Michael Stein and Michael Gilbert

Michael Stein posted an interview with Michael Gilbert at GetActive's Word of Net yesterday, and the results were as interesting as you'd expect, given their extensive involvement in the nonprofit technology field.  Gilbert made a particularly good point on the question of whether ample resources (i.e. staff time, money, and management support) are preconditions for successful nonprofit technology initiatives:

I am not convinced of the generalization that more resources devoted to Internet strategies are the key to success. Rather, I think success is the key to more resources. In other words, I think that careful change management, with an eye toward the right first steps, can be far more powerful than asking people to pour resources in and wait for results down the road.

So it's the culture, stupid?  But although I agree with Gilbert's emphasis on the importance of organizational culture and change management, I'm not convinced by his continued prioritization of email over websites:

The Internet has not changed in any way that fundamentally undermines those rules. [i.e. (1) Resources spent on email strategies are more valuable than the same resources spent on web strategies, (2) A website built around an email strategy is more valuable than a website that is built around itself, and (3) Email-oriented thinking will yield better strategic thinking overall.] You still get a higher return on investment on money invested in email. You still get better websites when you design them around your email strategies. And the better you are at thinking about email, the better you become at thinking about relationship management strategies in general.

At the root of Gilbert's philosophy is an absolutely correct emphasis on relationship management and attention to ROI.  Listen to your constituents and don't waste money on useless bells and whistles--and that advice will hold true forever.  And email isn't going away anytime soon--nonprofits must continue to think seriously about their email strategies.

But the Inbox isn't the only place to meet your constituents anymore--try their aggregators--and websites aren't static, glossy brochures--they're lively public spaces, with comments, guest bloggers, and wikis creating opportunities for direct participation.  And although these tools are still in their infancy, usage is exploding and they're dirt-cheap and easy to implement.  The Internet may not have changed, but the tools we use to access it certainly have, and nonprofits should be taking full advantage of them.

nptech

Comments

[Mark Fredrickson]

I think I have to weigh in on the Gilbert side of this debate, and for one simple reason: message. Email allows for better control of what you are saying and to whom. I believe the thought of allowing anyone the opportunity to add, change or diffuse an organization's message is scary (to me at least).

I come from an electoral background, where message manipulation is the primary focus of the campaign. I've seen campaigns burned by allowing anyone to use their websites as a soap box. In a similar vein, remember MoveOn.org's "Bush = Hitler" ad fiasco?

(I apologize in advance for linking to a Washington Times article - I would have found something better but I'm in a hurry ;-).

With email, an organization does not need to worry any (even well meaning) person hijacking the message.

My $0.02

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

I know that the fear of lost control is common response to wikis, but to all the world of Web 2.0? There's more to it than wikis, and some of the tools are arguably more controlable than traditional online tools. RSS, for example, should supplant email soon as the prefered communication channel with constituants for a number of reasons. #1 being that your messages can be changed, updated or removed even after initial "delivery." Information posted into an RSS feed doesn't fly out of your hands and into someone's inbox as soon as you publish it, rather readers access your feed anew each time they log onto their feed readers. One example a group of UK consultants used a few months back was a Florida gov agency's mistaken emailing of info regarding thousands of peoples' HIV status to thousands of unathorized readers. Once an email is sent - it's sent and there is nothing you can do about it. If that agency was delivering it's info via RSS, it could just change the item in its feed as soon as it realized the mistake, and anyone reading the feed thereafter would only see the revised information. That's just one of many example s of the supperiority of RSS over email, which is just one example of the awesomeness of Web 2.0 tools. The only advantage email has right now is the small numbers of RSS adopting users - and hopefully that will be changing over time.

[Ed]

Great example, Marshall--I think it's well worth considering how various Web 2.0 technologies will affect (or overhaul entirely) the way we work today.

But I also think the entire RSS infrastructure is going to have to get much more user-friendly for it to live up to its full potential. Email caught on because it fit so easily into everyone's existing frame of reference. RSS doesn't have that advantage--it's much more difficult to grasp conceptually--so the tools are going to have to be that much easier to use. And they're not nearly there yet, not for the average person.

[Beth]

Thanks for the pointer! Great interview. I like your framing at the end - the inbox isn't the only way to meet your constituents.

[Ed]

Thanks, Beth. Michael (Stein) has been doing some great writing at Word of Net--I just wish it came out more frequently.