

Any Hackers work for Nonprofits? - bbissoon

Hi All, I&#x27;m looking to reach out to a few hacker&#x27;s who&#x27;ve worked for - or currently work with, nonprofits.<p>We&#x27;re trying to get a better grasp on the diverse workflow nonprofits use when making decisions that rely on tech. I.E. Building a Website, Making Changes, Adding Code for Google Analytics, PayPal etc.<p>What have been your experiences and what would you change?
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scmoore
I work for a research institution funded by a DOE grant, not sure if that
qualifies.

Technical decision-making is messy here. The folks making the decisions are
academics whose expertise is in their research areas, not in software
development. I will refrain from the horror stories. I have made suggestions
for improvements to workflow, technology, etc. but they must always be routed
through someone with at least a Master's degree. Usually it's easier to make
the changes myself and hope for the best. It can be frustrating that no one
cares, but OTOH there's very little pressure, as Bahamut noted. At this stage
in my career it's not a great fit, but if I were <10 years from retirement, I
might feel differently.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we're grant-funded. In a business
setting, I can make the case for process improvements in terms of the bottom
line. Here, it doesn't really matter if, for example, we have no bug tracker,
because that doesn't really affect the grant-writing process that keeps our
lights on.

Our research goal is to discover best practices for improving employment
options for people with disabilities. Therefore, if I could change anything,
I'd have my boss approach our software development efforts in the same spirit
as the research, that is, with an eye to measuring more of it and implementing
processes to improve those metrics.

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dsacco
I've done pro bono consulting work for nonprofits in the past. If you have
specific questions you're welcome to email me (check my profile).

If I had to sum up my experiences in general, I'd say they were fairly
disorganized - you really aren't sure what to expect when you dive into a
nonprofit company's tech stack. Smaller companies and nonprofits in particular
don't usually have the same regimented structure of larger companies, and you
really see this when you're exposed to it. More importantly, all of the
nonprofits I worked with had really shoddy IT because it's frankly an
afterthought for most of them. They just outsource to whoever markets to them
the most aggressively for the best price.

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bbissoon
This has been our general findings as well and we've been doing some research
on the best way to market. Clearly banking on the technological advantages
will be ineffective.

I'll hit you via email because your response brought to mind other things
we're curious about. Thanks for taking the time to answer dsacco

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Bahamut
I worked for a non-profit for my first job - it was nice in a lot of ways, it
was a zero pressure environment, no crunch time and a lot of spend time
learning at your speed.

The decision making was experiment with different technologies, figure out how
to get them to work, and determining whether it was scalable.

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bbissoon
Thanks Bahamut - Did you bring ideas to the decision makers based on a need
you saw at the nonprofit or did they approach you with something to look into?

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Bahamut
I experimented more - I was very junior back then, so I had a lot to learn. I
didn't really have anything to do with the decision making.

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LarryMade2
Define non-profit, a foundation, a private - public funded service, etc?

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bbissoon
Hi LarryMade2, I'm talking about charities, nonprofits organizations that
survive on grants and donations.

