Non-profit organisations are keen to take advantage of emerging technologies such as social networking for fundraising and software as a service for administration, but a lack of perceived support options is keeping them away from open source software and focused on traditional providers such as Microsoft.
At this week's Connecting Up conference in Brisbane, staff from non-profit groups were eagerly discussing Web 2.0 technologies, how wikis could help their organisation, and the role which Twitter might play in their fund-raising plans.
"We in Australia have barely scratched the surface of Web 2.0," said Doug Jacquier, CEO of CISA (Community Information Strategies Australia), which organised the event. "If we don't move soon, we risk losing an entire generation of potential supporters and donors."
While next generation technologies may be appealing, for resource-strapped charities, government service delivery branches and non-government organisations (NGOs), merely getting existing IT to work can be an uphill battle.
Moving beyond that is both pricey and scary, and unfamiliar concepts like free and open source software (FOSS) are unlikely to get a look in when the PCs are still running a pre-1995 desktop suite.
The challenge of change
Change is difficult in any business, but doubly so in minimally staffed organisations being pressured to deal with urgent social problems and unable to offer high IT salaries in a competitive market. In that context, new systems can be very slow to stick.
Want to know more?
For all the latest news, analysis and opinion on Linux, click here
"We're not all that proactive about changing things," said Amanda Kelly, business manager for the Windana Society, a Melbourne drug and alcohol recovery service which is undergoing a complex IT modernisation project. "A lot of my work has been around allowing people to change. It's a long and slow process a lot of the time."
Kelly previously spent five years working with the Australian Community Support Organisation (ACSO). "They had a computer system and did all the intake of clients electronically — and then they printed the information and put it in a paper client file."
Converting those reams of paper into electronic form was a long-term process.
"We had large numbers of travellers coming in pulling out every staple and taking off every sticky note and getting them ready to be scanned. By the time I'd finished, we'd converted 40,000 files. At the same time we had to work out how to change our electronic system to cope with the ongoing capture of information."
Kelly's current project is even more daunting. "At Windana, we have no computer system at all. We're starting from scratch."
Resources are definitely on the limited side. "Our server room is a converted toilet. I spent two hours trying to put together our server cabinet. It arrived in many pieces with no instructions."
Most staff don't need to know that, however. Avoiding technology terminology is crucial, Kelly says. If you mention concepts like wikis or RSS, "people just blank out. But when you say 'Do you want all your forms in one place?' they say 'Yes please'".
Open source shown the door
Something else Windana has avoided is open source. "For my preference, open source would be fantastic," Kelly said, but that's not the route Windana has chosen.
"In our risk assessment, we said we can go open source and the software is free, but how are we going to support it?"
Finding and keeping staff is a big problem, and one emphasised in nearly every presentation at the conference. "We're not going to keep someone," Kelly said. "We can't pay to attract someone who is brilliant with open source."
The constant pace of change is also daunting. "Open source is brilliant, but there's a new version of something every night so you need to monitor and change that," Kelly said. "We didn't have the ability to do that."
Conversely, there's always plenty of people being trained in how to administer Windows and Office, Kelly noted. "If we choose Microsoft, there are Microsoft support people coming out all the time. They're not [necessarily] going to stay [either], but if they don't we've got a fall-back plan." Other PC alternatives for Windana also fell over for cost reasons: "We looked at Mac but the hardware for that was just too expensive."
Even organisations that have embraced open source urge restraint. Philanthropy Australia used the open source MediaWiki software platform built for Wikipedia to help centralise its knowledge resources in a wiki format. "Nearly all our software is open source which works really well for us, but I always caution people that there's a cost in terms of the time and expertise needed," said communications and knowledge manager Louise Arkles. "While it has saved us a bit of money up front, there are costs involved."
Vista licences for AU$22
Of course, buying Microsoft site licences isn't cheap either, but it turns out that it is considerably cheaper upfront than you might expect. One of the conference sponsors is DonorTec, a "program to assist Australian non profits build their ICT capacity", and whose main line of products seems to be hugely discounted Microsoft and Cisco equipment, donated by the companies themselves.
Microsoft in particular is quite hard to...
4%
4%
My company, based in Christchurch, NZ, provides Drupal-based web application solutions for non-profit organisations (among others) in New Zealand, and we're stuggling to keep up with demand. Drupal and other open source web framewords are taking off like a rocket with this sector.
Frankly, I can't see how organisations can justify spending any of their scant resources on proprietary software licenses. All software requires some support (and you can get commercial open source support in any city in the world if you look for it), but you don't need to fork out for licenses isn't the best use of your money. Moreover, excellent free alternatives exist for just about any software niche you can name.
It saddens me to see nonprofits becoming increasingly committed to proprietary technologies by accepting these "discounted" price options from big software corporates through thinly veiled "discount" programs. They're not getting a "good deal". They're getting their first hit for free. Software corporates aren't idiots. They offer discounted pricing for very sound economic reasons: history shows that educational and charity discounts gets people using your software where they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. It effectively locks participating organisation in to their proprietary software products, generally thanks to proprietary file formats (think MS Office or Autocad for example)! It's a treacherous marketplace, and unforgiving for the uninitiated.