Back to the Client Side

On the eve of starting a contract with the national Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (www.JDRF.org)  as a PM  on a number of application customization and roll-out projects, I am struck at how genuinely excited I am to be once again plying my craft on behalf of a client organization, as opposed to a service related role defined by developing solutions as an agent for someone else. While I will miss the intensity and dynamic energy of the agency environment, I must admit a sense of eagerness to once again work from the other side of the fence.

I am also thrilled to have a second opportunity to approach the challenge of integrating  multi-channel constituent information for a caused based organization functioning at national and local levels. [I played a similar role for JFNA (then called UJC) in 2007-2008]. It is interesting to see how the technology leaders of a few years ago have developed, and how the understanding of relevant best practices have evolved. I look forward to getting back into the mix.

Long standing charities have  engaged in direct response donor relationship marketing for decades, developing personnel and data management processes to support mail, telephone and, more recently, email marketing. The convergence of constituent relationship data coming from so many sources, including event attendance and volunteer participation, has pushed the flexibility of the standard database technologies deployed in the 90’s and 2000’s. Compounded by a whole new set of interactions from organization sponsored social web activities, effective and efficient data management for these large charities is a major challenge.

There is an allure for interactive project managers and producers (well, at least for me) to work on the jazzy front end design applications, such as online community portals and killer ipad apps.  As I concluded in an earlier post (The Other CSI Myth), the effectiveness of even the most creative and innovative interactive strategy is only as good as what goes on behind the scenes and the data level. Admittedly, a few years ago this was a black hole for most of us working in the IT management of non-profit organizations in the then current state of web technology.  Only a few years later, it seems the main players have kept attacking the problem, and the maturation of partnerships between applications like Salesforce and Convio have closed the gap considerably.

Success in this arena will still necessitate an elegant orchestration of multiple software services, third party vendors and significant infrastructure choices – and by no means will it be easy. I am ecstatic to join a strong team at the JDRF with an ambitious vision of how interactive technology can facilitate deeper relationships with constituents and stakeholders of all types.

If anyone has related experience or insights to share, please post below.