Non-Profits and Drupal

I am interested...our web dev shop in Dallas is serving non-profits here is a brief article - http://www.koinemedia.com/article/drupal-non-profits

We had a great BOF today for churches and non-profits at www.DrupalCampDallas.org - was an awesome DrupalCamp! Come to DrupalCamp Austin (probably Oct 11-12) and we'll connect then.

Lee

Lee Raney
Dallas Drupal Group

www.KoineMedia.com
www.Christian.com

www.Twitter.com/leeraney

Hi Stefan,

My name is Chana Campos and I run AustinCMS, a training and mentoring consultancy here in Austin. As part of the training end of my business, I regularly offer a free training seat to a non-profit for my CMS classes. I am saying 'CMS' because I train on several of them - including Drupal. :-) I do development work in Drupal for non-profits and also train on Drupal here in Central Texas. I run Drupal Boot Camps twice a month in Austin and there has been an interesting, and significant, increase in Drupal in the last few months in this area, to be certain.

One perspective that I have of nonprofits right now is that they are so constrained by budget - and also importantly - aptitude - that the thought of tackling a Drupal development project with essentially non-technical staff would be an immediate "no-go". I have suggested to several non-profits locally that I could work with their staff to train them to build their site for far less than hiring me - or someone else to do it. In each and every case, I have been told "absolutely not." There is no one who "wants to do it" and "they only want to use it - not build it", and "we don't have staff available - let alone with the desire or aptitude, to do that."

And actually, I have to say, given the complexities and difficulties of project development - even with professional developers - I can see their point. Why do we think that all it takes it teaching someone how to use a tool - and they are suddenly capable of dealing with - architectural issues, requirements gathering, documentation, server and scalability issues, integration issues, security issues, maintenance and management issues and the on-going growth and integration of new functionality that any site needs? Even a Drupal site requires significant attention to these details...who provides it?

Most developers and architects have spent years acquiring and fine-tuning those skills - and even if they contribute them at no charge during initial development - what happens to the non-prof site two or three years down the line? As an example, I recently had two University of Texas IT employees in a class, and they were amazed at how much they didn't realize they needed to think about - even with a tool as complete as Drupal. And these are the professionals...!

Are we doing a non-profit a favor by suggesting that their staff can suddenly start thinking as professional developers? They really don't want to - in my experience. They (understandably) want to focus on their core mission. I believe that non-profit technical staff can and SHOULD be taught to maintain their Drupal sites - but, A to Z development - there's more to helping a non-profit that teaching them how to add modules and a theme to a site.

I don't wish to sound discouraging - only realistic. I feel a great responsibility to the local Drupal community and try to act accordingly. So, I do provide a free seat at every training nonetheless - and hope it does some good!

Kind regards,

Chana

I’m Gordon Atkinson with Jethro Management. We’ve developed Drupal sites for a number of not for profit sites - several churches, a blog network for the Christian Century, and some others. A number of those are local Texan not for profits as well – some are listed below. I’ve worked for several not for profit organizations in other capacities as well. The not for profit organizations we’ve worked with are showing the same kind of desire/need as businesses for websites that manage their information and content in sophisticated way. In other words, their expectations are keeping pace with the corporate world. And while it is true that many have budgetary constraints, a lot of them have budgets as big or bigger than most businesses. They have staff, buildings, resources, etc. etc. The only thing they lack is a for profit mentality at the end of the day. If anything, they are sometimes more free to spend on a website since they lack the same kind of bottom line requirements for their shareholders.

I think the question is one of helping them adjust their expectations. Not for profit organizations often have a rather dated view of a website as a product that is designed and forgotten or maintained rather easily. Initially they want their website to deliver in new ways, but they don’t understand the complexity of a CMS like Drupal. It’s a question of carefully walking them through a shift in the way they think. They need to be educated about the complexity of Drupal and come to expect that paying for website maintenance and upkeep is an expense that they need to factor in.

The truth is, these are sophisticated people. I’ve found that once I explain what capabilities Drupal is giving them for FREE, they are ready to accept a relatively minimal cost to develop and maintain the site. Jethro’s yearly price for upgrading Drupal and their modules and shepherding the site is still minimal when compared with their other expenses.

We have had a strategic alignment with many of our not for profit customers for many years handling their outsourced web management for them, while enabling them to concentrate on content development and their other core business tasks.

We would consider it the best practice approach that a not for profit organisation outsource the development, backend technical, hosting and site configuration and maintenance to a Drupal shop like ourselves and keep their focus on their output delivery to their clientele, members or parishioners as the case may be. The danger with teaching and training not for profit organization staff and volunteers in the technical development / management of a Drupal CMS (or any other non core business technical skill) is that volunteer (and paid) workforces come and go and the expertise or desire to manage these specialized roles can be lost / overrun with other work etc.

As Stefan suggested in his post we also would be interested in helping not for profits benchmark, share networking opportunities and learn more about Drupal. However we suspect that in most cases the actual organizations themselves won’t generally care too much about the Drupal aspect of the software – it is just a tool to them.

http://CCblogs.org
http://www.woodlandbc.org
http://www.alzcare.net

Gordon Atkinson
Web Services Manager
Jethro Management
Email gordon@jethromanagement.biz
Web www.jethromanagement.biz

Hi Gordon,

(Like the hat.. :-)

I hope that I didn't give the impression that I thought non-profits were "country bumpkins" in the world of technology. They are not. It is just that it is certainly NOT their core mission. You make a good point about volunteers/employees coming and going - therefore, when I give a free seat to training, there is one stipulation - that the individual coming must be an actual employee of the non-profit. It is true that employees come and go, as well. But, there is slightly more "investment" there, if it is an employee. I agree with all of your points, actually. I think that your points also apply quite nicely to the "for profit" crowd as well. My experience is that most CMS, in general, are "oversold" as a "quick and easy" manner for non-technical staff to maintain their websites. (This may be true - and it WILL take some training and hand-holding for that - as it would for any group.)

However, I can't tell you how many organizations quickly realize after even minimal training - that managing a CMS is more than they
"bargained" for....

Kind regards,

Chana
AustinCMS

I'd be interested in whatever networking we can put together. I am currently a Board of Trustees member for Dignity Houston, as well as the Webmaster for them. I'd done a great deal of Web development on other other platforms before setting up the DignityHouston.org Web site using Drupal. It's been a learning experience for me, but I've learned a lot (the hard way) about theming using customized template files and the like. It's been fun, but terribly frustrating at times. Dignity Houston is a chapter of Dignity USA. We knew that dignityusa.org was getting a new Web site, but it was a total surprise to me that the national organization had chosen Drupal as its platform as well, at the same time that we independently made the same choice.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses to this post and the representation of perspectives (CMS/Drupal trainer, Drupal developer serving nonprofits, Nonprofit board member/webmaster . . .). It's making me think differently about this. One thing I'm realizing is that it may be anomalous for nonprofits to have staff members who are directly engaged either wholly, or in part, with Drupal development for their nonprofit. It also makes me think that we shouldn't approach the subject of nonprofits as a monolith, but rather on a ranging scale of size and technical know-how. So with that, I have this axiom:

The capacity or ability for a nonprofit to create and maintain its own Drupal-based CMS / web site (i.e. its Drupability) is a function of, and proportional to, its size (measured in staff and budget) and (or) the amount of technical know-how that its staff possesses.

So in Use Case (1) of a very small non-profit with 1 or 2 staff members who use computers as typewriters and for sending email, the Drupability would be very low, approaching zero. In that Use Case, what Chana says makes sense. It'd be better to outsource both site development and maintenance.

Conversely, in Use Case (2) of a large non-profit with 15 to 20 staff members that includes an IT staff person and/or someone that deals with databases, as well as other staff who are creatives versed in Adobe-ware, the Drupability would be much higher.

Use Case (2) is more closely aligned to the type of nonprofit that I work for, with the add-on that we are a media organization.

Arguably there would be a better ROI for Drupal training of Use Case (2) nonprofits.

What I'm interested in, as a staff member of a nonprofit that is working with developers on a fairly complicated Drupal project, is to network with similar type nonprofits. I can see the value in a type of Nonprofit Drupal Users Group.

In any event, I'm hoping to organize a presentation, which I may even want to call something like "Nonprofit Drupability", for the Oct. 11/12 DrupalCamp Austin.

So between now and then I'd like to do some research and gather more information about how nonprofits in Austin and in Texas are using Drupal. I think it'd be good to give some more granularity to these 2 Use Cases I mentioned. And be able to present information about a spectrum of nonprofit examples. I'd also like to get more information on the breakdown of how nonprofits are using Drupal, versus Joomla and whatever else is out there.

How do I get involved in the Drupal Camp??? I'd love to contribute somehow!!!! :-D

Who is running this show anyway??? :-)

Thanks - and sorry for the Off-Topic-ness,

Chana

Great discussion - @ Stefan - Do you think this would be a good topic to open up to complimentary groups such as these?

• http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-for-good
• http://groups.drupal.org/open-media-project

Also think this thread may have some relevance? -
http://groups.drupal.org/node/22619

Cheers!

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions