Posted on Charity Villlage December 2, 2003.

Technology is changing so quickly, it's difficult for organizations to select the right solutions for their various information and communication needs. Examples include email services, spam filters, web site software and hosting, mobile phones, and computers. Solutions that are extremely expensive one year may cost a tenth as much the following year. And cheap services that were just fine one year may be completely inadequate the next.

I'll suggest specific solutions to two difficult areas, and then suggest a general approach that might help. The specific solutions will only be relevant for a few months until everything changes again.

Web sites:

A simple web site that describes an organization's services and contact information doesn't need an elaborate software program or process. For some advice on how to design your web site, see this previous Charity Village article. For software, you can use just about any basic program, including MS FrontPage, or one of the instant web sites listed in the CMS list below. Keep away from fancy graphics, flash media and so on – they mostly just annoy people and make your site less accessible and more expensive.

For complex web sites, choose a Content Management System, or CMS, that makes it easy for staff or volunteers to add and revise content without involving a programmer. CMSs are constantly getting cheaper and easier to use. See my blog entry on CMSs.

Email services and spam filters:

The explosion of spam and viruses, along with the increasing reliance on email, make it essential for organizations to set up solid, reliable email services. My preference is for outsourced email services that I can switch whenever their reliability goes down or my needs change, rather than setting up an internal solution that we manage ourselves. Over the years, I've switched providers several times, which is easy if you maintain your own domain name (e.g. realworldsystems.net) rather than using a third party domain name (e.g. youragency@sympatico.ca). Absolutely no agency or business should be using a third party domain name in their email addresses. Period.

I'm now using a combination of three email services which are working really well.

• ApolloHosting provides an unlimited number of email addresses protected by two spam and virus filters for $20/month US. It also provides 200MB of web site hosting, so we use it for our corporate web site, and lots of extra features.
• Magma.ca, a Canadian company, provides our high speed internet access (we recently switched from Sympatico because their email services have deteriorated significantly in the last few months), and also our outgoing mail server. Remember that your outgoing mail server is usually different from your incoming mail server, and you will generally be forced to use the outgoing mail services of your internet access provider. So you can have a great email service, but if your internet service provider sucks, your outgoing mail will keep getting rejected or otherwise messed up. Magma also offers general email services but is more expensive than ApolloHosting.
• Here's a more advanced option – we recently started using an email backup service through our DNS services at UltraDNS. Their Mail MXBacker service constantly monitors our email server, and when it goes down for any reason, it backs up all of the email that is being sent to our domain. When the email server comes back up, the email is sent through. This is a wonderful service, because email servers do occasionally go down, and previously we would lose most of the email messages that were 'in transit'. Cost is about $15/month per domain US in addition to the DNS services. I love this company and have been using it for years – I can manage my own domain names and point them wherever I like, so I can switch the location of my web sites or subdomains within a couple of hours as often as I like. Very handy. You can also buy their SiteBacker service, which mirrors your web site in case your usual service provider goes down.

I experimented with several stand-alone spam filters but none of them were as easy or effective as getting an email service that automatically provides it.

Mark Surman (see below) notes that not everyone can change email providers quickly or easily. He suggests Cloudmark as a good option for people using Outlook. “It has the bonus of being a very cool product based on collective intelligence of the user base rather than heuristics.”

Other technologies:

I'm currently experimenting with free or inexpensive Voice over IP services (like Skype), a virtual PBX for our company (Unite.ca), videoconferencing and web conferencing services, the new functionality of Windows Sharepoint Services, and comparing notes on other approaches with many colleagues in the technology field.

Tracking changes and improvements and cost reductions in this field requires many hours a week of reading technology newsletters, trying things out, comparing approaches that make sense for small organizations, and updating information on older solutions. It is not an easy or simple thing to do. Organizations that are trying to decide on a technology solution are very unlikely to be able to devote this amount of time and expertise to the research. As a result, organizations select technologies based on advice from the suppliers they already have, or by looking at a few ads, or by reading web logs and reviews, or by informal advice from enthusiasts.

If you already have a good, trusted and reliable supplier, it makes sense to stay with them. Just make sure that you do a scan of other options once in a while to ensure you're not locked into an expensive or obsolete platform.

In some cases, if you're willing to put up with variable quality, you can consider free services like Skype (for long distance phone calls over the computer). In other cases you need rock-solid reliability, and can't afford to go for a cheap approach.

If you are doing a scan of options, or if you need good advice on a new solution, I strongly advise you get an expert in the area who does not depend on commissions or is attached to a proprietary system. You might be able to ask them to help as a volunteer assignment (if you're a nonprofit), or you may hire them on a small consulting project. The right advice can save you thousands of dollars. A good consultant will assess your needs, identify a few relevant solutions, compare their costs, benefits and risks, and at the very least help you evaluate the performance of your current supplier if you have one.

Here are a few experts who can give objective advice on technologies:

• RealWorld Systems, of course. Contact me at gkerr at realworldsystems.net.
• Mark Surman of The Commons Group in Toronto keeps an eye on a variety of software trends and technologies of interest to non-profits. One of Mark's specialties is free and open source web applications, especially content management systems. Mark says in an email, “As Commons' main interest is in supporting non-profit collaboratives and partnerships, we also keep an eye on tools that facilitate sharing — or syndication — of information between web sites. While most agencies are not yet ready for these kinds of tools, the experience of employment groups like ACTEW are showing that there is a great deal of potential in this kind of information sharing. Our aim with all of this knowledge is to help find the cheapest and best tools for the job so money can be spent on more important things like real content and services for the community.”
• Luigi Canali De Rossi, known as 'Robin Good', is based in Rome, Italy. He specializes in several areas (independent publishing, information design, usability and testing), but his knowledge of tools for online collaboration is probably his strongest asset. He provides a live online or teleconferenced consultation on choosing the right collaboration tool for $301 US, and also publishes a comprehensive comparison of effective SOHO collaboration tools for $195. I have found him to be an amazing source of information on this stuff. In an online meeting, he will demonstrate various options, test them on your system, discuss your needs, and recommend the services that are most likely to work in your context.

  I would recommend a consultation with Luigi to anyone who needs to make a serious move to online collaboration but wants alternatives to the expensive corporate services like Webex and Microsoft Live Meeting. As Luigi says in an email, “the tools that I use work as good or better than those fancy hosted services costing thousands of dollars per month and I am very keen in reporting truthfully each and every limitation that each solution comes with.”

• Phillip Smith of CommunityBandwidth is another technology resource for nonprofits and the cultural sector. He has a background in web design, photography and graphic design, and calls himself a 'simplifier of technology'. Phillip is the force behind the Toronto chapter of the Social Tech Brewing Company, “an informal gathering of people working on, or interested in, the intersection of technology and the not-for-profit community in Vancouver and Toronto. The simple mandate is for people from tech, business and local not-for-profit organizations get together over beers, on a monthly basis, to discuss how technology can be used for positive social change.”

There's a growing community of technology workers and consultants who are committed to supporting the nonprofit sector and facilitating social change through technology. Take advantage of them.

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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.
President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net