Virtual CIO Project to Assist Nonprofits With Critically Needed IT Analysis

Survey Identifies Local Nonprofit IT Status

1-21-10

Northern Kentucky University’s Institute for Nonprofit Capacity (INC) and College of Informatics’ IMI are pleased to announce their partnership with United Way of Greater Cincinnati (UWGC) and the Leadership Council of Human Service Executives to support the IT needs of local human service nonprofits through the Virtual CIO Pilot Project.

INC just completed a voluntary survey on the IT structures and needs of Leadership Council member agencies, selecting 10 agencies to participate in a new Virtual CIO Pilot Project. Over the next several months, faculty and students from the College of Informatics will conduct onsite assessments of the IT infrastructure, data security, capacities of email, web status and database management and conduct a general overview of IT support and staff skills.

The Virtual CIO Pilot Project represents the ideal leveraging of NKU’s informatics assets for the betterment of greater Cincinnati nonprofits. The selected agencies represent both Kentucky and Ohio organizations, whose budgets range from under $500,000 to over $5 million. The 10 selected agencies are identified in the attached list.

“At a time of unprecedented demand being placed on human services agencies, we are pleased to provide this critical support,” said Dayle Deardurff, INC director.

Survey results, obtained from 42 local agencies, indicated critical needs for IT support and guidance of local nonprofits. The information gleaned from the responses provides a picture of the status of their IT equipment, support and staff skills. The survey reinforces the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2009 publication, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle”, which concluded that many nonprofits are at a defining moment with their IT infrastructures and achieving greater value from their investment.

The INC survey found that only 50 percent of the organizations have an IT director or IT department.  The others rely upon the skills of a staff person recognized as the internal “expert” and/or upon an outside vendor for all IT support.  The range of expenditures on annual IT services did not suggest any correlations between budget size and annual IT expenses. Respondents reported ranges of under $10,000 to over $100,000 for all agencies, with reported budgets over $3 million and under $50,000 for agencies whose budgets ranged from $1 million to $3 million. This mirrors the Stanford Review findings that concluded nonprofits may lack the funds to pay competitive salaries for necessary expertise and that agencies “without strong tracking systems have a hard time diagnosing which actions truly drive their desired outcomes.”

Of the agencies surveyed, 70 percent reported the need for upgrades and new hardware and 75 percent wanted to have their systems reviewed through the Virtual CIO Pilot Project. The Stanford article reported an agency where staff devoted 25 percent of their time to manually collecting data, indicating the improved efficiencies of the IT system would save administrative time and increase staff time available to serve clients. The article also recognized that investments in technology are necessary to support growth, tracking outcomes that allow quick and responsive improvements.

Noting the findings in UWGC’s recent 2009 Environmental Scan: Advancing the Common Good in a Time of Disruptive Change, it is clear that our community will see changes in client needs and demographics and a growing need for leadership on community issues from the nonprofit community.

Robert C. Reifsnyder, UWGC president, “The foundation provided by a strong IT system will strengthen the capacity and planning skills of the staff and board of any nonprofit. Better data help to answer the ever present questions of what is really needed to succeed and where are we under investing.”

All respondents reported use of word processing, spreadsheet and database software, though just under 50 percent use client service software to manage client service data. When asked about the IT training needed by their staff, the respondents identified Managing Tech to Meet Agency Needs, Project Management; Social Media; Instruction on IT Outsourcing and How to Effectively Use IT Dollars, as key training topics.

A report will be issued late this spring on the outcomes of the Virtual CIO Pilot Project. It is anticipated that the project will help to deepen our understanding of nonprofit IT needs and solutions, which in turn will lead to increased capacity and effectiveness.

For more information about INC, please see www.inc.nku.edu , or contact Dayle Deardurff, Director, at 859-572-7500.

About the College of Informatics

The Northern Kentucky University College of Informatics is one of only a few colleges in the country founded exclusively for the emerging field of informatics. The term informatics embraces the modern concept of information in all its aspects: information management, infrastructure, processing, presentation, dissemination, design and analysis. It is deeply integrative in approach. In practice, it ranges from the development of information technologies in the service of specific fields, to broader scholarly investigations of the representations, processing and communication of information in its full social context. The college offers courses and programs that cover the entire spectrum of informatics, from the bit-level to the conceptual, from the practical to the theoretical, from the basic to the advanced, from the traditional to the cutting edge. To learn more about the College of Informatics, visit http://informatics.nku.edu.

 About the IMI

The IMI in the College of Informatics at NKU is a prototypical institution, showing how academic and business organizations can work together for regional good. The IMI enhances student success and supports the mission of informatics through community engagement and managed co-ops. Visit http://imi.nku.edu for more information.