Enthusiasm and Wide-Ranging Interest

• Social change organizers are largely enthusiastic about the potential of online tools and view technology as extremely important to achieving their organizations’ missions.

• Because organizations’ online needs and operational goals run the gamut, no one tool or tool suite can completely fill the technology gap. However, the most popular tools, or the tools that a majority of respondents report using or needing, fall into the communications and fundraising categories.

Obstacles to Harnessing Online Potential

• Most organizations, whether three-person start-ups or 3 million-person coalitions, are struggling to keep their constituent databases in order, and as a result have difficulty embracing new and emerging technologies (such as blogs, social networking, SMS/text messaging, GIS mapping, and wikis).

• 59% report being frustrated or really struggling with technology.

• A surprising number of organizations indicate they lack the capacity to employ some of the most standard online organizing techniques — 39% do not use email newsletters and 47% do not accept donations online.

• Regardless of the size of the organization, organizers across the board reported that money (57%), time (45%), and lack of staff expertise (34%) prevent their organizations from taking full advantage of databases and online tools.

Data Disarray: The Great Equalizer

• Inadequate data management emerged as a major impediment to effective organizing. More than half the respondents report using slips of paper, Excel spreadsheets, and personal address books to manage organizational data.

• Organizations across the budget spectrum experience a similar lack of data integration in their systems. The ability to share data across platforms and between applications, such as contact databases and Web content management systems, reduces data duplication and errors, as well as time spent on manual data entry and manually synching data repositories. Only 7% of respondents report that their current systems share data easily.

• Organizers also stress the significance of data integration in their daily operations. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the greatest importance of data integration to their work, nearly 70% of respondents chose ratings between 7-10, signifying that a vast majority consider integration to be both a key obstacle and solution.

Predictors (or Not….) of Technology Success

• The number of dedicated technology staff in an organization emerged as the most stable predictor of technology success. Respondents with a higher number of dedicated technology staff tend to be less frustrated than respondents with fewer dedicated staff.

• Although larger annual budgets had a positive impact on respondents’ attitudes toward technology, funding is not a panacea for technology woes. For example, organizations that spent the least on software and online tools were just as likely to be satisfied, on average, as those that spent the most.

The Real Costs of the Technology Struggle

• Social change organizations are struggling to master standard and emerging technology, as well as to manage data silos and ill-suited tools. These challenges, which drain resources away from serving their communities and constituents, result in lost time, missed civic engagement opportunities, lost money, and poorly-informed decisions. For example, a comprehensive and flexible list of supporters is a core tool for organizing; yet, this tool remains drastically underutilized. 55% of respondents report that they don’t keep email lists at all, and a majority have email lists of fewer than 1,000 supporters.

The Good News

Fortunately, the world of organizing and technology is ripe for change. Social change organizers have adopted enough new technology to know what works, what’s missing, and most importantly, that the Web holds tremendous untapped potential. Organizers understand that online organizing tools can dramatically increase their capacity, and are demanding the know-how and tools to progress along that path.

Concurrently, trends in Web-based software development have created an ideal climate for collaboration and innovation. Open source development models make software code available for others to view, amend, adapt, and implement with minimal licensing fees. Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enable separate applications to work with each other, and on-demand software, such as Salesforce.com or Democracy in Action, enables users to access tools that are hosted and maintained online. On-demand access is lessening the need for in-house technical staff and making a wider array of tools accessible and affordable for organizers.

A promising convergence is now on the horizon, as organizers embrace online technology and those technologies gain the diversity and flexibility needed to support this sector.

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