Software Advice for Charities

Many nonprofit leaders feel overwhelmed by technology, and with good reason: Idealware, a nonprofit group in Portland, Me., has identified 35 kinds of software that charities might want to use for fund raising and communications.

“Trying to navigate through all of the software types that are possible is really challenging,” says Laura S. Quinn, executive director of Idealware. “There are so many different things that one could do, all of which take at least time, if not money.”

To help charities make sense of their options, the group has published The Idealware Field Guide to Software. The new book explains what each type of tool does, lists leading vendors, and gives a range of how much the products cost. It also tries to help charities prioritize the technology projects they want to tackle.

Says Ms. Quinn: “Wikis, for instance, are probably not where you should start if you don’t have a very good Web site and you haven’t thought that much about broadcast e-mail tools.”

Nonprofit employees are all over the map in terms of their awareness of the tools out there, says Ms. Quinn. She worries that amid the “swirling hype” about the latest technology, good, solid information about the basics can be hard to come by.

“It’s hard for folks who know a lot about technology to imagine how little other people know,” she says. “There are organizations that are literally running off an Access database or an Excel file and almost nothing else.”

For more information: Go to http://www.idealware.org.