 Welcome everyone to our webinar, Introduction to Technology Planning for Non-profits. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Susan Hopebard, the Training and Education Manager here at TechSoup. And we do work very hard to provide you with relevant webinars and presentations so that you can better serve your mission. So I'd like to ask you in advance to complete our survey questions at the end of the event. I know that some folks may have to drop off a little early, so I want to remind you that giving us that feedback will help us better understand your organization's needs. As we get started, I do want to familiarize you with our webinar platform, ReadyTalk. There's a chat box at the bottom left-hand corner of your screen. And you can use this chat box at any time to let us know if you're having problems viewing or hearing the audio. And the chat box is also for your questions. We'll be flagging your questions throughout the presentation and queuing them up for a later review. So you don't have to wait to chat your question until the end. You can chat them throughout the presentation when they come to you. If you lose your phone connection or your Internet connection, you can always reconnect using the link in your registration or reminder email. If you're hearing an echo through your computer speakers or having any issues with audio, you can always dial in using the total free line listed in the registration email or the one that Becky just chatted out to you. We are recording this presentation and we will archive this recording at TechSoup's webinar page. It should be up in about a week. This is where we share all of our webinar recordings and announce upcoming events. So we encourage you to check it out at www.techsoup.org slash community slash events dash webinars. You can also go to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash techsoupvideo. In a few days you'll receive a follow-up email with a link to the recorded presentation that we're sharing with you today. We'll also have resources including the PowerPoint presentation. You should have received a reminder email about an hour ago and that does contain the PowerPoint for today's event. It's on the right hand side in the blue shaded column under downloadable documents. If you're following along with Twitter you can tweet us at TechSoup or use hashtag TS webinars. I'd like to introduce you to our speakers for today. The first is Karen Graham. She is the Executive Director of IdealWare and she is a speaker, trainer, writer, and consultant with expertise in technology leadership and innovation, nonprofit software, and digital strategy. And she leads a team of talented researchers, presenters, and writers who create technology information resources designed to help folks just like you put your organization's vision into action. And her past experiences include leading technology consulting services and nonprofit technology learning and networking programs at MAP for nonprofits. She's also had various roles in arts and human services organizations. Our other speaker, Anne Puckett, the IT manager for the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, she unfortunately had a family emergency. She won't be able to attend but she kindly provided us with a lot of information that we'll share with you today about her organization's use of the technical technology planning course. And she's worked at the Grand Rapids Community Foundation for the past 15 years and she's pursuing a degree in computer information systems from Ferris State University. And she participates on many technology committees both locally and nationally. Also helping on the back end is Becky Regan. She is our webinar manager with TechSoup. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about TechSoup before I turn it over to Karen. TechSoup is headquartered in San Francisco, California. And we want to know where you're joining us from. So as I talk a little bit about TechSoup, take a minute to chat into us your city and state or country. We're a 501-C3 nonprofit like many of you joining us today. And we work to empower organizations around the world to help them get the latest tools, skills, and resources to help them achieve their mission. You can see from our map here that we serve almost every country in the world. And we have about 62 partner NGOs around the world. And I see that folks are here from all over the country. We have a few from Canada. Welcome everyone. A little bit about our impact. We've helped organizations get more than $5.4 billion in technology products and grants to NGOs around the world. And these tech products and grants come from more than 100 corporate and foundation partners. And I'm going to turn the presentation over to Karen. And she's going to talk a little bit about tactical technology planning. Karen? Thanks, Susan. And I've been looking at the chat as people chat in. I know that you can't see each other's responses. And if you are in Minneapolis like I am, you're probably glad that you can't see these because there are a lot of people from other parts of the country and Canada who are having beautiful weather today and here in Minnesota we are not. Anyway, since we don't have our web cams on today, I'll show you a picture of what I look like. I'm the executive director of Idealware. And I'll tell you more about Idealware in a moment. I just want to share a couple of details about my background that are relevant to this. For about three years before I came to Idealware I ran the technology consulting and education programs at Mat for Nonprofits which is an intermediary capacity building organization in Minnesota and did a lot of tactical and strategic technology planning for small nonprofit organizations. So that's where my firsthand experience with this comes from along with doing technology planning within my own organization as well. I would like to ask you a little bit about your experience with tech planning too. So we'll have a quick poll here. Have you ever created a tactical technology plan for your organization? And please just answer on screen. I'll just give you a few more seconds to do that. Let me do a countdown actually. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right. And then I'll skip ahead to the results so we can see what we've got here. And thanks to all of you who responded to that. So it looks like a good healthy majority of you have never done tactical technology planning before. And so you've come to the right place. I think we'll give you a few fundamentals to get you started here. And if you have done this before maybe you'll be able to pick up a few tips that will help you do it better the next time around. Or I can see I actually recognize some of the names on the attendee list and I can see that some of you are in a position to advise other organizations. So I'm hoping that this might help you out a little bit as well in that role. Just briefly about Idealware. If you're not familiar with our organization we're excited to be partnering with TechSoup which we've done for many years. And now the new thing that we're doing is partnering on some training that is available on demand. And you'll hear about that from Susan in a little while. Idealware is an independent source of information and resources about technology for the nonprofit sector to help you make smart technology decisions. And on our website Idealware.org you'll find consumer guides to technology products and software for nonprofits. You'll find workbooks that help you to think through the best decisions for your organization. And you'll also find a lot of other training including online workshops and courses like this. Some of which go a lot more in depth. I'm going to think about the next maybe 15 to 18 minutes to go over some basics of technology planning. So we'll talk about technology planning, how to think about the different aspects of technology in your organization, how to perform a quick audit of your current technology, and then create an action plan. And we only have time to kind of brush the surface today but there are lots of resources that we'll share with you that will help you dig deeper into this if you'd like to do that after this as well. So let's start out with just a little bit about what technology planning is and what the purpose of it is. A plan lets you know where you're going. And so as an example at Idealware, my own organization, we kind of looked at our technology situation and all the different ways that we were using technology about a year ago as we were doing our budgeting for 2016. And we knew that we had a lot of things that we would like to do and we didn't have the resources to accomplish every single thing in one year's time. And so we had to prioritize. And so in our case we decided that improving our website was a very high priority for us. And so we started funding for that. We did a complete website redesign this year. Launched a new website in September. And now we're ready to move on to our next thing. So that told us that website was our top priority. And the plan enabled us to really focus our efforts and our resources on that. But it also told us that there were some things that we weren't going to be able to realistically accomplish. One of those which we're moving on to now in 2017 is improving some of our data management systems. And so that was one thing that we knew wasn't possible. We also realized that there were some things that just weren't worth our time, at least at this point in our organization's timeline. For example, we were looking at, since we do a lot of training, a slide management tool. And after deliberating over the pros and cons and the costs and benefits of doing that, we came to the conclusion that although it had some potential to help us as an organization, the cost in terms of actual dollars as well as the time we'd have to put into it did not outweigh the benefit at this time. Now that might be different sometime in the future, but that's an example of something we decided just wasn't quite worth our time and resources at this point. And I'm sure that you can think of some examples of that in your own organization too. One more point about technology planning is that the plan itself is important, but the process is also helpful to you. A good technology planning process can build commitment to actually implementing the plan. It can help you discover what's actually going on in your organization. For example, you might discover some shadow technology workarounds that people are using or maybe sort of unauthorized tools that people are using that might indicate that things aren't working as well as you think they are. And so that's an important part of the process. Another important aspect of it is that it requires some conversations within the organization that can result in kind of getting everybody rowing in the same direction, getting everybody in sync with each other. And finally, the planning process can help to position technology and IT as a strategic resource for your organization. And I think that's a benefit to you as well to put IT in the right place in terms of all of the different inputs that go into making your organization work. We'll be talking mostly today about the tactical side of planning. Now, that's not to say that there isn't great value in strategic planning that includes technology. And so here are some of the differences. Strategic technology planning is going to ask like how can technology best serve our mission. Tactical technology planning is going to ask like what specific things can help us become more efficient or more effective. How can we... So it's like innovation versus optimization. It also has a different timeline. So a strategic technology plan might have a three to five year timeline. A tactical plan is going to really focus on the near term. What can we accomplish in the next, say, 12 months? Or what can we accomplish in our current budget year that will help to optimize our systems? And here's another way of looking at this. I think this is a great illustration. So let's use your house as a metaphor for your technology and your organization. If you're thinking about let's paint the cupboard a different color or let's get a new refrigerator, that kind of thing, then that would indicate that probably the basics are in order. You're not going to be even having those conversations if your basement is flooded or if your roof is leaking. So the point of this is that there are different... There's an order that you tend to go in when you're thinking about different aspects of technology. And at ideal where we often express this as a pyramid. So at the bottom is functional and secure infrastructure. And that includes things like computers that are reliable, reliable internet connection with enough bandwidth to be able to use your data management systems or to be able to manage your website. And all these other things that the upper tiers are often relying on just having basic infrastructure in place. Otherwise, you can't really use those. So when you assess your situation, you're going to end up making sure that the infrastructure is in place before you move on to something more advanced. This infrastructure is like your roof or like the foundation of your house. So let's look a little more closely at some of these. And first I want to ask you, I've got Pyramid. Which level worries you the most or what do you think is the biggest concern in your organization right now? And I'll give you maybe 10 seconds to work on that one. Okay, three, two, one. I'll skip on to the results. So this is actually about what I would have probably expected from this group. But it sounds like many of you already have a good infrastructure in place. But there are certainly some who probably need to focus there and not even think about the other stuff until you've got the basic infrastructure settled. Many of you are concerned about data management. And that matches what I deal with where often here's from our audience when we do audience surveys or when we do an assessment before a course or something like that. Data management is really a big concern and a growth area for a lot of organizations. So let's just go through each of those areas and talk a little bit about how you might audit your current technology and what kinds of things you might look for. And so you're going to form a committee at the beginning of your planning process that will review current technology. And your committee should represent perspectives of different people in the organization. We might touch back on that a little bit later especially if there are questions about that. And you also want to think about whether you need outside expertise. If you're sitting there thinking, wow, I could put together a technology committee, but none of my team members actually know anything about technology. And so how do we know if we're meeting basic standards or not? How do we know what our options are? How do we know what best practices are? Well, if that's what you're thinking then you probably want to look at a consultant, maybe a pro bono resource, maybe go to your current tech support provider if you have one, see if this is the service that they can provide for you and include somebody like that on your committee or in some aspect of your planning. Then let's start with hardware. Some of the things to look for here and there could be a much, much longer list of questions to ask yourself but some basics are, are your computers less than five years old? And if they're laptop even you might look at less than three or four years old as a standard. Are hardware options purely standardized within your organization? Or do you have a mix of Macs and PCs? Do you have a mix of all kinds of different brands? Then that can be more difficult to support and just more difficult to manage. So that's kind of a standard to look at. And do the pieces of equipment fit the task or the job role of the person who's using them? So those are some questions to ask about that. There's also something pointing here to a router. So you want to think along with hardware about along with network hardware about your internet connection. Is that robust enough? And can everybody connect in as they need to access files remotely, for example? Then also think about software infrastructure. And that includes not just software like, oh, like the Office Suite or software that you might use for accounting, things like that, but your basic operating system. That's one place to start. Is your operating system up to date? Is it the current supported version? How many different versions exist in your organization? Do you have security and anti-virus software running on every machine? How standardized are things? Are they meeting your needs? And is everyone trained to use them? So those are some considerations for software. And then moving up the pyramid a step, now we're talking about data management. Do your systems for constituent management work? And here's a place where you might be weighing like, should I use an all-in-one CRM system? Or should I use different tools for different purposes? And there's no right answer to that. It depends on your organization and your situation. Let's see. This is another area where training and user adoption is actually just as important as choosing the right tools. You'll be thinking about integration between tools, data integrity, and maybe at the more advanced levels thinking about workflow automation, and reporting and data visualization and things like that under this constituent management umbrella. There's some considerations there. And by the way, I just wanted to thank Becky for chiming in about some ways to find local consultants and welcome any other questions that people want to chat in here as well. I'll try to keep an eye on that. Moving on to the next level of the pyramid now. That's about websites and email. So with your website, you want to consider like are we on the right platform? Is everything in order with like keeping it up to date, making sure that the registration information is correct on your organization that shows up on who is. But then also thinking about what are your goals? Is your website meeting those goals? Who are your audiences? Is your website speaking to them and giving them what they need? Is it mobile-friendly? And of course there are lots of other considerations for websites as well. And along with that goes email, because that's still often the main communication method for organizations with their constituents. So with email, do you have the right tools? But then also are you using good practices to take advantage of email? So that has to do with messaging, targeting and segmentation, frequency of messages, layout. All of those things go into whether your email messages are actually effective or not. And then towards the top of the pyramid, we talk about social media. So there it's again choosing the right tools just because a social media tool exists doesn't mean that you should be on that channel. And having a plan, goals, metrics, and a process for managing it is important as well. And then at the more advanced level, thinking about cross-channel campaigns and how do you really leverage all of your different communication methods in a synchronized way to meet your goals. Now one thing we haven't talked about here, which also may belong on the pyramid, is using technology in your service delivery as well. So sometimes that's at the very top. Sometimes I would argue that that should go somewhere in the middle depending on what opportunities you have to use technology and the type of organization that you are. But that's another consideration. And it's going to be so different from every organization that I haven't included a slide about it here. So once you have been through kind of an audit of your current technology, then it's time to look at your action plan. And that will start with just thinking about what are all the potential projects that we could do. Now that we understand our situation and our needs, you'll probably see a whole big long list like I do where good and think I can't possibly do all of this and I'm not sure where to begin. So then it's a good place to, or a good time to go back to the pyramid and use that to help you prioritize. And I'll give you an example of this. I'll give you actually an example of an organization that failed to do this. And maybe I shouldn't share their name. It's a negative example. But this is an organization that operates homes for people with disabilities, group homes in a rural area, and they decided to implement electronic medical records. They did go through a technology planning process that identified that as a high priority for them and a place where they could gain a lot of benefit, especially in terms of efficiency, but also compliance with some of their funders and regulators. And so they invested in this system, they set it up, they trained all the staff, they rolled it out into all the homes, and it completely flopped. I'm wondering if anybody can guess why. Maybe you can chat in what you think happened there, why nobody was using it. They found out that instead of using this electronic system, people were going back to old ways of keeping track of their medical records. They were jotting things down on paper. They were using Excel spreadsheets, things like that. So I'm seeing a couple of people chime in like Marlis' infrastructure. That's the right direction. It's something specific. No user buy-in. That actually wasn't the case. That would have been my hunch. What happened, okay Jill's kind of got it. She said their computers couldn't handle it. They didn't have good internet connections. So remember I said they're in a rural area. They were on dial-ups. And so the speed was so slow that it drove the staff or CERC when they were trying to do their data entry in this system or when they were trying to access records. And so they just kind of threw up their hands and said that we're just going to work around this, do it the old way. And when the organization discovered that, then they had to systematically go through and upgrade the internet in every location and then do the rollout all over again. And now they've done that and everything is working really well. But unfortunately, they failed to identify that need upfront. And if they had gone through this pyramid in order from the bottom up to the top, then they more likely would have been able to identify that problem before they went through this failed rollout. So thanks to everybody who sent in your guesses on that. I hope that was helpful for you to think about that. And okay, so now let's say you have figured out your priorities. Maybe you've got two or three things that you think are most important to your organization. You might also think about contingencies. Like let's say that big grant that we're expecting doesn't come or it's delayed by six months, then what are we going to do? Like which one of our priorities actually gets delayed or dropped off the list if we don't have the funding to do it or if we don't have the staff resources to do it? Or on the other hand, like what if we have some kind of windfall or what if our best case scenario budget actually happens? Or what if we decide to launch this new program that we've been thinking about? Well then what are the implications for our technology plan? And so you might, like your budget, you might actually have three different technology plans. One that's most likely, one that is worst case scenario, and one that's best case scenario. And be prepared so that you can make adjustments on the fly, depending on what the actual situation is. Your plan is going to have things like dates, costs, who's responsible for each of the tasks and milestones. It also might have contingencies like I mentioned. And you want to make sure that in your budget you are including staff time allocated to this. And not just the staff person who's in charge of implementing the plan, or the staff person who's like say the database administrator when you're doing a database replacement or upgrade, but also the end users of that technology. Because if you make a change then it's going to result in probably some downtime for them. It may slow them down while they're learning the new system and so on. So you want to make sure that you're planning for that as well. And certainly don't forget user adoption and all the aspects of change management that are necessary to really make a new tool effective for your organization. We talked just a little bit before about who should be involved in decision making. And I'm wondering if you can chat in your ideas for that too, like who's going to be on your technology team? Not the names, but the roles of people. And I don't know if there's a right size for a technology team. I think it depends on the size of your organization. If you have only four people on your staff, well I don't know if it's really realistic to say all four of them are going to be on the technology team. So all four may have input to it. If you have 400 staff then again you're not going to have all 400 on the team. But you may want to have a team that's representative of different departments within the organization or different roles in relation to using the technology. Some of the important roles that should be on every technology team or technology planning team are an executive sponsor. So that's someone who has the authority to get you the resources you need and to hold people accountable for the decisions that you make. You're going to implement this. They're going to make sure that you actually are able to do that. Get things out of your way. Get the barriers out of your way. You also may have other champions at different levels of the organization who are enthusiastic about technology. Maybe they're super users and they're influencers among their peers. So those are good people to choose for your technology planning team as well. An expert is also a great person to have on your technology team and that might be an outside person. Danielle suggested a financial decision maker. That's a great person to have on your team as well. Or if not on the committee then at least someone who's being informed about the planning and has some input into it and some extra knowledge about it instead of just waiting until the very end to present your plans to that financial decision maker it's better to involve them early. And then an end user as well or in many cases you want more than one end user who are part of the team. So Kelly thanks for sharing your ideas too. She's got, actually Kelly, I'm not sure if you're a male or female. That could go either way. A director and COO plus engineering personnel is on Kelly's team. So that's great. And technology teams I've worked with have often included an executive director or CEO and administrative leader and that might be the office manager. It might be COO depending on the size of the organization who has responsibility. Often it is whoever is kind of the accidental techie in the organization if it's small and whoever has the responsibility for technology whether or not they actually have a formal IT role. If you do have an IT person then certainly that person is on your team. All right, so thanks for sharing those and for the clarification Kelly. Now that we've talked a bit about the planning process, I want to give you a good example. And I was hoping that Anne would be here today to be able to share this for herself. But since she has had an emergency come up, I have heard her story and so I'll be able to share some things that she has passed along with me and kind of talk about how the planning process went in the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. And Susan, let me bring you in here too and you can kind of help get this going. All right? Absolutely. Anne provided us with a lot of information and I'm sure our participants will find interesting and helpful. And again, everyone please do feel free to chat in questions. You don't need to wait until our Q&A session. When Anne's organization, the Grand Rapids Community Foundation was starting, Karen, what was their process? What was their tech planning process? How long did it take them? Who was involved? And what were the steps they took? What Anne shared with me was that it was about a six month process. And she actually checked in with me right at the beginning. She said, I just found your tactical technology planning on demand course. And so I signed up for that and I'm watching the videos and doing the worksheets with my team. So that was in maybe January or February of 2016. And then by June, they had completed the whole process. And then she shared her final plan with me, which was great of her to be willing to have outside eyes on that. So they took about six months. They created an internal technology team that had people from multiple departments of the organization and at multiple different levels. And they followed the planning guide from ideal where pretty closely. But they did take a few liberties with it as well to adjust it to their own situation. And I would encourage you to do that as well. Don't just use the planning materials that we provide as a rigid cookie cutter. But take that and then adapt it to your own situation. And she also said, and I want to actually read this to you because she touched me a note about this. She said, when it came to discussing the strengths and weaknesses of our hardware and software, we felt it was important to get feedback from all staff. So not just the committee, but everyone. So she says, I held sessions with each of the departments and gave them 30 minutes to go through each section. I kept it short in order to get their immediate feedback and not get into the weeds. I did send them the document one day ahead of time to give them time to think about the topics. I gave them each sticky notes and they listed their pros and cons on a giant sticky. And I then reviewed them to make sure what I captured was accurate. I then condensed everything down and reviewed what was collected for themes. So I'm sure many of you have been in a planning process like this that's facilitated where you have all the sticky notes and you put them up on the wall or whatever and rearrange them and kind of come up with a group consensus on what the pain points or the priorities are. So that was what she did with each of her departments in 30-minute meetings. And that was a pretty important part of their process I think. Thanks. And I think in that question we kind of addressed that getting started and assessing all of the infrastructure, kind of that foundational course that Idealware has in the Tech Planning 101. And another question that we asked were what priorities were identified? And specifically, what did Grand Rapids Community Foundation decide not to focus on? So when they were starting to put their plan into action, how did they prioritize? One of the things that came out in those staff focus groups was that staff felt like they didn't have enough choice in what kind of computers they used. And they felt that maybe their computers weren't a good fit for their role. Some people had desktops when they really needed laptops and so on. And so as a result of that, they made this computer cafeteria plan and that's probably the biggest outcome so far for them. It was actually a small thing to implement, but what they did is they created kind of a menu of choices. And I think they offer four or five different computer choices for everyone. So when their computer is up for replacement, they can look at this menu and they can pick the one that they feel is the best fit for their role in the organization and their personal preferences. So they're achieving a good balance between giving people personal choice and letting them feel like their needs are being honored and met. And at the same time, keeping some level of standardization so that rather than it just being a big free-for-all where they give everybody like 800 bucks and tell them to go buy their own computer, they're managing the procurements centrally. They're limiting it to I think all one brand of computer and only five different models. And so then it makes it easier for them to manage while still giving people that sense of choice. And so that has been very well received so far. And I think that actually went a long way toward achieving some of the buy-in and enthusiasm about technology and helping get people's attitudes to be more positive toward that which will help them with other aspects of the plan. And then one other priority that they identified was improving the functionality of their fund statements as a community foundation. That's an important part of their operations. I don't have as much detail about what exactly they're doing there but that was another thing that they identified as a top priority. And that's the next thing they're going to move on to now that the cafeteria plan is rolled out. Thank you. I think some of the other questions in the chat here too, Susan, so maybe we can address some of those. But I think you might have another one for me, right? I think there's one more. And then we have got quite a few questions from our audience that we can address. What advice does Ann have for every other organization who is starting the planning process? One thing that I thought was great that Ann said was that it was a really smooth process for them. And she said there really weren't a lot of surprises. She said the only real surprise was that staff were much kinder in their feedback than I expected. So that was good. Now that doesn't always happen. So we can't all expect you to go that smoothly but great outcome for them. But even though she didn't express a lot of challenges or surprises, I think this is my opinion. I think that's because Ann was very deliberate about the way she handled this process. She educated herself about technology planning. She made sure that there were resources allocated to it, but it wasn't something that had to be like squeezed in the cracks, but that she actually had dedicated time for herself to devote to this and that she had other people in the organization that were freed to be able to be part of the technology planning committee and really do a good job of this. And so I think that's kind of the key for them to making it be a really smooth process. Great. Thanks. We have quite a few questions from the audience and specifically there are a lot of folks who are coming from small organizations, small nonprofits that may only have two or three staff members and some of those are volunteers. How do they address developing the plan itself and then getting people on a committee? That's kind of a catch-22 because if you're a small organization, you probably have the biggest need to work with an outside resource to augment your staff capabilities and the knowledge that you have in-house. And yet you also may have very limited resources to be able to do that. So in cases like that, I would suggest maybe looking at pro bono resources. And so taproot and catch-of-fire and Executive Service Corps, there's a lot of organizations that can help match you up with someone who's qualified to provide this kind of assistance for you and can also support them to make sure that it's a good experience for everybody. So that might be something to look at. And another thing is just to really build it into your budget. And that's something that honestly I deal with struggles with as well. Even though we're out there giving other people advice about this, we have the same struggles that our audience does. We're a small organization. We have a limited budget. So we have actually gotten the direction from our board to make our infrastructure a priority for the coming year. And if that means that we have to specifically allocate staff time for that and seek funding for it, then that's what we're going to do. And it's hard. I mean just by saying you're going to do that doesn't make it happen. But I think if you're very deliberate about it and articulate it as a key priority, then it makes it easier to align resources around that. And also there are a lot of knowledge resources available for you, not just pro bono help, but if you feel like you need to just educate yourself about this or get some templates or guidelines for how to do a technology plan, then that's easy. We've got that covered for you. And soon we're going to talk more about some of those resources in a little while. Great. Thanks. We also have someone here from a library. And they have to create a plan to support their technology infrastructure. And they're also wondering about where to get started. So I think that some of the resources you mentioned and the courses that we'll just go through those in a little bit will help. But is there anything specific you can recommend for libraries? I'm trying to think what would be different about a library versus another kind of nonprofit organization. And the main thing is that libraries often have patrons who are using their technology. They might have a lab or they might have computers that are used for various purposes at the library site. And then there are also some special kinds of software systems and data management systems that libraries use. So there probably would be some specific resources on how to choose those tools and how to set up a lab environment and maintain it that are a little bit different. But other than that, the basic process is the same. You'll still use the pyramid. You'll still prioritize kind of following the same method. So I hope that these fundamentals would also apply to a library just as well. Great. Yes. And some of you are asking about the resources that Karen just mentioned. And we will curate a list of resources for everyone. And we will send that out in our follow-up email that will go out along with our link to the recording and the PowerPoint. So you'll be getting a lot of resources in that follow-up email in just a few days. I saw a couple questions about funding. Do you mind if we address that? That's tough. You get through this whole process and you have your priorities identified and then you think, well, wait a minute, how am I going to pay for all this? And one of the things we often say at Idealware is there are no technology funding fairies. There's not some secret foundation out there that only exists to fund your technology projects. So you have to approach this the same way that you fund anything else in your organization. You're going to make a case for it. You're going to probably approach your current funders. Those are often your best prospects. And you want to frame it in terms of how does this help you accomplish your mission? How does this help you deliver your programs? Why is this technology essential to being an effective organization? I could go on for probably a whole hour about this whole issue. There are a lot of barriers to technology funding and capacity building. And there's kind of a cycle of pain, I think, that organizations and their funders go through where organizations don't think funders are willing to fund technology. And so they ask for less than they need. And then they get less than they need. And then the technology doesn't work. And then funders perceive that technology isn't worth investing in. And it just kind of perpetuates itself. I think we have to get out of that cycle. But as far as just seeking funding, you can certainly include that in grant requests. You can also scrap together a lot of discounts and donations and pro bono resources that are available to nonprofits and libraries that maybe aren't available to general business organizations. And so that's another way to kind of solve that problem too. But what you shouldn't do is settle for less than what you need. Great. Thank you. All right. I think we're going to move along and talk a little bit about the courses so that we can address some of the other questions and show you where some of the resources that you're looking for, the courses may help you with some of the other questions that folks have in our chat box. I'm going to talk a little bit about the TechSoup and Idealware partnership and the courses that we have available to all of you and indeed anyone. We have four Tech planning courses. And you can find out all about these on our TechSoup courses platform. I'm going to give you a quick overview of the four courses, and I'm going to try to take you live to the platform to kind of navigate through the courses. There are four courses in this learning track. Essentially, Idealware has created, just like the pyramid that Karen discussed, they've created courses in a progressive learning environment. So where you can take the first course, which is the free course, it's Tech Planning 101. This is really that foundational piece. This is where when Karen was talking about your hardware and your software, all of that infrastructure, this is where you do that audit. This is where you can get all of the information that will inform developing your data strategy, how to organize your online communications, and then put the Tech Plan into action. So it's a free course, Tech Planning 101. And that is followed by Tech Planning 201, where we talk about that next level in the pyramid about data strategy. And kind of like, what data are you going to collect? How are you going to collect it? How are you going to maintain it? And how are you going to measure it? So there's modules in that course that help you answer those questions and begin to build your plan. Tech Planning 201 is organizing your online communication. So that's your social media and your online communication. So in this course, you learn how to define your communication goals, your best practices for your email, your website, then social media, and even more importantly, how to integrate your communication so that you're sure you're choosing the right tools and using them to meet your goals. And then the last course in the learning track is the Tech Planning 203, which is really where you put your Tech Plan into action. And it's where, like Karen discussed with Ann's organization, they actually identified their priorities. And they decided what to focus on and what not to focus on. And that last course, that final course, really is where you develop a written plan that you can use to give to funders that you also share with your board members and your executive team. So I did want to talk a little bit about the courses and kind of take you through the online components. And very quickly though, I did want to mention that the course is the Tech Planning 101 is free. So here's where you can build your foundation. And the other three courses are $40 each, or you can choose to get the All Access pass to successful Tech Planning. And here's where you get all of the courses bundled into one. So you get four courses for $99. So that's a savings of $21. And I am going to share my desktop with you so that I can show you what these courses look like online. And I just want to make sure that everyone can see my desktop right now. All right, great. So this is the Tech Planning 101 course. Idealware has done an amazing job of building this curriculum so that you have both information that you can view on their videos. And then there are also activities. So for example, in one of the modules we have the Technology Committee. And this is really a key component of any tactical technology plan is both the Technology Committee, how to build them, how to build the committee, how to select them, and how to work with them. And this course, and the series of courses, helps you do a step-by-step building your Technology Committee when you bring them together to have meetings to discuss important steps in building your Technology Plan. And the way these courses are laid out, we have individual modules, and each module has a video that you watch, and then there's an activity. And you can download these activities. You can simply pop them out. You can save them to your desktop, or you can share them with other folks in your organization or library. And you work through the modules from top to bottom. And towards the end, you start talking about building your Technology Plan document. So some of the things that you'll do in your foundational course, the 101 course, are to start that plan and to start building that document. And remember, this is a living document, and I'll invite Karen to jump in on this. But when I took the course myself, one of the things I noticed is that as I was answering the questions just for my own fictitious organization, I noticed that some of these things would change as I moved through some of the other modules in the other courses in the progressive learning. So after you've completed the 101 course, you could then really move into your tech planning 201, 202, and 203. And the great thing is we've built these so that you do have some overlap. So you can be assured that you'll always be developing parts of your tech plan, and you can always go back and get started and assess your IT infrastructure if you have to. So these courses are very easy to access. You simply go to our techsoup.course.tccatalog, and I know Becky is probably chatting that out right now, but you can navigate through our catalog and determine which of the courses you'd like to take. And interestingly enough, we also have a course on tech training. So a lot of you answered Karen's question about why some folks didn't adopt some new technology. And a lot of you answered that there wasn't a lot of buy-in from staff or there wasn't any training. We actually do have a free online course all about tech training as well. So we invite you to join us on our platform TechSoup Courses and kind of introduce yourself to Idealware's tactical technology planning courses. And try the 101. That's the free course. You can build your foundation. You can do your audit of your non-profit or your library. And then you can move on to taking any of the other three courses. We strongly recommend that you do take the 101 first. However, if you have a lot of experience or you've already done an audit, you can jump into the 201, 202, or 203. And I do want to see if anyone has any questions. All right. We don't have any additional questions. Susan, do you mind if I just talk briefly about the live course too? Absolutely. Great. So on your screen you'll see a discount code, TechSoup, for $20 off this live course. So as a kind of culmination to all the on-demand online learning, if you feel like you would like to be part of a cohort that goes through this together, that has an instructor that can kind of help you figure out how to apply this to your situation. And it's just like a more three-dimensional experience for you. Idealware will be offering a live version of this course starting January 5th. And it's designed to build on the on-demand content. So we'll actually be assigning some of that as homework. And then in the live courses it'll be virtual, so it's by webinar. But that will be much less like listening to somebody present and more interaction, conversation with the instructor and other participants to work through the specific problems that you're encountering. So for example, we've got a couple of questions here like from Ken. We're a small nonprofit who works with the homeless and needy. After finishing our plan can you suggest grants? Or someone else asked, it was Anthony, I'm a very new charity that's just starting out. What should we put in place in the beginning that will help us out in the long run? So this course will help you get specific answers to questions like that. And I'll chat out the link to it. There's no reason for you not to do the on-demand course first and then do the live stuff. That'll get you a really good jump on the homework for this. So I guess that's all about that Susan. Great, you bring up a really good point. It's for all different types of learners. So the course that you can take independently anytime, anywhere, you can go to our TechSoup courses and jump into the Tech Planning courses. And then you can also attend Ideal Wears course where you'd be attending some live events and discussing things with an instructor. We also have a couple of things on our website that Becky will chat out. We do have a couple of blog posts. And we have some other resources on our website that Ann talked about, some of her successes in Tech Planning outcomes. And also there's a blog post about how you can Tech Plan. A lot of you came here today to get some basic information about how to start. And we want to continue building your knowledge and confidence. So we invite you to join us on our TechSoup courses and take some of Ideal Wears wonderful classes. Now Karen has discussed a lot of information today. She's provided an excellent foundation for everyone to get started with Tactical Tech Planning. We'd like you to chat in one thing that you learned in today's webinar or something that you're going to try to implement. And as you're doing that, I'm also going to talk to you about some more upcoming webinars and events. We have a couple upcoming free webinars. Tomorrow we have one about Microsoft Cloud Services and what it can do for your nonprofit. There's also a webinar next week about early STEM learning. So for those of you who work with early childhood or young children, this is a good webinar for you. And then in November we've got Power Up Your Data with Microsoft Power BI. We'll talk about data visualization. And then on the 16th of November we have a library webinar. Fix it at the library. Do it yourself. Repair programs. So great. I'm glad to see a lot of folks really identified that the pyramid is a way to prioritize efforts. Great. We are actually almost out. We hope you do try to take the free course because I think once you take the free course and you kind of identify or do your assessment or your audit, I think you'll be inspired to move on to take some of the other courses. And we of course invite you to give us feedback throughout the courses. And we do have evaluations and surveys built into that. I do want to thank Karen from IdeaWare for all of her support during our partnership and the rollout of these online courses. We've done this for all of you, our nonprofits and library community. So we want to make sure that it's relevant. Please do give us feedback in the survey that will pop up today when we end this webinar or when you X out of the webinar. Karen, thank you so much for your expertise in providing this overview and all of the support you've given to TechSoup. I appreciate it being to do this with you. Yeah, this has been a wonderful experience. And I've learned a lot. I also want to thank Becky on the back end for doing all of the chats and shout outs. Thank you so much for your support on this webinar. And of course all of you, we know your most valuable resource is your time. So we do appreciate your time today. And we do hope you'll join us in our online courses. And thanks to our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk. Thank you. Have a great rest of your week and a fabulous weekend.