Charity Resource Planning – CRP and ERP March 1st, 2010
After some attempts to explain what my work is all about, I have come to the conclusion that the description “Charity Resource Planning” might fit best.
Previous attempts were “Administration Software”, but then people think about administration of computers, etc. And I have not read about anyone calling any software “Administration software”.
Other people call it “Back Office Software”.
Wikipedia describes Back office in these words:
“A back office is a part of most corporations where tasks dedicated to running the company itself take place. The term comes from the building layout of early companies where the front office would contain the sales and other customer-facing staff and the back office would be those manufacturing or developing the products or involved in administration but without being seen by customers. Although the operations of a back office are usually not given a lot of consideration, they are a major contributor to a business.”
But does a charity have a front office and a back office? It is usually quite a small team of dedicated people. I remember once a funny bookkeeper in one of our smallest offices, telling me he would ask the system administrator to do something for him… it took me a few seconds to realise he was speaking of himself in the third person…
“Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a term usually used in conjunction with ERP software or an ERP system which is intended to manage all the information and functions of a business or company from shared data stores.
It is a commercial software package that promotes seamless integration of all the information flowing through a company.
[…]
[The term ERP] was introduced by research and analysis firm Gartner in 1990. ERP systems now attempt to cover all core functions of an enterprise, regardless of the organization’s business or charter. These systems can now be found in non-manufacturing businesses, non-profit organizations and governments.”
- CRP software has to be easy to use, since charities often have much higher staff turnover than normal businesses, due to short term commitments etc
- CRP software should center on managing relations with supporters and workers and the people involved in the projects in a way that is right and honourable.
- CRP software should provide tools for most of the office tasks, eg. Personnel department, Donor contact management, Financial Planning, Accounting
- CRP software has to be available in all sorts of languages and support many currencies, so that it can be used across a multi-national organisation, in such a diversity of countries that companies of the size of a usual charity normally would never work in because they don’t have the manpower.
- Such a CRP software has to allow easy integration with other software, eg. Payroll which is probably too difficult to adapt to the laws of each country. It should also provide many plugin interfaces that allow localisation of the tools, eg. for processing bank statements etc.
- CRP software has be available at justifiable costs, considering the personal effort of supporters and workers to keep the charity going.
Timotheus Pokorra is currently working as a software developer for OM, a christian charity working in many countries. OM owns the OpenPetra.org project which aims to provide a free software solution for the administration of charities.
A look at charities and Open Source ERP software February 14th, 2010
I want to look at several articles and initiatives that I have found on the web, and address some of the questions and risks and benefits.
This really depends on the type of charity.
For example a representative from Christian Aid says in this BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6124582.stm), which I will refer to again later:
“We are a funding organisation that ships £90m around the world …”
[…]
“We spend one pence in the pound on administration, and that means we’ve got to be as effective and efficient as we can, and software is one way to do that.”
Reading this, that means that they are still spending £900.000 on administration.
I would like to list different goals that a charity has:
- deliver a message
- provide material help
- provide training or practical help through people
Therefore an organisation that ships a lot of money around the world, it is much easier to spend quite big amounts on software, and this saves them all sorts of trouble with technical support etc.
We should also not forget cultural differences. It seems it is much more acceptable in the US to invest into administration than it is in Europe.
The BBC article about Christian Aid also mentions the use of standard office software, e.g. Windows XP and MS Office licenses. They are very happy with the good charity discounts from Microsoft. I will not address this topic here, because I am not discussing Operating Systems or Office Software, but Administrative software.
I want to introduce the idea that has been formed by the Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI) (see http://www.csinitiative.com/).
I quote from their website:
For applications that don’t enable competitive advantage or are associated with non-value added activities such as compliance, regulatory, and industry standards, Collaborative Software empowers customer core team members to provide control and direction over a project while leveraging the efficiencies of using the same software and reducing costs.”
They are thinking of banks and insurances and the automobile industry. I think we can easily apply the same to mission organisations and charities. We don’t want to develop software for the sake of it, and we don’t want a competitive advantage over other mission organisations or charities. Therefore it would make much sense to coordinate the efforts, and let others benefit from our work, and even encourage them to contribute.
Open Source is not as good as the best of breed
First of all, the best of breed software will probably cost more. In case it is cheaper or you can afford it anyways, and you have also calculated the cost of training etc, then it might well be that the best of breed is better for you.
Regarding the issue that the users know the best of breed and it is more difficult training them on an Open Source system because it is unknown to them: This might be more an issue for Operating Systems and Office packages. Although the introduction of Office 2007 has shown how easy it is to force users to suddenly use ribbons instead of menus.
The advantage of an Open Source administration suite should be that it is easy because it can be customized to the specific needs. Can your workers cope with the complexity of the best of breed, fits-all system? Most of the time you don’t need all functionality of the best of breed software.
In the case that you have to train your workers on the best of breed software, make sure you know how often you have to train new staff, and how expensive that is, depending if it is possible to provide your own in-house training, or you have to pay expensive courses. With Open Source you don’t get what you really need
This is generally true for all software. But with Open Source you have a chance, to change the software much easierly, either by doing it yourself or get someone to do it for you.
If you have a good reason, you can convince a developer to do it, and it can benefit others as well.
Depending on the size of differences of expectation, you need to be able and willing to invest into adaption yourself; but you will own the change and don’t need to pay license fees for it in the future. There are too many updates to install for Open Source software
see also the article “How open source is losing the charity battle” at ZDNet.
Security nowadays requires updates anyways, even Microsoft have a monthly patch day.
Nowadays updates should become much more easy to install.
The more users there are, the quicker a solution is provided; frequent updates prevent a bug from annoying you for a longer time.
You should look for a contract with a software engineer, and the greater the community for an Open Source software, the more people are willing to help. It is not all for free, but that is a good thing for you, because when you pay you have rights. On the other hand, you might find IT people that specifically want to support your organisation as volunteers. Because of the free nature of Open Source, it will be much easier for them to accustom themselves to the software.
There should also be general support of the users amongst each other, therefore leaving only serious extensions to paid or volunteering developers.
Case Studies:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6124582.stm
Charity shuns open source code http://www.cafamily.org.uk/opensource.html
A charity using open source http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39166840,00.htm
London-based charity which saved more than £28,000 by using Linux Terminal Server to build its network. Articles:
http://www.linux.com/feature/33378
Article: Help introduce open source software to charities http://www.uwnyc.org/technews/v5_n6_a1.html
How “Open Source” Can Open Doors for Nonprofits
http://www.donortec.org/
DonorTec provides donated software and hardware from companies such as Microsoft and Cisco to eligible Australian non profit groups with Income Tax Exempt Status (ITE).
Charityware (c-ware) is any software that supports charity. Some developers ask that proceeds from the sale of software be donated to charity, while others license or donate their software directly to charity. http://www.socialsource.org.uk/
Last update in 2005.
This wiki is a central point for an advocacy initiative (“SocialSource”) seeking to promote and assist the practical use of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) within the UK Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS)*. http://www.volresource.org.uk/swit/miscsw.htm
information for voluntary and community organisations http://www.it4communities.org.uk/it4c/home/index.jsp
We are the UK’s leading national IT volunteering programme.
iT4Comunities can help charities, community groups and social enterprises access free IT support from IT professional volunteers and make substantial savings http://www.nosi.net/projects/primer
Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
technology serving humanity http://www.ngogeeks.com/
To evaluate Open Source Software in an effort to reduce the IT costs of Non-Government and Not for Profit Organisations http://www.ngopulse.org/article/ngo-ict-management-toolkit
The Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org/
This is the website of the South Asian hub of NGO-in-a-box, a collection of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools selected for use by non-profit organisations. http://www.codn.net/plugins/content/content.php?content.10
Christian Open Development Network