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As the CIO for a nonprofit, community-based healthcare center, I interact with vendors a lot. Probably 25% or more of my week involves dealing with vendors on new project proposals, renewals, research, or getting support. With that experience, here are a couple of things that I would like you, all of the IT vendors out there who want a nonprofit’s business, to know about how to do business with a nonprofit and have more understanding of the people across the table from you.

1. Nonprofit organizations are way different from for-profit organizations. That should be obvious, but let me explain how this should play into how you interact with or understand a nonprofit organization:

a. Most nonprofit organizations, especially those of us relying on federal funding to serve vulnerable populations, have to fight for every dollar we get, therefore, it is imperative to make sure that we are good stewards of those dollars and get the most value for every dollar spent that we can.

b.  This means that we are going to ask more questions, move more slowly to make decisions, maybe consider more options, and certainly push on you for more information than maybe a for-profit customer might.

2. I am going to ask you for a nonprofit discount or special pricing every day, all day long. Your competitors offer this, and I will expect you to as well if you want to do business with me!

3. If you are a VAR representing multiple vendors, we are really going to lean on you to make sure that you are living up to the value-added component of our relationship. For the reasons stated above in item 1b, you might have to spend more time and effort to make a sale to us for a specific product or service. Please understand this before agreeing to enter into a relationship with us. We are going to bring you problems and look for you to help provide us with solutions.

a.  Just because we don’t buy today doesn't mean that we won’t in the future. You may present us with a great solution that we just can’t afford today, however, we will be continually working to find a way to swing that purchase in the future so your working on putting together solutions and proposals for us should be seen as an investment in future business even if you don’t immediately make a sale.

4. Due to lean staffing models, we are always in firefighting mode. Anything you can do to help us become more proactive is appreciated and will be reciprocated in the form of referrals to other colleagues. I personally speak to many of my colleagues in other nonprofit organizations and we frequently discuss our vendor experiences. I always highlight those vendors that I feel have gone above and beyond for us and make strong recommendations advocating for those vendors. Understand that the reverse is also true.

5. We generally want to establish a relationship and have trust in our vendors. We are going to be hesitant when we first start to do business with a new vendor, and it is incumbent on that vendor to build trust with us. While we are always price-sensitive, we also look to the value of the service offered. I don’t mind spending a little more money on a service if it helps me scale to the point where we can do more without adding more FTEs. I am always looking for that value beyond just the bottom-line cost. 

That being said, if you sell me on that value, you had better deliver or else any trust or goodwill will quickly evaporate and your opportunity to do business with us in the future will be greatly hampered.

In conclusion, the relationship between IT vendors and nonprofit organizations is built on understanding, trust, and mutual respect. Vendors who take the time to comprehend the unique challenges faced by nonprofits and offer tailored solutions, discounts, and unwavering support will find loyal and long-term partners. By recognizing the value in each interaction and seeing beyond immediate sales, IT vendors can foster strong, lasting relationships that benefit both parties and ultimately serve the greater good of the community.

No Project Management or Bad Project Management: Which is Worse?

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Over the last few years, I have gone back in forth on my opinion of whether it is worse to have no formal project management in place or to have some project management in place that is somewhat ineffective. Previously, I had always leaned toward having some project management in place being better as at least there was something to start from and it could hopefully get better. I have recently changed my opinion on that though after witnessing firsthand what ineffective or bad project management can do to an organization. Here is how I arrived at this change of opinion:

 Initial Belief: Bad project management is a starting point that could be improved upon.

Actual Observations: Bad project management rarely gets better. Individuals who are part of the “bad” process typically don’t want to change and don’t want to recognize what they are doing wrong.  This is basically like trying to get rid of a bad habit in your personal life, which we all know how that is to do. When bad project management habits become entrenched in an organization, they are very difficult to get rid of. Furthermore, leadership “thinks” that they have project management in place because they have individuals with the title of project manager in the organization so making change in this area becomes less of a priority.

Initial Belief: Bad project management probably at least enlists some elements of a project management discipline.

Actual Observations: This is really a myth. While there might be some aspects that are masquerading as project management discipline, in reality, it is usually just bits and pieces that someone has picked through and selectively implemented or tried to implement, but there is typically no discipline behind them and usually are misused.

Initial Belief: No project management just means chaos.

      Actual Observations: Typically, while not completely organized, there is usually some sort of project management happening at the user level so that they can at least manage their activity even if the overall project is being managed effectively. In my experience, it is easier to take these efforts and organize them into a project management discipline instead of fixing bad project management practice.

How Does This Usually Happen

• I think we all agree that project management is critical for any organization that regularly has any type of work that involves multiple resources and/or multiple departments with multiple tasks that take place over a period of time. Many organizations make a half-hearted or uneducated stab at implementing a project management discipline. The problem that usually arises from this is that processes aren’t well thought out or established or applied consistently. This can be due to the following reasons:

• Project management roles aren’t established as full-time, professional jobs within the organization which means that it just becomes another hat that someone who already has a full-time job ends up wearing.

• Even if project manager roles are established in the organization, they are given to someone without any formal project management training, often someone in a clerical role, who really is just responsible for coordinating project activities. This role often doesn’t have the authority to manage the human resources assigned to particular projects.

• Project management is distributed across the organization instead of centralized in a single PMO-type function. This leads to varying degrees of implementation and consistency.

• Not only is project management a professional discipline that, to do well, requires a lot of education and judgement, but it also requires someone who is highly organized and is a master planner. Often, project management roles aren’t recruited for, they are bestowed or dumped on someone, which usually leads to poor results.

How Does This Typically Manifest

The results of poor project management usually are chiefly evident in lack of or poor planning. Poor or missing project planning usually starts right at the beginning of the project with inadequate requirements gathering and scoping. These two elements alone can doom a project. Without adequate requirements, how do you even build or manage a project plan let alone accomplish anything. This usually leads to massive scope creep as requirements get uncovered throughout the project and then are either reworked into the project with an unending timeline or are left out together delivering a failed mess of a project. Occasionally, requirements get missed, even on the best planned projects, but knowing how to deal with them makes all of the difference in the world. Being able to assess the impact on the project of addressing the new requirements as a scope change vs. adding them to a second phase of the project where initial requirements are delivered and the new requirements are then slotted into another phase takes training and professional judgement to do successfully, not to mention good communication skills to work with your stakeholders to determine the solution that is best for the project and the organization. Bad project management and managers don’t do this assessment and don’t work with their stakeholders to work out a recovery plan to keep the project on track.

Then there are so-called requirements that come in as change requests that aren’t really requirements but nice to have features that someone dreamed up. Strong project management is needed to sort these through and determine what is necessary to successfully deliver the project vs. what is not and can be negotiated for potential later prioritization or release. If your project management is really only just tracking and coordinating project activities, you lose this vital project management skill.

Requirements gathering and project planning are the foundation of a sound project. Without these, a project is doomed to fail before it even really gets started.

Another way that poor project management manifests itself is in lack of leadership, The inability to assess risks to the project and communicate those risks in a meaningful way so as to facilitate the creation of a mitigation strategy is key. This takes leadership and experience.

Lack of communication is also a hallmark of poor project management. Project managers are the glue that hold the project together. The only way to do this is by being a good communicator and facilitator. That means staying engaged with the project team and stakeholders, watching for signs of trouble or risk, communicating often and early when issues arise and making sure that everyone involved understands their role and responsibilities to the project and is held accountable.

Conclusion

While I would wholeheartedly agree that no project management in an organization is a bad thing, I have come to realize that bad project management is even worse as it can create confusion and lead to misunderstandings, lead to ineffective requirements gathering and planning and usually leads to unending scope creep and/or project failure.

As this blog was mainly an opinion piece, I would be curious to hear your opinions or experiences around lack of or bad project management and which you think is worse.