 Welcome everyone to Working with Tech Consultants. Thanks so much for joining us for today's TechSoup webinar. We are glad to have you on the line with us. Before we get started I would like to make sure everyone is comfortable using ReadyTalk, the webinar platform we are on today. You can chat in to ask us any questions using the box on the lower left side of your screen that I am pointing to here. Go ahead and let us know if you are having any issues with the audio, if you need any help technically with the tool, or if you have questions for our presenter at any time during the webinar. Most of you are going to hear the audio play through your computer speakers but if you are hearing an echo you may be logged in more than once and will need to close an instance of ReadyTalk. Also if your slides and audio fall out of sync with the audio stream we recommend dialing into the toll-free 855 number that Susan has just chatted out in the chat window. 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Within a few days you will receive an email of this presentation with the full recording that you can watch at your convenience and any links and resources we discuss. You can tweet with us at TechSoup or using the hashtag TSWebinars. We will be tweeting live some of today's events. My name is Becky Wiegand and I'm the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup and I come to TechSoup after I've been here for 8 years but prior to that I spent a decade working at small nonprofits as the accidental techie, as the person who by default because I had a MySpace account was tasked with many of our tech projects and had to work with consultants. And I was lucky enough to actually have worked with PicNet where Tim Forbes joins us from. More than a decade ago they did my organization's web redesign project and I thought they were so well organized in the way that they did it. And it was such a really valuable consulting relationship that I had with them. I learned a lot about the process that I thought it would be great to invite them to join us as a presenter on today's webinar to talk about how to effectively work with tech consultants, to share some insight into what a process could look like, to help you understand some of the language that may be intimidating, and to help define some of the potential steps. And Tim will be doing this by sharing an example of what the process could look like if you were doing a web redesign project. Now in a moment we'll do some live poll questions to get an idea of what kind of tech projects you may be looking to work with a consultant on. We recognize that it could be getting new computer hardware installed at your office. It could be developing a database. It could be any number of technology related projects. So this is intended to be a good example of what a process could look like and how that relationship with the tech consultant ideally should go. And so we'll share a lot of tips and experience and ideas that we hope that you'll find helpful today. So Tim Forbes joins us as the VP of Products and Marketing at Picnet where he is regularly working to help nonprofits as a consultant, working with them to help them identify their needs and what outcomes they are really looking to achieve with their technology products specifically around web solutions and to help them – he oversees the development of the process and ensuring that they meet those needs with his organization. He has worked as a nonprofit accidental techie himself both in the U.S. and overseas where he's worked in project management, strategic planning, marketing, and fundraising as well as web development. He has a BA in communications and a master's in public administration with an emphasis on NGO management. So he comes from that nonprofit sector that Picnet serves. And Picnet is a consulting firm that primarily works with nonprofit organizations based in Washington, D.C. but he also – they've developed Soapbox Engage which is kind of a website in a box tool that's available as well. So we're really glad to have him joining us. You'll also see on the back end assisting with the chat and there to help you with any of your questions, Susan Hope Bard who is our training and education manager here at TechSoup. And so she'll be on hand to help you throughout. Looking at our learning objectives, we hope that today's event will help you gain a better grasp of the key terminology that you'll encounter when working with consultants. We want to translate those MOUs, SLAs, RFPs, and so on so you understand what all of those terms mean and can communicate effectively with a consultant. We'd hope that you would better understand the stages and decision-making points of what will be today a hypothetical technology project and then apply some of those examples to your own tech contracts that you may be coming up with in the future. We hope that you'll come away with considerations for each stage that you can bring back to your staff, board, and stakeholders. So you come back with questions that you need to ask at those different decision-making points to help improve your project outcomes. And we'll also hope that you will leave with some resources on samples of RFPs and a glossary of terms that you can take with you as resources when you're developing your own projects. I'm going to quickly just introduce TechSoup in case you're not familiar with us before we get to those live poll questions. We are every place on this map that's blue and we are serving all of these countries around the world to build a dynamic bridge that helps connect civil society organizations and social change agents to the tools and resources they need to design solutions for a more equitable planet. Go ahead and chat in to let us know where you're joining from on the map, whether that's in the US or outside of the US. If you're joining us from outside the US, we recommend checking out TechSoup.global and selecting your country from the drop-down to learn what types of donation programs and discount programs are available to your organization. We have been serving organizations since 1987 and we have helped facilitate $5.4 billion in technology, products, and grants to the social do-gooders around the world. That's NGOs, libraries, churches, foundations. I'm proud to be part of it. And had been a customer of TechSoup long before I worked here, so come with that perspective as well. So a couple of poll questions before we get started, and this will help us learn a little bit about you, our audience today. What type of technology project is your organization looking forward to you? What are you planning? Maybe you don't have a specific plan yet, but what are you hoping to be doing in the near future? Are you looking to replace or add computers, servers, your actual physical hardware, your layout? Are you looking for a web overhaul or a redesign of your website, maybe a whole new site? Are you looking for database development? That could be a new constituent relationship management tool, a CRM. That could be a database to house your patron information if you're a library or your client information. If you have a social service program that you run, are you looking maybe for something else? Maybe you're looking for help with an inventory program because you run a program like a Salvation Army that takes donated furniture and clothing and distributes it. So go ahead and chat into us if there's something not on this list that you're looking to do. We have a couple of people mentioning in the chat Office 365. One other person, Steve, is mentioning redundant Internet access with load balancing and failover. So there may be a variety of different kinds of tech projects that you could be moving forward and planning in your near future. Maybe you're already in the middle of it. I'll give just another second for people to respond. Ashley comments that they're looking at system backups. So having some redundant systems to help ensure that your organization has good continuity and doesn't fail. Annette comments a new server hardware in the middle of a website redesign. So you're doing a bunch of different things at once. That's a lot to undertake. Brave folks. I'm going to go ahead and show the results to get an idea of what people are most looking forward to with their tech projects right now. It's pretty split with half of our audience responding hardware, half of our audience responding web overhaul, and about 40% that are looking at database development. And then some of those others that we mentioned in the chat. So again, the example that Tim is going to share today will be focused on sort of the web redesign process. But there are some analogous points to any of the projects that you can pull out of that. So I hope it will be useful. Leah has commented in the chat SharePoint Design for External and Internal Access. So you're maybe looking for SharePoint websites as well as an intranet maybe. That's a big project too. We use SharePoint here at TechSoup. So here is a question that you can select a number of answers. What worries you most about your project? Are you most worried about cost overruns? Are you worried that your results won't match the goals you set out at the starting point? Do you have a limited budget? Are you having a hard time finding the right consultants? Are you limited in your in-house ability to manage the project after it's completed? Are you worried about the timeline? This is something you need to do in the next two months maybe. Are you worried about scope creeps like that you have your scope already set and that people keep adding more to it as the project moves forward and that you're suddenly expanding your scope of your project? Are you most worried about pleasing all of your stakeholders? That could be your board, that could be your staff, your users. All of these things I think are – I could check all of these boxes from the projects I've managed in the past. I'll give just a few more seconds so people can make their selections and then I'll go ahead and share the results. Looks like for our audience right now the biggest worry is finding the right consultants. And I have some people commenting on how to find funding. Megan, that is a really good point. I didn't include that here but finding the funding to do your projects is always a challenge especially around technology. And Jessica comments all of the above which I have that personal experience as well. So limited budget, finding the right consultants, pleasing all the stakeholders, these are very common challenges that I know we all are facing in technology projects. One last question before we move into Tim's content. Are you currently engaged on a project or are you searching for a consultant? Are you engaged with somebody already? Maybe in contract with a consultant? Are you currently in the review process? Are you just starting to look and maybe you're not sure where? Working with volunteers maybe? Or you've got a tech guy down the block who said he can help out. That was often the case with us when I was in different organizations, particularly really small ones. Oh my friend's boyfriend can help. And the common issue we often found sometimes helpful, sometimes less than helpful. Are you trying to manage the whole thing in-house? Maybe you have an IT staff that's helping manage this already. Or maybe you're the accidental techie who's having to manage it yourself. And if there are other scenarios feel free to comment in the chat. It looks like the majority of folks are just starting to look for a consultant so I think this should be a helpful event for many of you. And we'll share resources toward the end that will highlight different ways to connect with a consultant if you're not sure of how to find one at this point. We have some resources through TechSoup that can connect you. And I can also chat out some other resources and places to search if you have an RFP and you're looking to put that out there. If you don't know what RFP means you will learn that term in just a moment. And so with that I'm going to segue into welcoming Tim Forbes to our program today. We're really glad to have you on to talk to us from the consultant side about how to best work with Tech Consultants. Or I like his alternative title here, What to Expect When You're Expecting a Tech Project. So thanks for joining us Tim. Welcome to the line. Thank you Becky. It's fantastic to be here. I'm super excited to join you all. As Becky was so thorough already in introducing me, my name is Tim Forbes. I work here at TechNet. I feel like I am amongst my people here. The answers that you all were giving was the split across all of the different types of projects that you're looking to tackle. Many of you attempt to tackle multiple big projects at the same time plus having a number of worries, chief among them, money worries as with any nonprofit that's always a consideration. Those were all things that spoke very near and dear to my heart as a former nonprofit accidental Becky-turned consultant. And I'm really glad to be here with you all so that we can talk through some of those pieces. As Becky mentioned, we here at TechNet have an offering that I should mention just off the top called Subbox Engage. That is really the lion's share of the work that we do building out websites on our Subbox Engage platform. It's an online engagement tool for change makers. It has a full content management system plus a number of apps for fundraising, event management, easy form building, advocacy tools, a user integration portal service for member organizations or other folks wanting member-only content. A lot of features involved in that platform if you're interested to learn more about that feel free to check out SubboxEngage.com. What we are going to be covering during the next few minutes here in addition to what Becky so articulately shared earlier, we are going to be diving into some tips on developing a successful request for a proposal. There is that phrase again that we are going to define in a moment. We are going to be determining what should be included in your scope of work. We are going to touch on some lingo around service level agreements and other pieces of the puzzle. Touch on long-term maintenance contract issues or short-term maintenance contract setups potentially. And then make sure that you walk away at the end of this presentation with a cheat sheet both for some of the tech lingo as well as some of the resources that will help you in the future so that when you sit down to write that RFP you'll have a sample you can work from or if you've got the need to find out where to post your RFP all of those pieces will be in those documents that we'll share at the end of the webinar. So the content of the webinar how we are going to be covering this topic, I'm going to try not to bore you. That's maybe my number one goal for the next few minutes. And the way I'm going to try not to bore you is by telling you a story. That story is going to be informed by 13-plus years of nonprofit tech consulting experience here at TickNet and Suboxone Gauge. We are going to get as real and specific about the experience as possible changing the names to protect the innocent or not so innocent. I will also mention that none of the negative comments or difficult scenarios that will be raised have any connection with Becky and her work with us low these many years ago. So we can absolve her of attribution for any of the comments that we'll share. It is entirely other experience that we've had that we want to share with you with the purpose of breaking down what you can expect as you seek to pursue this tech project. We're going to flag some of those realities where what happens in the real world kind of departs from the expectation and then give you some analysis and tips for how you can make sure that your process conforms to what to expect and make sure that you can have a successful project. Now this story that we're going to share, as Becky mentioned, is going to dig down into specifics of a web development project. We'll block out the stages of that web project and do so with a particular protagonist here. So our protagonist, please meet Phil Penguin. Phil happens to be the mascot that we have at Picnet. He himself is a nonprofit accidental techie. He works for an organization called SomeOrg.org. SomeOrg.org is a small DC-based nonprofit organization that has decided they need a new website as well as a staff person and management website. Phil has just been promoted from intern at SomeOrg.org to Webmaster just today because folks find out that he is the only one that staff with a Snapchat account. And based on that information they decided he was the most technologically savvy individual on staff so he owns this project. So now Phil is in charge of the web project and wonders where he starts. So if we break down what to expect for the life cycle of this tech project that he's about to dive into, we can expect a number of items here. We're looking at a planning and contracting phase. We're going to spend a lot of our time focused on those elements of that phase because they're going to be most universal to all the different types of projects that folks are interested in. And by the way, I noticed the comments about this being garbled. I'll do my best to have the microphone a bit closer and if that improves things, let me know. If it doesn't improve things, let me know. So from there we'll be discussing the discovery, design, development, content population, quality assurance, and launch of the web project, and then touch on support. We'll be spending sort of less time in those middle sections since they're not necessarily as universally applicable to all types of projects but there will be tie-ins between this breakdown of phases for a web project as well as database development, hardware, implementation that we'll tease out as we go through. So first phase here, we've got the planning and contracting phase. The items that still can expect to walk through here will be a process for clarifying project goals, determining budgets, identifying audiences for the website, developing inventory of content for the current site, creating a request for proposal, tuning into consultants, drafting the scope of work, and entering into a contract. That's the expectation. Let's look at the reality of what Phil ends up facing. We've got a number of voices that we're going to hear that speak to Phil throughout this process. The first one here is Cremate Fraud. He happens to be the board president. He says, I heard we need to have an RFP. What's an RFP? So an RFP is a request for proposal that is a document that an organization posts to illicit bids from potential vendors. What the RFP is looking to specify is who you are as an organization, what the goal is for your project, what you're attempting to address, the any specific elements of the process through which you want to address those. If you have any technical considerations, you're going to look to identify budgets, you're going to look to identify a potential timeline or desired timeline, and then some basics about how folks apply who the point of contact is. The next voice that we have is the executive director, Miss Piggy, who says now the RFP that we're going to write is the RFP, either the consultant can deliver everything in it or they can't. One thing to share with you from our experience as a consultant is the request for proposal is really an invitation to begin a discussion. What you're attempting to do is articulate your goals for the project and make sure that you can fit those goals into the larger mission of your organization when you describe what you're after. The follow-on discussions there are really going to be focused on the consultant seeking to further clarify your goals, share with you their experience, their expertise, and figure out the best path for success. Oftentimes that's going to be looking to balance your goals, your timeline, and budget. Rather than being sort of writ large, cast in stone document for your RFP, it really is that invitation to a conversation. Kermit here shines in again. I know this firm that has worked with Fortune 500 companies we totally got to hire them. We've got to work with the best. One thing to keep in mind with this whole process is that it matters when you're looking to choose a consultant. Seek one out and it's going to align well with your organization, its values, its culture, its goals. That might be one that works consistently with Fortune 500 companies. It might not be. You want to find out from the consultant what experience they have in working with organizations like yours, and ideally project types that you're particularly looking to engage in. You want to request references from the consultant and contact those references to talk to them about did they deliver the project on time, on budget, what was it like to work with them. Those are key considerations that you shouldn't overlook. Along with this is that when you're developing that RFP, that request for proposal, it's good to create a series of metrics that you're going to use to evaluate the responses to the RFP. If you have that in the beginning, determine what weight you're going to give to the various elements, whether budget is a big priority, or a history of working with similar organizations, or being in a location that is near you. Those are all potential items that you might value more than others. So defining what of those things are most important will help you determine who you want to really continue the conversation with. Next to comment here that we've got from Ms. Piggy is, hey, so we don't have a budget. Just go out, find us the best deal, and we'll include it in next year's budget. It's always going to help define the scope of work and overall project strategy if you can articulate a budget early in the process. That helps the consultant be able to respond to your needs in a way that fits within your budget. If you walk into a car dealership, your goal could be, hey, I want to drive out here with a vehicle that has four wheels, a steering wheel, and a hood. Now, those goals could be met in a variety of different ways, at a variety of different price points. That could be in a Jag, that could be in a Honda Civic. And giving the budget information to a consultant can help just dig down into specifics about what's possible and what's going to best meet your needs given the budget realities. Also being transparent about funding status can help frame expectations on both sides. If you're putting on an RFP in June, when you know that the money won't be available until January to start the project, that's an important bit of information for the consultants. And any good consultant, particularly any consultant that is used to working with them on a profit, they will totally get that and will be happy to work with you to make sure you get the information that you need and that you can be set up for success whenever that success can. Next item here from Ms. Piggy, Executive Director again. Remember, we're a consensus-driven organization, so everybody and staff needs to be involved in these discussions and the decisions about the sites. So look at that one there. What you want to do in this early planning phase is identify project participants and define their roles early in the process. Along with that, you're going to want to decide, okay, what are the decision points that everybody or a group of folks need to be involved with, and what are those decision points that a project manager on your staff can simply decide with the consultant and move forward. And then that last bit here, it is going to be important to identify an individual, not a group of individuals and individuals who can be the project manager that really owns this on your side. So you've got one person who's responsible, may leverage the assistance of a number of people on staff, but looking to have that one individual who can speak with one voice to the consultant once the contract has been signed, and then speak with one voice back to your internal staff is super key to ensuring success. We've got a new individual here, the marketing director, who funnily enough hasn't looked at his own website in months, and you know it's there, but hates it all. It's going to be great to do some legwork ahead of time, identify as much as possible what the specific goals are of whatever tech projects that you're looking for. So you can share that with the consultant. That's especially important in the RFP process, and then the subsequent discussions. Because if it comes down to, hey, we've got this much budget, this much time, not everything is going to fit, what's the most important? Having a good idea of where you stand at the moment and what your key goals are can help inform those decisions. Next thing we've got, we've got our board president again, Kermit Chyman, in saying we need a forum on the site. Every serious website has one. One thing that's super valuable when you have these internal planning discussions within your organization is really focusing on outcomes rather than specific tools. If you focus on the goals of the project, then the specific tools can follow up later when you're discussing specifics with the consultant. Also, if you're focused on goals and outcomes in that internal discussion within your organization, that helps level the playing field. So everybody who's invested in the mission can participate in the discussion, and you don't have that one person who knows a little bit more than everybody else who can toss out some tech buzzwords and own the conversation. So the more that you can focus on the why of your project and fully articulating that in your RFP and carrying that into those internal discussions with your consultant, the better. Next slide in here, Kermit says, hey, the RFP stipulated that the site should look great and netscape remains old school. We talked specifically about it in the meetings with the consultant. I don't care if it's not the actual contract, that's all just text feet anyway of that contract stuff. So this brings us to the scope of work. This is a formal agreement that outlines what is actually going to get done. This is different than the RFP, and it is really the end product of that discussion with the consultant. When you've gone, you've shared your goals, you've discussed what you want, the consultant has offered their expertise, you've figured out what's most important to achieve, how you're going to do that, you've documented that in the scope of work. That is what is the governing document moving forward. So just because something may have been mentioned in the RFP or discussed in earlier sales discussions, if it doesn't make the scope of work, then it's not going to be included. It should be important that everybody on your teams aware of that. One thing to address Kermit's statement about things just being so much techie speak is that there are a number of ways that a consultant should be empowered to work with you to clarify your goals, translate those into specific deliverables so that everybody knows what's going to be done. One of the ways that we do that at TechNet with Stepbox Engage is what we call user stories, and the format that we've got here can be filled in like so. As a front-end web user, I want to be able to visit a page that shows a listing of members for an organization so that I can put in a search term and locate members of a given type. That would be an example of a way that you can document in just common ordinary language what a deliverable should be and then include that in the scope of work so that it's documented, it's clear. You don't need to worry about digging into the technical language unless there's a really powerful reason to do that so that everybody can have a clear understanding of what the end result is going to be. To give you a sense, we can often have dozens of user stories, sometimes hundreds of user stories, depending on how complicated a given scope of work is, so that we can clearly identify in that document what we're going to be tackling. Moving on. So we've concluded this portion of the story that's addressed the planning and contracting phase. We're going to move speedily through a number of items here for the interim phases for the tech project, just to keep out some of the common items. So in Discovery, this is one of the consultants learning more about you. We're working through who your audience is. We're developing discovery documents that a website project will govern what the site navigation looks like, what the wireframe or overall build of the website, the architecture of the website looks like. And just a few items here to point out from Phil's experience. They've got a bunch of folks who are involved in the project. They've all completed this design and discovery questionnaire. That's great, right? What you want to really do as you work through the project is clarify with one voice as an organization what your priorities are so that a consultant has a good chance of fulfilling what you're after. If you're in a place where you can't fully agree, there are different consulting options that you might choose when you have a limited engagement with a consultant who can come in and help manage that internal conversation to bring some consensus. But unless that's specifically listed as part of the scope of work, it's good to make sure that you coalesce those voices and share or speak with one voice to the consultant. It's important to demonstrate our commitment to Spanish-speaking clients. The whole site needs to be in Spanish as well as English. One thing you want to keep in mind when you're doing either a web project or really any tech project is make sure you evaluate your own internal capabilities for maintaining what's going to get built for you. You don't necessarily want to walk in, spend a lot of money to develop this really cool thing but realize afterwards that you don't have the people's resources to manage it. Within design, there's a couple things that Phil encountered. They're marking the director again. He wants a great design. Prevatives to manage. We'll find somebody who has HTML experience that can update it later on. Again, be very honest with yourselves about your internal capacity. Make sure that the tech project that you're engaging in is one that the current staff can support or that you make sure that you know you've got the funding to bring on a new individual if you need some additional expertise. From the marketing director again here, I really live at the Apple.com site. It's great. Make sure that through a web project or an overall tech project that you're really focused on your needs as an organization, not just what's the hip new thing, the flashy thing. Focus on what's going to be your needs. Apologies for the voice disturbance here. I'm continuing to keep the microphone closed. Hopefully that'll be effective here. Moving on to another piece of the design phase. We've got the marketing director chiming in again saying, hey, we're doing a complete rebranding of our organization. That's not going to affect the web design process. As with so much of the responses that you all had from what projects you're engaged in, it's going to be helpful for a tech consultant to have a good understanding from you as to what other efforts you're engaged in so that if they affect what they're doing, like, hey, we're doing a full marketing rebrand and Mr. Consultant who's creating our website, you should probably know that. Just make sure that there's good transparency there. Again, I'll focus here on not turning my head. Apologies for any difficulties. For development, there's a few things to consider as you're digging into the actual process of working through the project, be it websites or the database development, what have you. It's going to be important that within the scope of work and the contract, you've been able to define the various phases that you're signing off on the project so that you can make sure that those key elements have feedback from you before the consultant is moving ahead with a given next deliverable. This is super important for maybe individuals that you might be contracting with that don't have more formal processes involved. Here, we've got a comment from Ms. B, Executive Director. During the development process, hey, I just saw the site design for the first sign. This is all wrong. This won't work. It's got to be redone. Make sure that as you move through the process, you get organizational buy-in and involvement from key individuals. Again, that's going to be something that you want to establish at the beginning of your planning process, who needs to be involved and at what point do they need to be involved. Next item here under development, Hermit shines in, hey, we need a searchable map for all meal service locations in D.C. and an integrated shopping cart. I've heard that's totally easy to do with that. Obviously, any consultant is going to recognize with you that changes can come up as you move through a project. Just recognize that additional functionality is going to mean more time and more money. You'll just need to be open and honest with the consultant if you're looking to change the scope of work. Another really important thing to recognize is that phase projects can be successful projects. If you start with a scope of work that's tightly defined, you can always say, hey, as we move through this project, we're going to want to go ahead and plan on a phase 2 or phase 3 so that you can tackle items iteratively over time, ensure success with that first step, and then build on that success moving forward. Content population, we're actually going to hop over this particular item since we've got just a mix of folks that are web project focused. Quality assurance, the setup or the expectation that you're going to have here. There's going to be a review of the design, testing the functionality, prioritizing and fixing the bugs, and then some final check to make sure that everything's in place. For Phil, he's got his project manager over at the consultant firm saying, hey, if that's all done, our guys just finished coding for lunch. Let's launch at the end of the day. Obviously, at the red flag, you want to make sure that you're participating in the quality assurance and testing process. Sometimes organizations are looking to just have that be on the consultant. It's good for you to be working through that and clearly defining what you all can be reviewing so that you make sure that what you signed off on during that scope of work is what they're delivering and it meets your needs. For the actual launch or rollout of a project, whether it's your site or a database or some new hardware, you're going to be coordinating the timing of the launch and then launching that project. From the marketing director again, I know we haven't finished updating those pages you've asked about and that I've been ignoring calls and emails from our project manager at the development firm, but we need to launch soon like 3 p.m. today. We've got a big press conference at 4 p.m. and we need the new setup. One thing you want to do for the role of project manager within your own organization is really manage internal expectations and that includes expectations about timeline, making sure that folks are following up on their individual tasks and that you're in good frequent communication with the consultants about where things stand even if it's just to contact them and say, hey, we've got nothing new to report. One thing that is really helpful at the beginning of the project is establishing some regular interval of communication, whether it's once a week, once every other week, so you can check on the project status and make sure that things are moving well. We've got the launch here of the site. You want to make sure that you understand how your website or your other tech project fits within the larger scope of the organization so that if you're launching your new website, you understand how that relates to your e-mail service or if you're launching that new consistent relationship management tool that you used to integrate with your website, you better handle on how that will continue talking to it if at all. And don't assume that something that hasn't been committed to in the scope of work is going to be done. One thing that we see a lot with, say, website launches is that some folks might assume that there's something that happens related to their e-mail service. Well, being clear that your expectation is X around other systems that are related to that is important earlier in the scope of work. For support stuff, once the site is launched, once the new database is in place, once the new hardware is in place, it's going to be important to clarify how that ongoing maintenance is going to happen. In Phil's case, we've got a response to a question from a staff member there. Hey, update content. I'm so sorry, but you're not able to do that with text changes on a given page. That's part of our web services. We're going to need to charge $150 per page to make that change for you. You want to make sure that you can first understand the capabilities and limitations of the tech project that you're rolling out. What do you all do internally with it? What do you need to rely on that consultant to do? And then what's the nature of that relationship? Sometimes you're going to have a service agreement that is a monthly service agreement that's part and parcel of, say, a web hosting agreement. And within that, there could be some basic knowledge-based resources that are available to you, maybe that ticketing service to answer questions, and anything beyond that that involves new coding to be charged by the hour. In some cases, you're going to have an ad hoc arrangement where you're going to be contacting your consultants and they're going to be giving you a quote and charging you again by the hour for a given service. You want to make sure that that's clear very upfront before you get through launch, finish the project, and now you need to maintain what's there. Some key factors in that ongoing relationship that you want to keep in mind are the term of service, how long you are on the hook for this given ongoing service arrangement. Oftentimes, it might be a year commitment, it could be a monthly commitment. What is their first response time and how does that differ with the time to solution? This is a key thing for a lot of folks when they're looking to get assistance. Most of the time, a consultant is going to say, hey, we are going to respond to your initial request within 48 hours. That doesn't mean that the issue that you're raising with them is going to be solved within 48 hours. It may take longer than that. It will depend on what you're raising. But clarifying that initial response time is going to be important. Moving forward, you want to clarify who owns what was just created. Is this something that you have? Do you have access to the code? Do you use it however you wish? Or is there some other arrangement where the consultant is retaining the code and you just have a license to use it? I'm going to try to see what happens with your data. Some consultants, particularly for the cloud-based offering that you may have some rights that they assert over some or maybe all of your data. Others don't. Do you have unlimited access to your data? If you just wanted to terminate your agreement and walk away, could you just get a database dump of the data that you've stored with them or is there some other process? And then finally, termination. If you decide, hey, this whole relationship isn't working out, we need to move on. What is involved in terminating? Do you need to give a certain length of time notice? Does that need to be in writing? All of those elements would be part of working through your support agreement moving forward. Last thing here to touch on, we've got Animal. He's the new marketing manager that comes online. So, Phil, thanks for the warm welcome to the new job. It looks like our website could use some updating. I've got some great ideas. I think we need a whole new overhaul. Let's talk. One thing to keep in mind way in the beginning when you're working with finding a consulting firm is it's going to be great to find somebody who's going to be around in the long run. You should fully recognize that projects that you do today can have iterations in the future. There's maintenance that might be involved. There's a number of different things that you will benefit from by having a consultant that's got some history and a solid basis for continuing on in the future. So that relationship, ideally, if it's successful through the project phase, can be maintained over time and you can continue to have good results. That takes us through the story of what to expect when you're expecting a web or a tech project. We've got some time here for questions and answers as well as some additional resources that we've been mentioning throughout the webinar here in the chat. The glossary of terms that's listed there are docsengage.com slash wtd-glossary. That actually has both a number of terms that we covered, some that we didn't, as well as links to these additional resources and a couple others that are thrown in. The RFP template there is really an exceptional resource from an organization called Aspiration Tech. We're big fans of Aspiration Tech. So feel free to check that out. We've also got their link to some nonprofit services that they offer. If in the end you think, hey, this whole process feels way too intimidating, it would be great to go ahead and see if we can actually find a consultant who can help us find a consultant. That is totally cool. There are organizations that do that. Aspiration Tech offers some services around that, so feel free to check that out. Then we've got sample RFPs that have been referenced in the chat here for the TechSoup site. That is what we've got. In terms of recommendations on how and where to post an RFP, there are some great links, I believe, in on the TechSoup site so that you can refer to those. It looks like we've also got some responses here in the chat so that you can see that out. I'm going to turn it back over to Becky here so that we can work through the questions as needed. Maybe Becky can help me determine which ones we want to tackle and I can also see here in the chat what's been voiced. Before we do that, I just want to point, because we do have some folks asking where to access Tech Consultants, how to put your RFP out there, where to put it out. I wanted to point to a handful of additional resources through the TechSoup site that we have been working on creating relationships with Tech Consultants on a handful of different common needs that we've found the nonprofits that work with us and we're a nonprofit too. Some of these are Tech Consultants that we've worked with internally that we've created relationships with where you can get consultations, you can have an hour-long consultation or a five-hour consultation. Some of these are $15 to be able to talk to them about a specific project. For example, this is a CRM template assessment if you're needing to do that, or a database assessment, and there's some for Office 365, there's some for Web projects. You can find all of these listed at techsoup.org slash it-services, and that link is available in the resources in the slides as well. I also wanted to mention that TechSoup has recently launched its own IT Assist managed services contract, and this has managed IT services to help you with your consulting and technology projects. You actually fill out a little application and intake form and you meet with one of our tech experts to talk about what your technology needs are and they have some free consultation as part of that. Then you decide whether you want to move into a real managed IT service relationship. I wanted to mention that, and you can learn more about that at techsoup.org slash it-assist. As with all of TechSoup's programs, all of them are working with either tech consultants or companies who are greatly discounting or donating their services. I would definitely check that out if you're seeking some managed IT options. Then some additional resources, I've linked again to some of the resources that Tim mentioned already. I think what I'll do with some of those stocks because some folks mentioned that it was difficult to open up the glossary of terms. I may just put that into a Word document and attach it to the archive email so that people can just open that up without having to go into Google. Then some other articles that we have on whatever your organization needs in your IT contract when you're working with a consultant. Those are things to really consider how to choose and work with tech consultants, when to use consultants, how to manage a consultant relationship, choosing the right consultant. So more on this same topic and an overview of the RFP process for nonprofits, charities, and libraries. It goes through all of the steps of developing that RFP, putting it out there, getting feedback and input. I wanted to highlight those because they are directly related to this content we've been discussing today. I am going to go ahead at this point and field some of these questions. Jason asked earlier if there is a major difference between a request for proposals or a request for bids. I responded with some of my perspective on that but I would love your perspective on that too. Is there a difference between RFP and RFB from your end, Tim? Yes, so there's going to be a number of different alphabet soup variations of request for proposal or invitation to bid, request for information, request for quotes. A lot of times what that means is that there are some very specific requirements that are really locked in and all you want to know is price. Request for proposal is more of that invitation to a conversation where you've got a sense of this is what we want. This is the goal that we're after. We might have some specific requirements that we want to know or the goal that we're after. We might have some requirements around the technology for that but it's mostly us seeking a particular objective and then having a consultant engage with you in a conversation about the details of how that objective can be met. So I think a lot of times nonprofits, particularly the smaller medium-sized nonprofits that we work with that we don't have dedicated IT staff and you're juggling multiple different balls all at once, the request for proposal route is going to be better because what you really want to do is not kind of lean upon yourself to tightly define all of the different elements and just say, hey, give me the price but really have that conversation and benefit from that conversation with a consultant. That's great. And I think that is similar to what I had answered in the chat as well to know that I was not totally off track on that. So Lea asked earlier, do you need an RFP if you're working with a volunteer and there's no payment involved? What is your thought on should you have that kind of introductory request for proposal document go out even if you have or expecting that you'll have a volunteer who will be completing the work? Yeah, that's a great question. I think what I would say is that the RFP process is as valuable a process as an internal exercise in defining what is expected, what the goals are for a tech project as it is for engaging with a consultant. So I think even if you don't necessarily issue a formal RFP because maybe you've got a specific volunteer in mind that working through a lot of the mechanics of defining what the goals are and then certainly having a scope of work that you engage with with the volunteer will be a valuable exercise even if there's not money attached because even though there's not money attached there's still time attached. And oftentimes in a nonprofit time is as valuable as money because you're doing so many things all at once and you don't want to walk down a road with a volunteer who has their own idea of what they're doing for you to realize that their own idea when they finish it is not what was your idea or the idea of say your executive director or whoever else needs to be involved. So even if you don't issue a formal RFP especially if you've got a specific volunteer in mind at least going through the process of defining the goals and the scope of work is important. Yeah, and I think that's a really valuable piece of advice there that the internal definitions of that whole process is so, so important no matter who you work with whether it's in-house that you're going to be doing it or with an external consultant or volunteer having that internal nailing down all of that and writing I think is so, so valuable. There's one takeaway. I think that's the piece that I think people should really make sure that you're putting it to paper and committing here are the things we really value for this project. I just field a couple of other questions before we wrap up and this one I'm actually going to just answer. Ralph asked any recommendations on how and where to post the RFP and I did chat out that there are a couple of great resources. You can post your RFP on the TechSoup forums if you're interested in doing that but I would also recommend N10 the nonprofit technology network has these affinity groups called 501 TechClubs you know 501c3 kind of nonprofit they have these TechClubs that are email listservs in mostly larger cities around the country but they have a lot of them and they are mostly populated by people who work for nonprofits and work in technology so you can put them out in those listservs in those groups and often get a lot of responses. I also recommend checking out the NetSquared local meetups so at netsquared.org that is a project of TechSoups as well. They've got monthly meetups happening I think it's in 60 some cities around the world and that's another great place to post your RFPs if there's a local meetup group near you. For some projects you may not need a local vendor and that sort of segues into the last question we'll cover today which is Devin asked how to remote consultants handle on-site needs and I'll just mention that with the IT Assist program that I mentioned earlier they are located in one place so they wouldn't necessarily be coming into your office unless you're in that same place but there is a lot of ability these days with cloud services and remote operation of technology VPNs and things like that that can allow people to take over your machine, see what's going on and do direct fixes and troubleshooting of technology. So that is one option now they wouldn't be able to physically come in and remove a bad hard drive and replace it with a new one but they could probably connect you with somebody who would but I'd love to get your feedback quickly Tim as we wrap up here on how do you work with a consultant who may not be on-site and do you recommend that people find somebody who's actually in their town depending on the project? Yeah, I would imagine that certainly some projects particularly something like a hardware project would be more important to have somebody local. I would just echo what you shared Becky that the technology, the services that are out there that can bridge miles and miles of distance are so rich and so varied these days that it's becoming less and less important to have somebody local. I will say that the vast majority of the projects that we work with and the organizations that we support are not ones that we meet with in person on a regular basis. We have a number in D.C. but then plenty around the country and around the world and they don't really suffer from that distance at all just because of all of the options that are available. So unless you have a very specific need having an off-site consultant is probably going to be just perfectly fine. I would agree with that. So in our wrapping up right now we are at time but I would encourage you to chat in one thing that you've learned in today's webinar that you will take back and apply to your own relationships and how you work with consultants or how you develop those RFPs or how you outline the process for the people internally who need to buy into the process and also encourage you to share this information with your colleagues across your network who may benefit from it. I'd like to lastly invite you to join us for our upcoming webinars and events. If you are using QuickBooks, either the desktop installed or the online version we would invite you to join us for these webinars next week. We've got one on Tuesday one on Thursday. I don't have it on here but we also will have an Office 365 Facebook Live on Tuesday where you can come to TechSoup's Facebook and ask your questions about Office 365 and get answers live on the air from experts on Office 365 so come check that out. We also have a webinar later this month for libraries on how to create a TechnoCulture and join us for any of those. Lastly I'd like to thank ReadyTalk, our webinar sponsor for providing the use of this platform so that we can present today's webinar. I would like to invite you to please take that post event survey that pops up when you leave. We really do value your feedback input on what other topics you'd like to see from us and on how we did today and how we can do better in the future. Thank you so much everyone for joining us. Thank you Tim for sharing your expertise. It was a lot of really valuable information packed into this hour. Look for that follow up email from me. Thank you to Susan on the back and thank you to all of you our participants for joining us today. Have a great afternoon. Bye-bye.