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ROUNDTABLE | Technology as an Enabler to Data Empowerment


  • Nonprofits—regardless of size—recognize the value of technology, and want to use it more effectively for their own processes, data science, and data systems.
  • The gap is often with discoverability—nonprofits feel overwhelmed with a ‘technology information overload’, and feel ill-equipped to identify and choose the right solution for their organizations. In addition, the technology ecosystem players that work with nonprofits also face discoverability issues—only those organizations that tend to be more tech savvy are the ones that find the tech intermediaries, while the ones that need the most support are often harder to locate.
  • Today, there is no dearth of technology. Instead, the gap lies in the capacity to understand and deploy tech effectively. This capacity is lacking at various levels, from on-the-ground staff, to leadership.
  • There is a need to develop and expand the pipeline of people entering tech and data careers, within the social impact sphere. Additionally, there’s a need to work with academia to nurture and support students who are interested in these careers.
  • Donors are generally amenable to support tech innovation at nonprofits, as long as the organization can make a clear case for why they need it, and how it will help them achieve their objectives and impact. Having said that, there is also a need to expand the pool of strategic funders for tech. Funders need to recognize that long term impact will not be achievable if they fund on a project-to-project basis. They need to support building the capacity of people and organizations across operations, processes, and systems that are necessary for data solutions and tech implementation.
COVID-19 has brought data and technology to the forefront of nonprofit work. As organizations shifted to working from home, leveraging digital became an urgency, and has remained a necessity even now as the world emerges from over a year under lockdown and physical distancing.

Yet, there remain gaps in how effectively the social sector ecosystem is able to leverage technology to achieve its goals. How can these gaps be filled? How can we strengthen the tech ecosystem, so that all organizations that need support can afford it, and are equipped to take it on? How do we build the capacity of people to understand tech, and implement it effectively to solve the right problems? How do we bring greater investment and focus on funding tech for long-term social impact? And, how can we ensure that when it comes to tech, we can shift the mindset from revolving around ‘tech solutions’, to being focused on the people and communities that the sector intends to serve?

Panelists at this session answered these questions and more, based on their experience of working with nonprofits of different sizes and focus areas, across India, as well as globally. The panelists—Mona (Techsoup), Puneeth (DataKind), Lindsay (Data.org) and Swapnil (Dhwani Rural Information Systems), represented intermediary organizations that support social impact organizations with technology—whether it’s data, tech
implementation, or strategic consultations—and shared their experiences and insights with using technology for good.
They talked about how all the tech and data already exists. The primary challenge tends to be people’s capacity to find and deploy it, especially in the nonprofit sector. While there needs to be greater investment in capacity building, we also need long term funding for tech, rather than a project-by-project approach. Building a pipeline of tech talent in the nonprofit sector is also key—whether it is at a college level as people figure out their careers, or investing in developing the skills of people already working in the social sector.
​

This session highlighted just how crucial data and technology are, as enablers for social impact, while reminding us that we need to figure out how to support the nonprofit ecosystem to leverage tech smarter, and more effectively. Importantly, the session highlighted how we need to stop thinking of technology as the solution; and instead look at it as something that helps organizations achieve their mission and deliver impact.

Quotes

“Everything has to start with: What is your mission? In order to meet your mission, what do you need to achieve? In order to achieve, what are your two or three focus areas? And then based on that, what is the technology that you want to get? So I don't disagree that technology is really important. But, you know, my perspective would be to basically start with the mission.” - Mona Raina, Techsoup
“A lot of tools, which we see—for example if you see Zoho, if you see Google—are marketed and sold for the mainstream world, and nonprofits are not able to find that connect.” - Swapnil Agarwal, Dhwani Rural Information Systems
“We need a standard way to define and to think about digital transformation. Digital transformation is essentially a buzzword now… and was essentially created with the intention of delivering higher revenue and competitive advantage by investing in technology… Now, what we realized is that we need to define what it means for a nonprofit.” - Mona Raina, Techsoup
“The data is there. There are different ways to collect data, there are different ways to make sense of that data. But unless you contextualize it, and figure out actionable insights, I think, you will not be able to make a great impact.” - Swapnil Agarwal, Dhwani Rural Information Systems
“Each case is unique. Each mission is unique. So identifying them individually and trying to fit in our tech solution is only about 10 to 20% of the whole equation. The success of it is determined by the 70-80% -- of understanding the stakeholder, understanding the environment, the surroundings… that is something we have realized over the past five, six years that we have been around.”
​- Puneeth Narayana, DataKind
“We have a lot of excellent technology. And to be honest, it's often not an issue of having the technologies; it's having the right people who are able to use them.” – Lindsay Gottschalk, Data.org

Key Statistics

- A global survey of 12,000 small nonprofits across 125 countries found that 75% of organizations who responded believe in the power of technology. 25% of them already have a strategic digital plan.

- In the same survey, 70% of nonprofits reported that their greatest barrier to adopting technology is the cost of adoption. In the global south, 39% said that a barrier to data management was the inability to provide staff with resources.

- The survey revealed that across the organizations that participated, the median budget for IT was less than USD 3000 annually, and that most organizations had more IT volunteers than they did regular full-time staff.

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  • D4GX 2022
    • Annual Conference >
      • SPEAKERS
      • AGENDA
    • EMPOWERMENT CHALLENGE >
      • ABOUT THE CHALLENGE
      • CHALLENGE WINNERS
      • Jury Profile 2022
      • Highlights
      • FAQs
  • D4GX 2021
    • EMPOWERMENT CHALLENGE >
      • CHALLENGE WINNERS
      • PARTNERS
    • ANNUAL CONFERENCE >
      • AGENDA
      • SPEAKERS
      • HIGHLIGHTS
  • RESOURCES