue into the foreseeable future.