technology consulting in the community · bush is the president & ceo. program directors denise...

Technology Consulting in the Community

Spring 2016

Carnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh, Pennsylvaniawww.cmu.edu/tcinc

Danish Malik Urban League of Greater

Pittsburgh

Final Consulting Report

Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh Page 1 of 22 Danish Malik, Student Consultant April 28, 2016

Final Consulting Report Student Consultant, Danish Malik

Community Partner, Winford Craig

I. Executive SummaryThis report provides details of a consulting engagement between Danish Malik and the UrbanLeague of Greater Pittsburgh. The tasks involved were geared toward preparing the organization forimplementation of a centralized case management and outcomes management software solution.The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh is one of 93 affiliates of the National Urban League, anorganization dedicated to improving African-American economic self-reliance, parity and power,and civil rights. The IT department of the Pittsburgh affiliate is headed by Winford Craig, a retiredIT professional with over 7 years of experience as owner of an IT services business. Mr. Craig wasthe community partner for the duration of engagement and may be contacted at [email protected] organization may be reached through their website http://ulpgh.org/contact-us/, or via phone at(412) 227-4802.

The scope of work undertaken was aimed towards aiding the transition of the organization from its current (non-standardized) case-management/outcomes management processes to the Apricot software solution. Apricot (http://www.socialsolutions.com/apricot/) is an all-in-one cloud based platform for non-profits that offers case management, client, donor and volunteer tracking as well as outcomes management. Adopting a new software solution often requires a change in associated business processes and workflows. To highlight how different functional areas within the organization would need to readapt, design documentation was created to diagram the organization’s current reporting processes and how they would change with Apricot implementation. This outcome of this task aims to increase organizational capacity by defining standardized reporting processes and by ensuring a smooth transition to Apricot in the future. A second major task involved planning for Apricot implementation, training and maintenance. An analysis was done to identify data fields required for reporting by different Urban League programs. It is intended that customizable data form fields in Apricot will be updated with the information gathered from this analysis. Additionally, a training plan was established defining resources and timelines involved in the effort. Also, details were fleshed out regarding a pilot-project to reduce the number of issues during go-live. Finally, a maintenance strategy was outlined defining troubleshooting protocols as well as long-term goals. By ensuring that the vendor and the organization spend minimal time doing such analysis during deployment, this task has also contributed to increased organizational capacity.

Using technology strategically and proactively allows better management and lets an organization communicate its mission to a wider audience. To this end it is recommended that going forward, the Urban League should define and implement a strategic technology plan and a social media strategy.


Having a strategic technology plan ensures that IT will be able to aid the organization’s long-term goals and strategy. Having major technology related decisions in a structured, well-defined manner saves time, minimizes crises, and avoids wasting money on equipment. Meanwhile, a strong social media presence is important not only as a public relations tool but also as a way to connect with potential volunteers, donors and the media. The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh is lagging in this department and should reevaluate its strategy to better position itself.


II. About the Organization Organization

The Mission of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh is to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity and power, and civil rights.

As stated in its strategy statement, The Urban League employs the following 5-point strategy, tailored to local needs, in order to implement its mission:

• Education and Youth Empowerment

• Economic Empowerment

• Health and Quality of Life Empowerment

• Civic Engagement Empowerment

• Civil Rights and Racial Justice Empowerment The Urban League is a national organization with 105 local affiliates in cities all over the United States. The Pittsburgh affiliate has been serving the community for 95 years. The annual budget is $6 million and they employ 110 full-time employees along with 40 volunteers. They serve approximately 18,000 people per year and offer 32 programs. The organization works with a number of external governmental agencies (such as the Department of Human Services and the Department of Education) for some of its offerings.

There is no defined technology strategy at the national level and implementing a technology plan is up to the local affiliate. The Pittsburgh Urban League has a technology division headed by Winford Craig. The major problem identified by Mr. Craig is a lack of standardized data-collection and data-management across the different programs offered especially in regards to outcomes management.

Facilities The Urban League of Pittsburgh is located at 610 Wood Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. The building has multiple floors and the organization is spread across three of these floors. One floor is the administration level where the executives and the finance department have their offices. The other two floors are divided amongst the different programs.

Programs

The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh offers 32 programs in total. A number of programs have external ties to government agencies and outside sponsors. The categories that these programs fall under are:

• Center for Economic Self Reliance (including computer training, job training, resume assistance and the Mature Workers Program)

• Housing (including home ownership workshops, rental assistance, banking assistance and food assistance programs)

• African American Leadership Development (including college preparation and planning and STEM focused after-school programs)


• Family Growth and Child Development (including daycare, parental development workshops and health insurance assistance programs)

• Hunger Services (emergency food assistance, SNAP) Computers facilitate organizational activities as well as being a core part of some of the programs (such as after-school programs and IT certification programs).

Staff The organization consists of both administrative and program related staff. Administrative departments include technology, finance and external relations, each led by a VP or Director. Esther Bush is the President & CEO. Program Directors Denise Hill (Family Support), Richard Morris (Housing/Hunger Services), Ryan Scott (Education), and Rodney Brown (Employment) head the major programs.

The IT Director, Winford Craig, has been with the Urban League for over 10 years and previously owned his own IT services company. He has one full-time staff member who focuses on day-to-day infrastructure support. Staff and executives use the Microsoft Office (Word and Excel primarily) suite of applications extensively and Microsoft Outlook is used for email and calendar purposes. Staff members also use specialized software as necessitated by different programs. For example, Housing Department staff use the web-based ‘Home Counselor Online’ application to help clients prepare for home purchases. Mr. Craig characterizes the staff as generally tech savvy. Technology training has not been a key focus in the past, however there are plans to change that.

Technology Infrastructure

All office workspaces as well as two computer labs have computers. One computer lab is lets job seekers find and apply to jobs as well as work on job related materials. The other lab is for afterschool and STEM related Education programs There are 6 servers in a server-room on-site – two act as file servers, one hosts all their promotional media such as videos and photos, one is dedicated for software used in the STEM program computer lab, one hosts their Exchange server, and one was purchased to host the an agency database that was previously proposed but never materialized. Winford has mentioned an ongoing discussion about the possibility of moving to a cloud based solution such as Office 365 as an alternative to additional server purchases.

The Urban League uses both Cisco and Juniper for its network. Some technology facilities are a result of corporate partnerships, for example there is a Sharp Corporation printing/copying station and the networking solution is provided by Cisco. The major software used by administrative departments is the Microsoft Office suite and the computers run on Windows. Recently the organization plans on purchasing Apricot, a non-profit software solution, to unify their data records across all agency programs and to facilitate in generating insights and reports

Technology Management

The Technology Director is Winford Craig. Mr. Craig heads the technology department along with a coordinator working with him. As such the technology department is not big but deals with a number of issues from troubleshooting to technology strategy and planning. The technology


department is also responsible for equipment maintenance and operational tasks such as installing and updating software.

Technology Planning The Director of Technology handles technology planning and budgeting with the CEO and VP’s involved in key decisions. There is currently no formal technology plan. Winford, also responsible for IT management at the Urban League Charter School has adopted a 5-year plan there and aims to set a 3-year plan for the organization. Meanwhile, decisions regarding IT strategy are made on an ad-hoc basis. Winford intends on addressing the issue of whether to move to a cloud based solution (Office 365) or to buy more server space as one of the fundamental questions in designing an overarching plan.

Internal and External Communication Staff has email accounts and access to the web. Inter-office communication is primarily phone and email based. File sharing is primarily done using Windows file sharing or by staff using email attachments.

The website (www.ulpgh.org) is regularly updated and maintained, however there is a distinct lack of a social media footprint for the organization.

Contact information for donors, funders, clients and volunteers is kept in separate spreadsheet documents.

Information Management Different programs in the organization have unique data requirements. Some programs input data into applications managed by other agencies (for example the Family Support program uses the KIDS database extensively). Other programs only maintain their records as Excel spreadsheets. There is no standardization of data or any sort of central database across agency programs. An attempt was previously made to gather the data into a single SQL database. However, a lack of management endorsement and user training led to the initiative being scrapped. Recently the organization plans on purchasing the Apricot software solution that provides case management, client, donor and volunteer tracking as well as outcomes management. The vendor, Social Solutions, provides service support as well as training for the software. It is estimated that about 20-25 employees across all programs will be using this software to track program outcomes and to manage milestones. Management is expected to use the software to aid with reports and to get a snapshot of performance across the organization. Previous information management problems have arisen from a lack of standardized data across different programs. Not having a unified database has hampered tracking program outcomes and program milestones across the agency


III. Task 1: Improve data management across the agency Motivation

There is a lack of standardization across Urban League programs when it comes to information management, data collection and reporting. The major programs operate in silos with their own workflows and processes. This makes it difficult to view agency performance on a whole and significantly hinders the ability to report program outcomes and milestones across the agency in a timely manner. To help with this problem the Urban League is procuring the Apricot software solution for non-profit case management/outcomes management. However, implementing a central solution such as Apricot requires an overhaul of current business processes and employee workflows related to reporting and data gathering. As the current data management and reporting processes are not well defined, a logical starting place was to determine these workflows. Once existing workflows were defined an effort could be made to propose standardized practices when incorporating Apricot. This two-step task was driven by the following motivations:

• Define baseline measurements of how long it takes on average to process new and existing cases, as well as how long other data related activities take (such as building the quarterly and monthly reports).

• Determine areas for improvement within the current processes to let the organization better utilize their time and focus on furthering their mission in meaningful ways.

• Provide solutions that emphasize a reduction in redundancy and double entry by introducing canned reporting and moving away from ad-hoc reporting.

• Improving the organization’s reporting capacity to gather statistics that are currently hard to find because of a lack of a centralized all-agency database.

Outcomes

Requirements for accomplishing this task were gathered in the following way: 1. Surveyed four program directors (department heads) to determine their data management

needs. This involved asking high-level questions about how data is collected and managed in their particular department:

a. What kind of data is collected? b. What kind of data is not collected that they would like collected?

c. How is the data stored? If any sort of internal or external databases are used what are these?

d. What the shortcomings of the current data management process?

e. What reporting is the department responsible for? 2. Surveyed employees in sub-programs within a department to determine current reporting

processes by program. The requirements gathered in step 1 were at a high level while these involved drilling down to a finer detail. Questions asked on the program level included:

a. What is the step-by-step process for new and existing clients from intake through outcome for each program?


b. How long does each individual process defined in a. take? c. How long does it take to generate reports associated with each individual process

defined in a.? An analysis of these requirements led to the creation of design documentation in the form of process flows defining current data gathering and reporting practices. All such documentation that was created can be found in Appendices A-E. An example of one of these process flows for programs under the African American Leadership Development department is found below:

As mentioned previously, part of the motivation behind diagramming the current process was to determine areas for improvement when migrating the organization to Apricot. As a result, after verifying the process flows for current practices, a second set of documentation was created defining how they would look in the future. Again, these documents are found in Appendices A-E and as an example, the corresponding proposed process flow for the diagram above is as follows:

This documentation significantly aids the Apricot project by letting stakeholders visualize workflow changes associated with implementation and showing how reporting will be streamlined. It will also help the vendor with decision-making during the implementation process. The proposed data management solutions also emphasize standardization, which should harmonize inter-agency


processes and allow staff more flexibility to work cross program if ever required. By breaking up the silo system currently in place, information management practices will improve.

The solutions presented in the documentation are designed to account for how long the current data-entry, data cleaning, compilation, and reporting processes take for each program compared to the original. When considering proposed solutions it was estimated how much time would be saved/gained by standardizing the process for each program. These calculations were based on employee estimates and estimates from the vendor. Programs relying solely on Excel for reporting (African American Leadership Development, Emergency Food Pantry) are not significantly impacted while all other programs save 1-3 hours per each report. This gain should allow staff to focus on increasing the number of individuals served, helping the Urban League better meet their outcome targets. Despite saving on time overall, a drawback of some proposals is the addition of double entry to certain programs. This is because implementing a central database does not mean that these programs no longer have to report data to the external databases that they currently report to, due to contractual obligations or otherwise. To counter this, the possibility of reducing double entry by automation was investigated (transferring data from the proposed centralized solution to external databases or vice versa). However, no concrete recommendation could be established given the complex nature of the organization’s relationships with the owners of external databases.

The flexibility of Apricot affords the proposed solutions sustainability - additional data fields, reports, or programs can be added. However, some proposals may not be immediately implementable. For example, the Family Support program does not currently have staff familiar with querying the LIFT SQL-based database that they use. They rely on an external State employee to send them relevant reporting data every month via email. The proposal assumes that the vendor can work with this State employee to run the relevant queries in Apricot automatically, which might not end up being the case. Finally, there is always a risk that staff might not be receptive to process changes, threatening the long-term sustainability of standardized information management practices.


IV. Plan for Apricot training, implementation and maintenance Motivation

The Apricot procurement process was not finalized prior to the end of the consulting engagement. However, this process is in its final stages and in order to prepare the Urban League for a transition to Apricot an implementation roadmap and work plan was created. Having a clear vision of how the organization will embrace this change is key to ensuring a smooth transition. This task was driven by the following motivations:

• Reduce the amount of implementation and design related decisions undertaken during vendor implementation so that the vendor and Urban League can focus on other training/testing related issues.

• Allow employees flexibility in defining their training schedule ahead of time.

• Provide the organization a roadmap to successful Apricot implementation after the conclusion of the consulting engagement.

The following solutions was created as part of the task:

• A work plan of staff training timelines

• A spreadsheet of data field elements to enter into Apricot

• A go-live strategy

Outcomes As a part of the contract, the vendor will provide multiple sessions of on-site training. There will be two types of trainings, one at a central/administrative level and one geared towards each program area. One of the motivations behind designing a training plan was to maximize scheduling flexibility. Thus, the program area trainings are scheduled over a week. The following table shows the documented training timeline (note that dates are tentative and subject to change):

Training # Date Training Type Functional/Program Area Resources

1 6/6/16 Core Multiple

Mia Van Amberg Andrea Hudley Winford Craig David Greve Michelle Thompson Ramona Walkins

2 6/6/16 Core Administration

Andrea Hudley Michelle Thompson Michael Buzzelli

3 6/7/16 Program Specific African American Leadership Development

Teanna Medina Ryan Scott

4 6/8/16 Program Specific Housing Andrea Towey Danielle Haskin


Training # Date Training Type Functional/Program Area Resources

5 6/9/16 Program Specific Center for Economic Self Reliance

Grace Kizzy Michelle Thompson TBD (New Hire)

6 6/10/16 Program Specific Family Support TBD

Having a training plan ready at the onset means that the Urban League will not have to devote extra resources and time to define one when Apricot is implemented. Rather than focusing on logistics, Winford and the IT team can focus on assisting those that need extra help or training. On a whole, this ensures a smooth transition to the new system and saves the organization time that can be better utilized to achieve other goals. In addition to on-site training the vendor also provides implementation support for a limited time. As a part of this the software will be tailored to the Urban League’s needs. To avail this support to its maximum, a part of this exercise was done ahead of time by gathering data field elements that each program uses for its reporting needs. These data elements were gathered from a variety of sources including paper forms, external databases and existing reports. They are documented in a spreadsheet and, as an example, elements from the Hunger Services department Emergency Food Pantry program are provided:

The data elements are up-to-date as of the last meetings with program areas in March 2016, however if Apricot implementation is significantly delayed they may need to be revisited to account for any changes to forms or reports. Additionally, in the future if any details are added or removed from any interface that does not directly link to Apricot, data elements will need to be reentered. A go-live date of July 1st was decided upon since it is the start of the new fiscal year for the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. Initially a full rollout for all programs was planned, however after considering potential issues that could arise it was mutually agreed that the project could benefit from a pilot phase on June 1st. During the pilot phase, staff from programs under the African American Leadership Development and Center For Economic Self Reliance programs (with the exception of Mature Workers Program) will start using the Apricot system for data-entry and reporting. These programs were chosen because they currently do not use an underlying database


and only use Excel for all their reporting. As a part of this, individual cases from these programs will also be entered into Apricot case management. Data migration for other programs is not intended as this data is difficult to obtain, clean, and import into Apricot for programs not relying on Excel.

For maintenance, Apricot will be incorporated into the existing Urban League ticketing system. Currently staff can send an email to [email protected] for any sort of troubleshooting. This system will be used to process any Apricot related issues by one of the resources that have taken the core Apricot training. The staff member will attempt to resolve it or escalate it to the IT department or the vendor if they are unable to do so.


V. Recommendations A. Vision

The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh must use technology strategically and proactively to better manage the organization and to communicate its mission of serving and empowering the African American community to a wider audience. As an organization they are capable of taking crucial technology related decisions to further the organization’s mission. However, often these decisions are done on an as-needed basis and end up taking a lot of time and effort on the IT departments part. Having a well-defined technology plan is one way to ensure that the Urban League undertakes such evaluations in a structured manner rather than relying on ad-hoc decisions. Additionally, by employing the correct technologies, the organization can improve its outreach to potential volunteers, donors, and the wider community.

B. Goals

Goal 1: Develop and implement a social media strategy to improve outreach

The Urban League currently does not have a social media strategy. The extent of the organization’s social media presence is limited to a single Facebook page handled by the External Relations department. This page, while updated fairly frequently (about once a week), is not attempting to actively engage users on Facebook. Despite being launched in April 2014, the page only has a little over 300 followers. Research shows that non-profits that practice public relations through social media are effective in developing relationships with younger individuals, the media, and the community. [3][4] The Urban League should keep these results in mind when deciding on a Public Relations strategy.

In terms of a three-year roadmap, the Urban League should devote the first year to assessing different platforms they can leverage and how they can better use Facebook. Additionally, there needs to be a clear picture of what the strategy is trying to achieve – engaging with donors, reaching out to the community, developing relationships with other organizations, or some combination of these and other goals. Once there is a clear picture of what the outcomes of the social media strategy should be and how the current approach is falling short, starting in the second year the Urban League should look into how different resources should be allocated to this effort. Around this time they should also finalize their social media plan and budget for related expenses. Finally, they should actually implement the plan, measure outcomes vs. expectations, and tweak the strategy accordingly. At this point, going into the third year they should think about expanding their reach to other platforms, as social media platforms tend to rapidly cycle in and out of fashion.

Goal 2: Define and implement a strategic technology plan

The Urban League currently does not have a well-defined technology plan. Major decisions related to system upgrades, new software deployments and the future of the IT department are taken on an ad-hoc basis. While this may not be much of an issue for a smaller shop, having a strategic technology plan is a must for an organization operating at the size of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. Not having a plan will cost more time and money in the long run while having one ensures that technology will be able to aid the organization’s long-term goals and strategy. [1]


The Urban League does have a rough proposal of an IT vision going into the future in the form of an orientation packet presented to the board last year. This document includes a needs assessment as well as sections defining expected hardware and software updates. The document however falls short of providing concrete timelines for these updates, having an itemized budget or an evaluation method of the proposed updates. Based on technology planning suggestions from TechSoup[2], I recommend that over the next year the Urban League should focus on planning the plan. They should define a team that includes stakeholders across different functional areas (programs, administration and the board). This team should then conduct a more thorough needs assessment and inventory, draft a roadmap for plan implementation and conduct a cost analysis. Going into year two they should finalize the plan along with measurable outcomes and budget for the coming year according to the finalized plan. They should aim to implement the plan towards the middle of year two. Going into the third year they should use the measureable outcomes to gauge successes and shortcomings and then reiterate the process to continue evolving the plan as needed on a biennial basis.

C. Strategies

Goal 1: Develop and implement a social media strategy to improve outreach As a first step the organization needs to develop a social media strategy. This involves identifying platforms that they should be actively using. In addition to Facebook, the organization should focus on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. If the organization opts to hire a social media manager, the national average salary for a Social Media Manager/Coordinator according to Glassdoor.com is $38,000 [5] (data is not available for the Pittsburgh area).

Since having a social media team or a full-time resource might not be feasible from a budget perspective, hiring a single volunteer or intern to work on creating these pages and working on actively engaging a user base might be the best way to move forward. While the External Relations department has not hired interns in the past, other departments at the Urban League do employ a number of volunteers and interns. They could have one of these resources be their social media manager. The individual would be responsible for setting up and maintaining a Twitter account. The individual would also be responsible for posting on the Facebook page more frequently so that the Urban League can promote particular programs. For example, the Techno Teens program recruits tech savvy high school kids for STEM related after school projects. As mentioned, social media is particularly effective in trying to reach out to a younger crowd and so the Urban League could really benefit from promoting this program on social media. In terms of how to engage users, there are a number of low-cost strategies that non-profits such as the Urban League can adopt. These include posting donor of the day/donor of the week status updates, starting crowdfunding campaigns, and engaging with influencers in the area to try to get them to mention the organization. [6] A large number of younger people prefer a social media notification to an email [6] so it might be worth transitioning communications from purely email and website over to Twitter and Facebook as well. Lastly, the Urban League should integrate its social media offerings into its website. The website, while very well designed, is not adaptable to dynamic updates as much as a Twitter page. While the website does currently have a Facebook button in the footer leading to the Facebook page, it might


be worthwhile adding an embedded Twitter feed. Instructions to do so can be found on the Twitter website at: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170071.

By having this integration in place, the Urban League will not have to worry about updating the website immediately or sending an email when trying to send out an important update to its members.

Goal 2: Define and implement a strategic technology plan

In the first stage the Urban League needs to assemble a team that will be involved in planning. This should not only be representative of the IT department but also other stakeholders within the organization such as program directors, board members, and tech-savvy staff members. Board member(s) should be present to ensure board support. Additionally, board members may bring technology expertise of their own if they have IT experience. The IT department lead, Winford Craig, plays a pivotal role here as the “keeper of the plan”. Thus, Winford has final responsibility to ensuring that things stay on track, meetings are held, and the implementation is managed. Luckily, the Urban League has a draft plan already in place. However, it does need to be updated with new additions over the past year. This plan addresses the immediate needs of the organization over the next 5 years, including a needs assessment and proposals for hardware and software purchases. The technology planning committee can build upon the needs assessment already present by doing it in a more systematic nature. One aspect currently missing from the draft plan is an assessment of current inventory. Creating and maintaining an asset inventory can save work hours in the future by, helping proactively address equipment issues. [7] This assessment could take the following form:

Serial Number

Device Name Manufacturer Age Operating System/Firmware

Comments

0001 Lab PC #1 Dell 4 Years Windows 7 N/A

In the next stage of the needs assessment, the planning committee should state technology goals in the short and long term. For example a short-term goal might be to allow access to email offsite while a long-term goal might be automation of data into Apricot from external sources. Once a comprehensive list is developed it should be ordered according to how important the goal is to the Urban League’s mission. This lets the organization prioritize the most important considerations and lets it develop a vision for its technological future. Unlike the current draft plan, which provides recommendations but not alternatives, the technology planning committee should outline and explore all possibilities before committing to one. Another possibility of a needs assessment could be through surveying employees to determine where and how technology can improve their jobs, and by extension further the mission of the organization. As an example the following list of questions from different areas of IT could be included:

Area Question Hardware What hardware do you work with? How often do you use it?

What hardware have you had issues with? Software What software do you work with? How often do you use them?

What software have you had issues with?


Area Question Information/Data Management What data/information do you work with?

What data sources do you use? Internal: External: What is the data collection process like? Does any data need to be cleaned? If so, does this take up a significant amount of your time? Do you ever perform double entry? If so, do you think it is avoidable?

While organizations such as NTEN and TechSoup advocate this approach, it may not be the best strategy for an organization the size of the Urban League where needs of the organization on a whole may be radically different from the needs of individual employees. After performing a technology needs assessment, exploring possibilities for meeting those needs, and defining a technology vision, the technology planning committee should develop strategies to meet that vision. In defining strategies, there should also be timelines associated with each to define when the plans goals will be met. It should be noted that not all strategies might be concrete at this stage, however those that are should be budgeted. In developing a budget, it is important to consider the total cost of ownership associated with each item included in the strategy i.e. not just the initial cost but the total cost of purchasing, owning, maintaining, and updating a technology. A matrix of the following form should be helpful in enumerating these (note - these numbers are not meant to be representative of real costs):

Item Quantity Costs Lab PC 1 Purchasing $500

Training $100 Normal Operations $300 Repairs and Maintenance $100 Software $500 Upgrades $100 Replacement $0 Total Cost of Ownership $1600

The planning committee needs to develop evaluation criteria prior to rolling out the plan. This is because technology planning is an iterative process and without consistently reevaluating the organization’s current progress it is difficult to establish how they are doing in regards to meeting their goals. All of the steps undertaken thus far by the planning committee should be recorded in a working document. This working document is the technology plan and it serves the threefold purpose of recording the committee’s progress, guiding the committee and guiding the implementation of the plan. Once the plan is put into implementation this working document should be updated with the results of the evaluation criteria.


There are a number of online resources available to the Urban League to help them implement the steps defined above in concrete terms. Perhaps the most extensive is the Nonprofit Strategic Technology Planning Guide from NTEN (https://community.nten.org/HigherLogic/System/DownloadDocumentFile.ashx?DocumentFileKey=2ac95847-1341-4cf3-acc6-48efb4028ce8) Other resources are as follows:

• TechSoup has a number of guides, templates and suggestions available: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/archive/2013/12/13/how-to-conduct-quick-tech-plan.aspx

• Massachussetts Library System Tech Planning Resources page has a number of templates and sample plans: http://guides.masslibsystem.org/technologyplanning

References

[1] "Five Reasons Your Nonprofit Organization Needs a Strategic IT Plan."Nonprofit Information. N.p., 2014. Web. 18 Apr. 2016. <http://nonprofitinformation.com/five-reasons-nonprofit-organization-needs-strategic-plan/>. [2] "How to Conduct a Quick Tech Plan." TechSoup. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2016. <http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/archive/2013/12/13/how-to-conduct-quick-tech-plan.aspx>.

[3] Curtis, Lindley, Carrie Edwards, Kristen L. Fraser, Sheryl Gudelsky, Jenny Holmquist, Kristin Thornton, and Kaye D. Sweetser. "Adoption of Social Media for Public Relations by Nonprofit Organizations." Public Relations Review 36.1 (2010): 90-92. Web. [4] Briones, Rowena L., Beth Kuch, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Yan Jin. "Keeping up with the Digital Age: How the American Red Cross Uses Social Media to Build Relationships." Public Relations Review 37.1 (2011): 37-43. Web.

[5] "Salary: Social Media Coordinator." Glassdoor. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2016. <https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/social-media-coordinator-salary-SRCH_KO0,24.htm>.

[6] Person, and Kevan Lee. "Social Media for Non-Profits: High-Impact Tips and the Best Free Tools." Buffer Social. N.p., 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2016. <https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-non-profits>. [7]"How to Conduct a Technology Assessment Tech Planning 4 Your Mission Part 2/3." 4YOURMISSION. N.p., 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2016. <http://blog.mobilebeacon.org/how-to-conduct-a-technology-assessment-tech-planning-4-your-mission-part-23/>.

Community Partner Winford Craig [email protected] Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh 610 Wood St #1 http://www.ulpgh.org

About the Consultant Danish Malik

[email protected]

Danish is a Masters candidate in Information Systems Management.

He will be interning as an analyst with 1010data this summer.


Appendix A: African American Leadership Development Programs


Appendix B: Family Support Programs


Appendix C: Mature Workers Program


Appendix D: Housing Programs


Appendix E: Hunger Services Programs

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