Making a Difference in Interesting Times

Making a Difference in Interesting Times

CCitDG Annual ConferenceOctober 8th, 2009

Edward Granger-HappCIO, Save the Children US & UK

Chairman, NetHope

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Five Take-aways

• We need to be more than “lights-on” in nonprofits

• Have a dream and don’t cut it• NGOs cannot follow in the footsteps of

corporations• Collaborate or perish• Ask good questions

The value of IT?

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• Save the Children (US)– Canceled raises (2 years)– 10%+ HQ staff cuts; early retirement packages

• CARE (Atlanta)– ~70 staff laid off, including ~60 people in HQ– Salary Cuts: executive by 10%; other staff by 4%

• World Vision (US)– 50 staff laid off ~ 5 % US workforce; Eliminated 25 vacant

positions– Reducing benefits (retirement match down 50%; co-pays up) – Freezing salaries/Canceling raises

• Ford, Kellogg, RWJ Foundations– Offering buyouts to 30-50% staff– Closing offices and cutting travel

• Museums and Art Orgs– Layoffs; furloughs; and program scale-back/elimination

Interesting Times

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IT Departments Have Been Hit Hard

• % of US NGOs with mandated cuts is 79%

• Average % cut from IT Budget is 24%

--US NGO-CIO Cost Cutting Survey, April 2009

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Why is it that technology is too often "the music program of the nonprofit industry, the first to get cut and the last to be reinstated"?  -- Holly Ross, ED, NTEN

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A parable

He CUT COSTS

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.”--Isabel Allende

What’s the single most important strategic question?

What’s my destination?

Save the ChildrenIT Vision and Strategy

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My Vision is Simple and Ambitious

Making us all part of one virtual village.

Connect!

• Why? We can imagine a village, a village is connected, needs are personally known & met

• Strategy is about setting a destination & having a clear vision about what that destination looks like

• A story about Fraser…

Double the number of children we reach with quality programs.

Increase Alliance collaboration to build our global movement for children

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Technology is a Key to Building CapacityMore Effective Impact

At Greater Scale

Effective, Efficient, Scalable Programs

Hir

ing

Tra

inin

g

To

ols

Pro

ces

ses

Sta

nd

ard

s

Funding Support

Systems Impact

Pa

rtn

erin

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Ad

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cac

y

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STC IT Strategy – Moving the Agenda Up the Pyramid

Incre

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

Donor & HQ

Facing

Child & Field Facing

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The Strategy Changes at Each LevelIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

Pilot & Build

Connect & Deliver

Buy, Co-op & COTS

Drive out costs, In-source, Shared Services

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And the Good Enough Boundary is HighIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Competitive

or Leading

Pilot & Build

Connect & Deliver

Buy, Co-op & COTS

Drive out costs, In-source, Shared Services

Innovative, value-addedTechnology

“Good Enough”CommodityTechnology

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“What makes a resource truly strategic … is not ubiquity but scarcity. You only gain an edge over rivals by having or doing something that they can't have or do. By now, the core functions of IT — data storage, data processing, and data transport — have become available and affordable to all.” --Nicolas Carr

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Some Dysfunctional Pyramids

FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

The low cost utility;Efficient and headless

Drive out costs, In-source, Shared Services

Value-less IT?

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Some Dysfunctional PyramidsIn

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OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

The Business App Portfolio;

Siloed & Foundationless

Buy, Co-op & COTS

Shadow IT?

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Some Dysfunctional PyramidsIn

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PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

Connect & Deliver

The Front-lineService Org;

The Disconnected Field

Shadow IT?

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Some Dysfunctional PyramidsIn

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Helping save more lives;1:1 need fulfillment

CHILD“Differentiating”

Pilot & Build

Impact!

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So what type of IT are you in a crisis?In

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• Are we going to be about only saving costs or saving twice the children?

• That fundamentally is the key, the hinge on which NGO IT strategy turns.

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We Need to Push the Pyramid at Both EndsIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

Get out

Get in

Corporate indicators?

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What if we continue down the path of following our for-profit colleagues. Will the tried and true work for the NGO world?

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Nonprofits get by with a fifth (or less) of corp. IT costs

Average IT Spend per Seat

$-$1,000$2,000$3,000$4,000$5,000$6,000$7,000$8,000$9,000

$10,000$11,000$12,000$13,000$14,000

Small NGO Large NGO - NetHopeMembers

Corporate - No. America

5x

4x

18x

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IF• 57% of ERP projects don't realize their

ROI (Nucleus Research)

• 66% IT projects fail (Standish Chaos DB) • NGOs spend a 20th what corporations

do (Tuck survey)

• And we are spending donors’ dollarsTHEN • We must find a better way...

Non Profit IT Departments Can’t Play the Odds

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Key Conclusion: we can’t do it

Even if nonprofits tripled IT spending, they would still be playing catch-up for just keeping the lights on.

Bottom line?

We need to collaborate or perish!

Collaboration: The NetHope Case

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NetHope’s Members … an organization that works

Collaborating in Challenging Times! 32

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SharedSpecialization

Partnering“How can we work with corporations?”

Basic Info Sharing“What are my peers doing?”

Collaborating is about trust and humilityIn

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Joint Projects“What can we build together?”

“Who has expertise I can trust?

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NetHope Vision

To be a catalyst for collaboration in the International NGO community and enable best use of technology for connecting in the developing parts of the world

Connected Together, Changing the World

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External Collaboration Will Drive the Internal Agenda

Why NetHope as a collaboration works? We have…

– History: NetHope has been at it for 8 years: building trust since 2001

– Hunger: NGO IT are beggars – don’t underestimate value of under-funding

– Humility: extending trust to centers of excellence in other members

– Partnering: corporate partners buy-in to the leverage of collaboration and having impact with technology

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NetHope’s Major Partners and Supporters …

Our Partners

Our Supporters

Collaborating in Challenging Times!

Learn to love the questions

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Some Poke-in-the-Eye Questions

1. Why are we still running our own email? – Ron Markezich forecast

2. Why are we running our own help desks? 3. Why do we need a server, period? –Chris

Thomas4. Why haven't we changed our program

delivery significantly in past 30 years? 5. Why do Imagine Cup students develop more

field-based IT innovation in 9 months than nonprofits in 5 years?

6. Why is Cisco able to cut travel 50% and increase customer contacts 20-30% and we can't approach that with our Field?

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Six questions for Nonprofit CIOs

1. What new programs (that directly serve beneficiaries) have you helped engender that would not have been possible without the new use of technology?

2. What have you done to help close the "productivity gap" in the way your nonprofit delivers programs and operates as an organization?

3. How have you helped bridge the divide that will be caused by disruptive innovations in the nonprofit space?

4. For relief organizations: How have you helped disaster response be 50% faster with 50% greater impact?

5. How have you helped your organization attract and retain knowledge workers (and IT professionals) in the face of crisis of the baby boom generation retirement wave?

6. What are you doing to move commodity functions out of your organization and contribute time, dollars and support to the truly value-added functions of your agency?

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Five Take-aways

• We need to be more than “lights-on” in nonprofits

• Have a dream and don’t cut it• NGOs cannot follow in the footsteps of

corporations• Collaborate or perish• Ask good questions

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Further Reading

• Blogs: http://eghapp.blogspot.com/

http://granger-happ.blogspot.com/ (Dartmouth Fellowship)

• Web site: http://www.fairfieldreview.org/hpmd/EGHprofile.nsf

• Email: ehapp@savechildren.org

• Twitter: @ehapp • And the book:

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, chap. 11.

Questions?

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Appendix

• Additional detail slides

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CCitDG Annual Conference 2009, October 7th to 9th

‘Making a Difference in Interesting Times’

The theme of the conference is "Making a Difference in Interesting Times". Current economicconditions are just as challenging for charities as for any other organisation, with issuesincluding falling income from donors, falling interest on reserves and, for those workingoverseas, increased costs due to falling exchange rates. For all our members (and we're talkingCIOs and IT directors) this has meant a big change to their ‘status quo’. Times are tough,budgets are being cut but more significantly there is an increased level of uncertainty, the futureis less clear, plans are being consistently torn-up and re-made and so forth. However challengingtimes often present more opportunities and in the more effective organisations, CIOs are engagedwith the whole leadership team in turning adversity into advantage, plotting the path for theircharity through the ‘recession’ and positioning their charity to emerge stronger; others aremerely hanging on and hoping! So the conference will explore ways in which we, as CIOs andIT Directors, can really make a difference to an organisation’s performance during thesechallenging times.

The approach we have taken in organizing the event has been to give all the speakers a similarbrief and invite them to tackle this from their perspective, so we have:- Board Level - Ed Granger Happ- Finance Director – Mark Hallam- Sector Consultant - Chris Tiernan- Leading Research Organisation – Dave Aron- Supplier Viewpoint – Stuart Monk- Looking to the Future - Peter Cochrane- Soft Skills - Diana Gomick

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An introduction• I’m Ed Granger-Happ

ehapp@savechildren.org

• Some things on my resume:– I spent 13 years on Wall Street & 10 running

my own management consulting business --both in IT

– I’ve been at Save the Children 9 years– Save the Children is my third career

• Some things not on my resume:– I was born on Mother’s Day– I have two step-sons, David (18) and Scott (15)– I like to exercise my right brain with creative

writing (see www.fairfieldreview.org)

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In the beginning, there was the vision

Imagine this:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Bumper sticker version:

All the information for all the people, now

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Six strategic questions ED/CEOs should ask

1.How can we ensure Convergence rather than Divergence?

2.How do we balance innovation and foundation building? process and work-flow applications, and reserve some

3.What’s the technology future and what’s the past?

4.How do we meet near-term business needs while building for the long term?

5.How do we invest enough and not too much? 6.From where will disruptive innovations come

for nonprofits come?

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Relentless Focus on the Goal…

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Who Are Our Customers?

IT Dept.

HQ Depts

ProgramDesigner

Donors,Grantors

FieldWorker

Child

Corporations

Organization

Field

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What does success look like?In five years, I envision SC using technology in the following ways:1. Greater use of technology to directly impact the lives of children. New

programs in health, education, & protection delivered & monitored via technology.

2. All SC offices seamlessly connected. Stakeholders can readily find each other based on expertise & interests, move easily from one office to next & feel part of one organization. Solutions for low bandwidth locations identified & delivered.

3. Critical management information (financials, program status, key metrics like children reached) is available for all countries on a near-real time basis.

4. SC is leveraging technology to be the first & most responsive organization in emergencies (e.g., RFID-based solutions, real-time information & tracking.)

5. Greater connectedness between donors & SC, sponsors & children using web 2.0 technology (e.g. social networking) to strengthen & increase relationships.

6. A low cost technology infrastructure that is shared & scales across the Alliance for large & small members, complex & basic field offices.

7. A greater use of consumer applications (e.g. SKYPE, Flickr, LinkedIn, Google calendar, etc.) by our employees for conducting their daily work.

8. Greater collaboration with INGOs & other partners sharing basic commodity IT services like help desk & procurement.

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Our Objectives Support the StrategyIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

FinanceMgmt (FMS)

Overseas WAN“FO Wiring”

ICT4DNetHope

Beneficiary Pilots

Imagine Cup

Video Conferencing

“VOX”

Unified US-UK IT

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What are Top Tech Questions to Ask?

1. How will global broadband impact how we do business?

2. What will the unbundling of the application value chain mean?

3. How will consumer applications and cell phones change the tool set?

4. What will the immediacy & democratization of information mean?

5. From where will disruptive innovations come for nonprofits?

6. What if we’re wrong?

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Some Poke-in-the-Eye Questions1. Why are we still running our own email? – Ron Markezich

forecast2. Why are we running our own help desks? 3. Why are we running commodity IT instead of mission-

moving IT? 4. Why are we following in steps of corporations instead of

leap-frogging them? 5. “Shadow IT” should be encouraged, supported,

recognized –Chris Thomas6. Why do we need a server, period? –Chris Thomas7. Why haven't we changed our program delivery

significantly in past 30 years? 8. Why do Imagine Cup students develop more field-based

IT innovation in 9 months than nonprofits in 5 years? 9. Why is Cisco able to cut travel 50% and increase

customer contacts 20-30% and we can't approach that with our Field?

10.Why is it that “every day, somewhere in the world, something is being reinvented in our organization poorly”?

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What if we’re wrong?

Strategy is about making bets!

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Advice from a Hockey Legend

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” --Wayne Gretzky

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A final piece of advice #1 (User Revolutions)

• Users of technology find ways to get what they need– Case of the Wall Street analysts and the Apple II

• Centralized and controlling technology policies usually invite revolt among the users. – Seeing this again with influx of consumer

applications like SKYPE, Blogger and Facebook in the workplace.

• IT managers would do well to heed Lyndon Johnson’s advice: – “better to have them inside the tent pissing out

than outside pissing in.”

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Before you make your bets: – when there is rapid change and

uncertainty, smart organizations vary like mad.

– Run pilots, experiments and test ideas. Throw away what doesn’t work. Take to scale that which succeeds.

A final piece of advice #2