Getting the Tech House in Order
We are strategists, communicators, campaigners, and policy wonks. Political wonks, too. We like to spend our time with our clients devising the best ways to win votes, hearts and minds, attention, whatever will make the most difference.
We don’t love talking about the technology to back that up, and usually we don’t have to. Tools for communications and organization have become so ubiquitous, inexpensive, and user-friendly that we usually get to work with clients to figure out how best to deploy them in support of kick-butt strategy.
However, we’ve been reminded of late that a little thinking about your technology toolkit is a good thing now and then. So, three things we hope you’ll take to heart as you consider how to implement the best possible strategies for communications, advocacy, and fundraising:
1) Make sure your technology isn’t holding you back.
We’ve been a bit like a broken record in preaching that successful communications is not about the tools, it’s about executing a well-thought and appropriate strategy (for example, here, here, here, and here). That’s still the true story, but some recent work has reminded us that a baseline level of access to the tools is necessary to implement almost any good strategy. If, on a regular basis, you find yourself saying (or hearing from your strategy team) anything like, “That’s a great idea but it’s a nonstarter because our website can’t accommodate it,” then your technology might be holding you back.
At the very least, if your website doesn’t include a content management system (CMS), with baked-in capacity for RSS feeds and the flexibility to add, change, and test buttons, blocks, and other ways of conveying information, then your technology is holding you back and it’s time to fix it.
2) Never build your own content management system.
There are a slew of open-source content management systems available for every budget level – Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla, to name a few – and if you’ve got budget and are looking for something a bit more “plug and play” there are several good options there, too. It is never a good option to build your own CMS or contract with a developer or firm to build your site on his/her/their own homebuilt one-off CMS. It’s a bad idea for at least two good reasons:
- The big systems have thousands of users who have tested the system, found it’s bugs and weaknesses, and in the case of the open-source solutions devoted their time and brains to making the system better. Not true with the home-brew CMSes. Fewer smart minds and fewer users equals a lot less testing and improvement, which means less usability for you, and less likelihood that the system will have grown to accommodate the baseline technology referenced above.
- If you build your website on a home-grown system, you are forever tied to the developer who built the system. There are hundreds of excellent developers with oodles of experience building on Wordpress (just as an example). If for any reason you want to bring in a new developer, if your site is built on Wordpress you will be awash in terrific options. A homebuilt system has one or two developers who know it inside and out. If you want to switch providers, you’re stuck – either with that developer, or with building a whole new website on a better CMS.
That one-off CMS built by your Communications Director’s son’s college roommate might seem like a bargain now, but it will end up being a very costly decision over time.
3) Choose systems that integrate as much as possible.
There are terrific options for managing websites, mass email, social media, membership lists, donors, and more. Luckily, many of them work together so you don’t have to figure out how to manage multiple databases in order to most effectively communicate with your volunteers, advocates, and donors. We usually talk about this in the same way we talk about not letting your technology hold you back – having the same people in 10 different places certainly holds you back – but it’s so important we thought it deserved it’s own “thing” in this week’s 3 things. Keeping track of how people end up on your list, what they best respond to and when, what they like to do, what they can be inspired to do, and how they’re connected to their networks is vital information – online and offline. Integrating your databases as completely as possible is a good technology investment.