I’ve been working with two different infrastructure organisations lately using two different databases and inevitably it’s got me thinking about what staffing factors contribute to a successful database in an organisation.

Here are a few thoughts on what I think a project like this needs from its people:

Leadership – staff need to know that the decision to use a database – or start using a different one – has come from the top, is supported by a business case, has been chosen for a reason, will bring benefits to the organisation and is going to be used by managers to report on their work, demonstrate impact and secure funding. There needs to be leadership by example.

Training – adequate training and supporting help notes and tutorials are essential. Ideally everyone will have been through in person training and also has a way of raising questions after they’ve been using the system for a while. They need to know that problems can almost always be fixed and where to go for help if that happens.

Project lead – in the early stages there really needs to be someone who is constantly badgering staff to use the system. Someone who is there to offer gentle reminders on a daily basis and answer questions when people get stuck. It takes a few months for an action to become a habit so this time is key.

So to spend four days talking about a piece of software that’s purely about fun is a real joy!

I’m working on a stand this week at BETT (the international educational technology show) for Zu3D, a company started by my hugely talented school friend David. We’ve got an extremely welcome stand in the corner of the main hall, overlooked by our giant giraffe.

When I say that the Zu3D animation software is all about fun, actually that’s just a lie were telling the kids. It can of course be used to make a fun film in art but it can also help with maths when calculating frame rates, music if you’re composing a soundtrack, English if you’re writing a story and history if you choose to recreate an historical event. Learning by stealth, that’s what I like.

The best bit about demonstrating is when you get a group of kids cone over who grasp it so quickly they make a film far better than we’ve been making.

By the end of day one, my little blue man was in need of repair.

In case you’ve found me through the #weeklyblogclub then a bit of background. Until the end of March last year I worked at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) leading on their work in supporting voluntary organisations to use technology. When I was made redundant I decided to carry on in the same field as a freelancer.

As it’s my first proper day back at work in 2012 I wanted to think about how I might be using technology over the next 12 months, not the usual new year technology predictions, but how I think my personal technology use will evolve and change.

Community reporting

I’m lucky enough to do some work with People’s Voice Media and the fabulous network of community reporters. Seeing (and hearing and reading) their community reporting content always inspires me and makes me want to capture my own stories. I’ve now got a mobile phone that takes fairly decent photos and video so along with using Audioboo to capture audio I’ve got all of the technology in my pocket I need to be a community reporter.

Something I definitely want to capture are the stories from my fellow room guides at the National Trust property I volunteer at. I’m really keen to hear about what they get from being a volunteer and also capture some of their stories about the beautiful rooms we get to tell visitors about every weekend.

Collaborative tools

Now that I’m working with multiple organisations I need to be a bit cleverer in the way I share, collaborate and work on documents. I do it pretty well at the moment using free tools such as Google Docs and Dropbox but I’m sure there are ways of using them more effectively, meaning I’m making better use of my time. One of the areas I’d like to look at particularly is how I make better use of travelling time (except when I’m on my bike of course).

Location apps

I’m quite a fan of location services, particulary Foursquare, probably more because it feels like doing a big treasure hunt than for anything business related. One of the reasons I haven’t made more use of them in the past has been the rubbishness of my phone but now I have my new shiney I’m hoping I’ll be able to discover more new places – and people? – when I’m out and about.

So, that’s me. How do you think you’ll be using technology differently over the coming year?

Association of Volunteer Managers – http://www.volunteermanagers.org.uk/blog
Using a blog to share news from within their organisations and other news and best practice resources.

Volunteer Centre Lewisham – twitter.com/VCLewisham
Using Twitter to promote their volunteering opportunities and events, sharing information about the centre and pictures and stories from volunteers.

Norwich Volunteer Centre – www.facebook.com/norwichvolunteercentre
Using Facebook as a way of sharing volunteering opportunities and also to encourage conversations about why people volunteer, where they do it etc.

Volunteers Edinburgh – www.youtube.com/user/VolunteerEdinburgh/
Using YouTube as a way to capture and share case studies about why people volunteer and the impact it has.

Volunteering Pembs – twitter.com/VolPembs
Using Twitter to promote volunteering opportunities and also wider support for voluntary organisations in the area.

Volunteer Centre York – twitter.com/VolCentreYork
Using Twitter to promote volunteering opportunities.

Brighton and Hove volunteer centre – twitter.com/volunteeringBH/ www.facebook.com/volunteeringBH
Using Twitter and Facebook to promote volunteering opportunities and encouraging organisations to post their own opportunities.

Volunteer Centre Derby – www.facebook.com/VolunteerDerby
Using Facebook to promote volunteering opportunities and also new volunteering resources. They are using their Facebook page as part of wider piece of work to encouraging people to take part through their volunteering champions, more info at www.communityactionderby.org.uk/volunteering.

[Edited to add the following on 5th January 2012]

Many of these organsations – and others across the UK – have a presence on i-volunteer, a social network for people looking to volunteer, seeking volunteers and managing volunteers. Members blog, comment and network through groups and promote listings. You can search opportunities and find resources at http://www.i-volunteer.org.uk/.

Over the last 6 years of working with voluntary organisations I’ve never seen anything give more pain – or more joy, well, that might be pushing it – than an organisation’s database.

It’s a tool that can be feared, hated and eventually ignored if things go bad, written off as an expensive mistake, but it doesn’t – and shouldn’t – have to be that way. In fact I’d go as far as saying that a well planned and managed database could be the best thing for your organisation. It will save time because everything is recorded in the same way and in the same place, it will make management easier because you’ll be able to see at the click of a button what is happening and it will be easier to raise funds because you can give reports to potential funders on the impact your work is having.

So what does it take for a database to work well?

Well, before you even see your database you should be spending time as an organisation talking about your data. What do you know about it? What’s your attitude to it? What do you need from it? This can be a time consuming process but once it’s done, it’s done and you are more likely to have something at the end that really works for you.

Ideally this kind of conversation will happen before you even choose a new database – so that it can inform your decision making – but it’s difficult to know that it’s something that needs to be done. One of those unknown unknowns.

What are the sorts of discussions you should be having before choosing or using your system?

The principles of data:

• Do you understand your responsibilities as an organisation holding personal data?
• Do the people you work with know – and give permission – for you to hold that data?
• Do you have processes in place to ensure the privacy of your data?

The data you’re collecting:

• How are you already collecting data?
• On paper forms?
• Over the phone?
• At face to face meetings?
• On who? Service users? Organisations? People? Funders? Volunteers?

What do you need to collect?

• What sorts of things do you need to know to do your job? Attendance lists for events? Case notes for clients? Treatment history?
• What information do you need to know for organisational management? Staff timesheets? Number of people reached? Numbers of sessions delivered?
• What information do you need to give to your board/ funders etc?
• What form does your information need to take? Demographic, numbers of attendees, age breakdown, average, median?
• What might you need to collect in the future? Are you hoping to get a quality standard in which case you might need to collect a specific piece of information. Are requirements from your funder likely to change?

Only by knowing these things can you be sure – or at least more confident – that the system you are using meets your needs, and then, when you get to the training it’s all about how to use it in the best way possible, rather than seeing how it’s not going to work for you.

[I should add a disclaimer that I work with Lamplight Database Systems to train organisations on their Lamplight System. Even if I didn't work with them I'd still be suggesting you talk to them about your requirements. They are passionate about an effective voluntary sector and their part in achieving that is in supporting organisations' data management. They are also really nice people.]

You can find out more about Lamplight at www.lamplightdb.co.uk.

There are also some really helpful online resources on databases at: ww.ictknowledgebase.org.uk/databases

The campaign is not an anti-Sainsbury’s campaign or an anti-big name brands campaign. The area is recognised for its diversity and independence and we (residents, workers and business owners) are worried that a development of this size will destroy the neighbourhood. There’s more at http://stokeylocal.org.uk if you’re interested in the issues.

The thing I wanted to focus on was the campaign’s use of technology. Once the proposed development went public, a meeting was hastily organised by a concerned local resident. 40 people turned up at that meeting and from there the technology took off.

Using technology to coordinate the campaign has really worked for us. It’s helped to overcome the issue of needing to be in the same place at the same time and even in just bringing people together as most of us didn’t know each other before.

The campaign has a long way to go and I’m sure there’s a lot more we’ll do using technology but here’s a bit of a starter:

Google group

After the first meeting was over, a Google group was created to carry on the discussion. At the beginning it was a useful way of everyone chipping in their ideas and thoughts and recording actions. After about two weeks there was over 200 posts and following the content was getting difficult. More on how we tackled this in a bit.

We had talked about restricting access to the group so that no one from the developers or associated companies could get into it but it was felt that the effort of policing the group just wasn’t worth it, and we wanted to be as inclusive as possible.

WordPress website

After a few days came the website. I think it looks great http://stokeylocal.org.uk. As the developers were very slow in putting any information about the development on their own website we tried to make sure that everything residents and business owners would need to know was on Stokey Local. (Even when an official website did go up it had been copied and pasted from another development with lots of the important info unchanged, including a photo of the site).

There’s also a really great Google map, showing (at least) 62 shops within a 0.5mi radius that sell similar goods to those that would be sold at a new supermarket. A powerful way of demonstrating the potential impact.

The website has grown even in these three weeks to include a forum, contact details of all the key players and as a place to start discussing possible alternatives.

The forum was important because the Google group just started getting too big. Having a forum meant we could split the conversations into distinct subjects, making it easier for other people to contribute and follow what had already been discussed.

[ETA - The main person that's been updating the site pages has told me that he's using the WordPress for Android app to keep it up to date on the road.]

Twitter

Twitter has been really important in this campaign. There’s quite a strong local community of tweeters so it has been one of the key ways we’ve shared information about what’s going on. There’s an “official” @StokeyLocal account, we use the tag #StokeyLocal.

There was a funny moment about a week into the campaign when we discovered that the key developer had his own Twitter account and had been using it to moan about the NIMBYs over at one of his developments. He’d also been using it to reply to people’s rants about the developers/ Sainsbury’s without saying who he was. Once we found out it was him, he foolishly pretended it wasn’t and then deleted his account. A Google search of the Twitter user name clearly came up with his real name. He never reappeared. I’m tempted to offer my social media services

Facebook

It was important for us to create a Facebook page to reach the people not on Twitter and perhaps not around to see our “real life” campaigning. Facebook.com/StokeyLocal was easy to set up and we use it to put up new blog posts from the main Stokey Local site, articles that appear in the press, photos of the development and whatever else we come across.

There are 3 admins of the page at the moment so we’re always able to respond quickly and cover if anyone’s away. The Facebook page isn’t the main home of the campaign by any means but is a really useful way of letting people know about the campaign and where they can go for more detailed information.

Videos

People have started to create videos, showing very powerfully just how people feel about the development, like this one that was filmed outside the consultation presentation:

I ran a series of seminars last year for CEOs and trustees to help them think about how technology could be used to weather the current financial storm and one of the main aspects I focussed on was management of information, whether about staff, clients, donors, projects or funders.

The problem with databases is that they’re such a huge investment, both financially and in terms of buy in from staff. If you don’t get every step of the process right you’re likely to end up with a system that no one uses and so doesn’t work for your organisation.

In my session I suggested a few things that could help to make the process a success:

1. Spend some time reviewing how you keep and use information in your organisation. Involve staff at all levels across the organisation in this discussion.
2. Think about who your relationships are with. Are you talking to individuals or organisations?
3. What kind of information do you use in your organisation and therefore what do you need to record? Do you need contact details? Financial details? Events they attend? Services people have used? Case histories?
4. What kind of information do you need to extract for management reporting? What is being asked of you by funders or trustees?
5. Talk to everyone in the organisation about how they use data, particularly those that will be responsible for inputting it.
6. Keep it simple – don’t collect information you don’t need and remember that no one will use an over-complicated system.

The reason for my database musings is that I was at the Lasa CRM Summit last week, a showcase of three CRM systems; Salesforce, CiviCRM and Microsoft Dynamics.

All three systems have much of the same customer relationship functionality so which system is best for you – or one of the many other systems out there – depends on what’s important for your organisation.

CiviCRM has been built for the non profit sector and has a strong community of developers in the UK. There is good integration with Drupal and Joomla websites and it does much of what you would expect for a CRM. It is free to download but you may find that you need to work with a developer to customise it to your needs. There is a hosting charge for CiviCRM, which our speakers thought would be no more than £75 per month.

Microsoft Dynamics can be bought through the CTX scheme and would cost a “few” hundred pounds for charities. There is of course easier integration with existing systems if an organisation is using Microsoft products.

Salesforce is available to charities through the Salesforce Foundation; 10 free, active licenses to start with and then there’s an 80% discount on each subsequent one, about £240 per/ year for charities. The key selling points appear to be that all hosting, updates etc are done by Salesforce and are included in the license charge.

I didn’t come away from the event thinking that any one of these systems is better than the other as it depends on what you want it to do, but I thought you might find these little snippets useful.

If you do need some info on databases then the Knowledgebase is a great place to start: www.ictknowledgebase.org.uk/buyingadatabase.

I’ve been volunteering at a National Trust property in Buckinghamshire for the last couple of weeks and one of the first things that struck me was how much the (largely very old) volunteers were missing out on by not using the internet. Again and again I heard fellow rooms guides telling visitors that they weren’t quite sure on the history of some piece or other and that no one knew any more about it. Well, I knew that I could find out in a couple of minutes by the power of Google. It’s only a small thing I know but research has shown that people who are online save money and are more informed.

It’s quite good timing also that the Race Online 2012 report: Getting On – A manifesto for older people in a networked nation has just come out.

These National Trust volunteers are a ready made audience for internet training, I’d be interested to find out if there are examples of organisations/ institutions have given training, not directly related to their volunteering role, in this way?

These are just thoughts for now, I’ll have to do some more reading.

There are two elements to this discussion we need to be considering; the opening up of our own organisational data and making use of data that’s available from Government, local authorities and other organisations.

What could charities do with open data?

It’s almost impossible to know the limits to what organisations could do with open data, but David Kane gave a lot of food for thought in his presentation:

One of the things that David said was that open data could help charities by:

• Informing lobbying and campaigning - Demonstrate how an issue is affecting people by mapping information that exists on need, services etc.
• Improving services - Ask for feedback on services using post code details to map your service locations.
• Demonstrating impact – Match the services you are delivering and their impact with known information about need.

What skills/ support do voluntary organisation need to make the most of using open data? 

But in all of this we need to think about how practical it is for small voluntary and community groups to make the most of open data. Are the technical skills out there in the sector?

I think David summed it up really nicely in his presentation by saying that, yes, there is a need for specific technical skills to make the most of open data BUT the tools we would use are free and there are lots of people out there who want to make a difference, have the skills and are connected by social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Some of the information and skills I think groups need are:

• An understanding of why Government is releasing its data – link to the transparency and accountability agenda.
• Some sense of what might happen around this in the future, whether it’s likely to be a requirement for organisations to release their own data.
• Dedicated time looking at organisational strategy to get to a clear understanding of what they need to prove need, demonstrate impact and/ or campaign more effectively.
• Knowing how to access the data, where to store it, and the implications for data protection.
• An overview understanding of how different websites or websites plus data can talk to each other.
• Practical experience of using APIs, playing with Google maps etc.

What about organisations releasing their own data?

Rich Watts has been very articulate in describing his organisation’s thinking when releasing their data so I won’t bother repeating it here.

I think there is a real benefit for organisations having the conversation now about opening up their data, as Rich alluded to in the session it’s almost certainly going to become a requirement for organisations in the not too distant future, either as a condition of registering with the Charity Commission or as a requirement when receiving public funding.

So what next?

There are already people on the forefront of testing what can be done with open data; visualisation, mapping etc so my own view is what we really need now are real life voluntary sector examples.

Some of this – I hope – will come out of the Open Data Campaigning Camp in a couple of weeks but we also need people giving it a go, perhaps as part of a structured pilot that involves using some of the open data “recipes” and tools on the Voluntary Sector Datastore.

NCVO is looking to run its own voluntary sector hack day, which is a great start. I can’t wait to be involved and see what emerges.

Session description:

“The move by local and central government to put all of the information that they store about us, finances, projects and services online is set to radically transform the way in which the UK is governed and the way in which our services our delivered.

This may be a bold claim, but the opening up of government-held data is a central aspect of the Big Society agenda and is already shaping the way we interact with services and how civil society holds government to account. This is an agenda with implications for the short and long term: transparency, accountability and co-production are just some of the issues.”

The speakers include NCVO’s Head of Research Karl Wilding, charity data guru David Kane, one of Government’s leading open data exponents Hadley Beeman and Rich Watts, who has been leading the way in the voluntary sector by opening up his own charity’s data.