Let me cut to the chase.  This is a plea to get as many people as possible to take the NTEN CMS Survey.  This survey will feed into the most exciting piece or industry research to come along since the Wired Wealthy Report.

One of the things I do as Convio’s CMS Evangelist is spend a lot of time thinking about how to help nonprofit organizations use web based technology better.  What does “better” mean?  Well, in my opinion, I think we can all do “better” managing our web technology to objectives in two categories. 

The first category has to do with how well technology helps us make our public facing web presence as strong as possible.  Are we engaging new constituents?  Does the site look professional?  Do constituents find our content truly valuable? Are constituents supporting our organization’s objectives – be they learning, donating, or taking action?

The second category centers around how well technology allows us to be more strategic than tactical.  Does maintaining the site take lots of time from our IT team?  Can our business oriented staff manage content without taking 22 days of training?

These objectives can be affected positively or negatively by the choices we make regarding technology.  One of the biggest challenges to making good choices about the technology to use is the lack of information.  There’s nary a technologist alive who could tell you with relative certainty what tools people are using, what ones are good, and what ones are tough to use.

This is a long way of saying, “I think you should take a few minutes to take the NTEN CMS Survey.”

For a few more days, NTEN is asking people to tell them what works and what doesn’t.  They’ll compile the results shortly and make them available to the public.  This research effort is groundbreaking, as no one else has (or has made public) the results of such a survey.

So, help your colleagues and help yourself, take a few minutes to take the NTEN CMS Survey.