Nonprofit technology organization NTEN has launched a public data dashboard for Tech Accelerate, a free, comprehensive assessment tool about technology use and policies designed to help nonprofit staff with decisions, planning, and investments.
NTEN conducted sector-wide research for more than a decade into how nonprofits invested in technology — from staffing levels to technology budgets — and surfaced the key indicators of practices and policies correlated with effective organizations.
“Starting in 2012, we piloted and expanded various self-assessment models of the survey questions and benchmarking tools, identifying what was of most use to nonprofit staff,” explained Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN. “In 2018, NTEN launched Tech Accelerate as an online assessment tool with custom reports and benchmarking.”
Tech Accelerate was designed as a to single, comprehensive assessment that offers multiple options for analysis and application. The reports have been used to apply for grants or support fundraising, inform strategic planning or budgeting, and build a technology roadmap, she said.
Users can work on the assessment alone or invite colleagues to create accounts and collaborate. Answers can be changed until a user is ready to submit the assessment. Once submitted, users have access to a custom report and benchmarking tools. The assessment data will be added to the dataset but will never be sold, and it will only be shared or disclosed as being yours if you choose to share it with a funder, consultant, or partner, said Sample Ward.
There are two ways to understand the technology adoption when you view your report, a Tech Adoption Score and Risk Assessment. The adoption score only appears for an overall score and for each of the four categories; it does not apply at the question level. The four-part Tech Adoption Scale includes struggling, functioning, operating and leading.
Each question for risk assessment has custom parameters based on the topic and technology it is about that are specific to organizational, constituent, and/or security risk. There are three categories of risk that appear, including ow risk, medium risk and significant risk.
To learn more about Tech Accelerate go to https://www.nten.org/accelerate/data
