In the ever-changing landscape of nonprofit organizations, the development of a comprehensive strategic plan is a cornerstone for success. These plans, often spanning anywhere from three to five years, lay the groundwork for achieving an organization's mission and goals.   However, despite the increase in "Digital Transformation" projects at nonprofits of all sizes, a common oversight in many strategic planning processes is the lack of depth needed to highlight technology's impact on the nonprofit's mission.  This is especially true of smaller nonprofit organizations that may not have the technical expertise needed to help facilitate these discussions.  As technology continues to shape and redefine how nonprofits operate, it is imperative to engage in meaningful conversations about the implications and benefits of technology on the strategic planning process. Nonprofit leaders often craft high-level strategies without diving into the specifics of how technology ca...

It seems sometimes that organizations are very quick to forget about the 2nd and 3rd place finishers in those lengthy RFP’s.  This is somewhat understandable given they’ve selected a solution and are now busy implementing it, getting trained, and making it work for their business needs.  These are all good and very necessary things.  But keep in mind, there’s value in understanding what the other RFP respondents are up to.  The solution you selected today may end up falling behind tomorrow.  Conditions such as account management, corporate ownership, price, features, internal leadership, and a host of others may change, resulting in your needing to pivot from your current provider.  This is simply the nature of business.   The reason this is so important, is because by keeping abreast of your solution providers competitors; when it comes to negotiating the renewal, you’ll be in a better position to talk about if/how they hold up against others and what...

You’ve built the business case, secured funding and have kicked off the implementation.  Weeks/Months later, and well beyond the planned go-live date, you still haven’t launched.  This can happen unfortunately; especially with more complex solutions (HR, Finance etc).  Reasons can include, but aren’t limited to, 1) Misunderstanding the implementation effort required, 2) Project management challenges, 3) Change management challenges, 4) Unexpected surprises during testing, and many more. The problem is that you (business owner) are now left with a “solution” that has cost a lot of implementation time/dollars and has yet to start solving the problem you defined in the business case.  Additionally, it calls into question other often overlooked factors such as when to train your staff (with the hope that they won’t need to be retrained in the future as you approach the new go-live date) When signing up for subscription-based software, it’s important to be abundantly clea...

  As word spreads about our service offerings for nonprofits and SMB's; more and more we're getting asked the question:     “ When should I, or someone I know, contact GreenMerits? ”    So, we've broken it down (a little bit), to keep things simple. If you, or others you know, find yourself thinking about or making any/all of these statements, contact us .     1.  " Performing Process123 takes too long, is cumbersome, is expensive, is error prone or is simply not sustainable. "  -Let's chat about our Operational Process Enhancements advisory service.     2. " We have, or are considering, a monthly/yearly subscription with CloudTechVendorXYZ, but need help understanding the total cost of ownership and how to measure our success. "  -Our SaaS Subscription Assistance advisory service is there to help.    3. " We need help finding and managing an extra set of hands to help us implement or reco...

This marks our (re)entry into the world of technology consultancy/advisory. Exciting times indeed!  With experiences spanning I.T. infrastructure administration, mobility solutions and cloud applications/services, we know our background could certainly help various type of organizations (with a preference for nonprofits ) that have, or are about to, embark on their technology journey/transformation.  Technology is an enabler to help get tangible things done more efficiently and effectively, as such, we’ve setup our advisory services to reflect this mindset in a phased approach:  1. The Operational Enhancements advisory is a way to explore what actually needs to be optimized in your organization, and how to go about doing so with the support of technology.  2. The SaaS Subscription Assistance advisory is there to help ensure that business focused cloud applications you subscribe to deliver the desired outcomes and value your organization requires.  3. Finally, ...