Sara Spivey

I attended NTEN’s NTC conference in San Francisco this week.  Like Holly Ross, I was BLOWN AWAY by the great work that is being done out there by so many organizations, helping so many people.   One of the truly great things about my move from for-profit tech to non-profit tech is how absolutely inspired I am each and every day.  I used to be pretty cavalier about what I did “saving the world.”  Now I see it every day and I’m so humbled by the thousands of folks who move mountains to move their missions.  But I’m also a little overwhelmed by how much more there is to be done. And frustrated by how slow we seem to be moving.

Clay Shirky opened the session with one of the best keynotes I’ve ever heard.  Not only was he a great speaker, with some incredible examples that proved his points, but he said a few things that really stuck with me:

1) Fail Informatively:  I LOVE this.  It should inspire all of us to try new things, reiterate when they don’t work and try again.  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

2) Many to Many and Many to Each Other:  The advent of social networks has opened up a whole new world of folks organizing without an organizer, and how powerful that is!

And my personal favorite (and the title of this blog),

3)  If you do nothing, nothing will happen.

I think the country (and the world for that matter) has been in a state of suspended animation for the last several months.  Financial crises, government bailouts, 2 front international conflicts and now a flu pandemic has everybody hunkered down in their homes, riding it out.  While some of this behavior is appropriate and for most businesses (for profit or non-profit), a reality of an uncertain time, I can’t help but wonder what the long term impact will be.  Once people want to start spending again, what will they spend it on?  There won’t have been much innovation for the past year, so where’s the “killer app” that will get people to open their checkbooks?

One of the biggest impacts of an economic slowdown is the long term collateral damage to innovation.  Investment falls, innovation withers, no impetus to change behavior, investment falls further, and so on.

If we want to break this cycle, we have to continue to innovate.  We have to give people a compelling reason to re-engage.  And I’m not talking about building the Aswan damn here, I’m talking about the thousands of small innovations that happen every day, and turning them into bigger innovations that move people, that get them out of their cocoons to say “I’m gonna do my part to get us moving.”   I’m going to make sure stimulus money in my community is spent on things that create jobs and make my community a better place.   I’m going to send that check to Name Your Favorite Organization Here that I didn’t send in December because I didn’t know what was going to happen in January.   I’m  going to encourage my employer to worry less about expenses, and more about revenue—which implies new thinking, new ideas, and selective investment. 

One thing’s for sure, if you do nothing, nothing will happen. 

I’m hoping that somebody out there can help me solve a mystery.  I like to think I’m a pretty smart gal, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why my esteemed colleagues at Blackbaud are so resistant to Open architecture.  They seem content on passing business back and forth, rather than on bringing a whole new class of customers to the table.  In all my years of high tech marketing (25 + I’m embarrassed to say), I know one thing to be true:  The only way you grow is to grow the collective.  So naturally, when I see an opportunity to bring disruptive change to an industry, cultivate a whole new class of buyers and help nonprofit organizations be more effective in the process, I’m on board.  So my question to Mr. Chardon and his crew down in Charleston is “Why aren’t YOU?” 

In every installment of high technology paradigm breakage I’ve observed the following: 
     1)  Open architecture always wins over closed, and 
     2) A new class of buyers (and therefore real market growth) can only be created with true innovation.

I would add a third rule which is an outgrowth of the first two:  True innovation happens a whole lot faster in an open environment.  

Convio has embraced this thinking by committing to integrating with other technologies. We have been providing data integration services for years because we recognized that many organizations were going to adopt our online marketing and fundraising platform and want to integrate it with their existing donor DB. We have since enhanced that strategy with our Open APIs and integration to social media  to allow non profits to build additional capabilities around the Convio product set.  Blackbaud will be happy to help you integrate Blackbaud to other Blackbaud products, but what about helping clients with heterogeneous environments? Sorry.   

We’ve extended that hand, only to receive a fist.

We’ve  actually tried to buy a copy of Raiser’s Edge so that we could further develop our connector and were told by the people at Blackbaud that they would not sell it to us.  I also had one of my folks apply to join their partner program--other than the auto responder email that tells us they are so pleased that he inquired and he will be hearing from them soon, I have heard NOTHING.   I have sent personal email to the CTO, and the CEO and I’ve spoken face to face with their VP of Partnerships…NO RESPONSE TO ANY OF IT.   Call me crazy, but I don’t think they want to talk to me.
I’m so sure I think this is the right thing to do for our customers (current and future) and for every constituent who’s ever given a donation or laced up shoes for a run, walk, or ride, that I invite Blackbaud to join us at the table and do the right thing not only because we can, but mostly because we should. 

What are they afraid of?