Originally published on cep.org
A few days ago, a colleague and I had an amazing site visit at a regional organization where staffers — among other things — oozed excitement about their recently implemented case management system. While we were there, the staff also lamented about being uncomfortable asking funders to support expanding their information technology capacity, as some funders are only interested in funding what they think is important for organizations.
While en route to our next site visit, I asked my colleague: from a purely organizational standpoint, why do people tend to hold nonprofit organizations to a lower standard than for-profit organizations? For example, if the CEO of a car manufacturer or hotel company asked their board of directors and shareholders to consider an investment in information technology to better inform their product, improve service delivery, and gather consumer feedback in real time, they would totally do it!