September 8, 2010

September 8, 2010

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In This Edition:


News Update:

Make Time To Develop A Disaster Recovery Plan


Tips Section:

Human Resources...
Preparing for-profit execs for the non-profit world

Donors...
Finding out what your they thing of giving

-Marketing...
Start measuring relationships with donors

 

 

 

 


















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Make Time To Develop A Disaster Recovery Plan

 

By Grant Howe

You've no doubt heard about the need for a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). You've also probably heard sad stories resulting from the lack of a DRP, including the pain of data loss and even complete organizational failure.

So, what is a DRP? A disaster recovery plan is a subset of a larger process known as business continuity planning that should include preparations for the resumption of applications, data, hardware, communications (such as networking), and other IT infrastructure.

According to Wikipedia, a typical business continuity plan (BCP) includes preparations for non-IT related aspects of a business, such as key personnel, facilities, crisis communication, and reputation protection, and should refer to the DRP for IT-related infrastructure recovery and continuity.

You might be asking: "Who has the time for this kind of planning?" And, you might be thinking: "Even if I develop a DRP today, it could be months before it's in place and tested. What if we have a disaster in the meantime?"

These are both great questions. To put your mind at ease (at least a little), let's look at four steps you can take now to reduce your risk, even without a fully developed DRP.

There is a specific question anyone in the technology field asks someone who has just experienced a disaster: "Where is your latest backup and how old is it?" You always want your backup to be all three of these things: off-site, accessible, and less than one week old.

Often they hear the very bad news about the data because they didn't a backup. It's gone forever. Many businesses and organizations that are unable to recover data from a disaster cannot make it through their next year. Hardware and software is easily replaced, but your organization's data is priceless and should be treated as such.

During the next seven days:

* Find out if your organization is performing backups. If not, start doing backups today. If so, make a list of additional data that might need backing up on a regular basis.* Get a plan in place to weekly backup everything on your list.

* Store your backups off-site.

When insurance agents ask organizations how many computers are in their building, most have no idea. Knowing how many physical IT assets you own is not only critical for insurance reasons, it is also necessary to help you figure out what computers and applications should be rebuilt first.

During the next 30 days:

* Make a list of your organization's computers and storage devices (workstations & servers).

* Annotate the functions and applications that are used on each one.

* Rate each resource as "critical" or "disposable." Critical resources are those that cannot be quickly rebuilt from new hardware and a backup (app servers, databases etc). Disposable resources are those that can be easily recreated from backups and install disks.

* Focus your attention on plans to "recover from failure" only the critical resources as your first step

The proper "care and feeding" of servers and mission-critical applications is best left to those who can afford specialized IT staff. If you would prefer to spend your IT staff's time on higher value tasks for your organization -- beyond patching the operating system or updating applications -- consider switching to hosted versions of key applications.

Many independent software vendors (ISVs) offer their software in a hosted environment that you can pay for on a monthly basis, with no servers or software for you to manage. You should also consider "renting" servers from a reliable and large managed service provider. When looking at these providers, make sure they include service level agreements (SLAs) of at least 99 percent uptime for your critical services, and that they are contractually bound to those SLAs.

During the next 45 days:

* Review the list of critical servers and applications from the previous exercise.* Ask your software vendors about hosted versions of your software.* Determine and consider total cost of ownership (including maintaining hardware in house), as compared to application hosting and outsourcing your servers.

* Pick the provider that works for you, and then implement some manageable and economical changes

Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Along with reducing your short-term disaster recovery risks, you'd be remiss in not starting the process of building a comprehensive DRP. Long term, your organization needs to have one developed and implemented. And, if you don't start, you'll never finish.

During the next 90 days:

* Discuss the need for a DRP with your executive director and/or board of directors and secure buy-in. * Ask for assignment of a project manager or owner.* Draft a project plan.

* Build a budget to present to your board.

DRPs are important, but reducing real short-term risk is important, too. In dealing with technology, it's important to make a difference, not a mess.

***

Grant Howe is the vice president of research and development for Sage North America's Nonprofit Solutions business unit, based in Austin, Texas. His email is grant.howe@sage.com


Human Resources...

 

Preparing for-profit execs for the non-profit world

 

 


As the nonprofit sector develops into a formidable hiring force, people from the for-profit world continuously jump to nonprofits for employment. But there some differences between the for-profit and nonprofit arenas that can make a difference in employment, according to Kurt Aschermann, president and chief operating officer of Charity Partners, LLC, based in Boston.


Making yourself aware of the differences between the two sectors can help when you are hiring. They include:

 


- Nonprofit hours aren't always 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Your mission might not always fit in the 8-hour workday. Express that to a potential hire. There can be special events -- galas, walk-a-thons, community service -- that extend later in the day or take up weekends. Be sure to outline what time commitment you expect.

 


- Not having ample resources. For-profit companies sometimes have easy access to things they need to operate. But nonprofits need to effectively use donor dollars. So, buying all new office furniture might be out of the question.

 


- Gaining a consensus. Aschermann said that some former for-profit hires have trouble working with volunteers. Consensus is key for nonprofits. It might be harder to get "buy-in," but it's necessary.

 


- Audience perspective. For-profit hires are used to reaching one audience -- the people who will potentially use the product they are marketing. "They had trouble dealing with the fact that the donor, who is our customer, is not the consumer of our product in most cases," said Aschermann. "We have two different audiences we need to reach -- and that one audience satisfies the other audiences."

Donors...Finding out what your they think of giving

 

That store you went into the other day -- where the people who "helped" you, for lack of a better term, treated you rudely or indifferently, talked more to each other than to you, and couldn't explain what they were offering – you're just chomping at the bit to get back there again, right?


No? Is it possible that your donors feel the same about your organization? If they do, you probably shouldn't expect any big checks any time soon.


At the DMA 09 Conference and Exhibition in San Diego in October, "The Global Event for Integrated Marketing," Bridget L. Brandt urged nonprofit managers to create loyalty through experience, by identifying, evaluating and enhancing the donor's experience.


To identify and evaluate the experience:

 


- 

Get more information. Act like a donor/customer, get someone else to act like a donor, listen to staff and volunteers, survey. Be careful about surveys, however. Don't over-survey your donors, make a plan for how many people in the organization are surveying and centralize the process. Assure a common understanding; don't use terms specific to your organization. Don't make a list of choices too long. Check your Web site.

 


- 

Examine all of your touch points.

 


- 

Be honest when you evaluate yourself and don't punish people for their honesty


- 

Accept the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marketing...Start measuring relationships with donors

 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is just technical jargon for keeping your constituents actively engaged with your organization as much as possible.


Peter Vandre, director of quantitative solutions at Merkle Inc., and Matthew Moller, senior manager, CRM at Samsung explained why you should stop guessing at engagement and start measuring at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Conference and Exhibition in San Diego, Calif.


Here are some points:


- 

Some engagement points are much more valuable. By analyzing your data, see if there are certain actions that steer constituents to a higher return on investment (ROI). You might be able to see that those signed up for your e-newsletter give larger donations than those of fans of your Facebook page.

 


- 

See where you are getting the best results and drive people there.

 


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Behavior is more important than demographics. You could understand your constituents outside the demographic barriers of gender, age and income level. Look at engagement factors, such as email click through rates, to determine where they fall in your customer experience management (CEM). Those with multiple engagement types usually fall within high CEM value.

 


- 

Pay attention to acquisition sources. There are various ways people come in to your organization. Try tracking the initial touch-points to see if there are acquisition sources that are more valuable than another.

 


- 

Understand lifecycle segments. Vandre and Moller explained that customers, just like donors, move through life cycles within your organization. They start out as a prospect and come to your organization as a newcomer. Then they may develop into a loyal participant. But they could also drift into lapsed and then inactive. The key is to keep catching the constituents before they lapse and inactivate to bring them back to the highly engaged stage. 

 


 

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