Technology should help your organization accomplish its mission.

But over time, organizations accumulate software, subscriptions, spreadsheets, manual processes, workarounds, integrations, and old systems nobody quite remembers choosing.

Then something new comes along. Right now, that’s AI.

The temptation is to start with the technology.

I start with the organization.

What are you trying to accomplish? What’s getting in the way? And which changes would make the biggest difference?

[Let’s Talk]

You probably don’t need more technology.

You might.

But that’s not where I start.

Maybe your staff spends hours every week moving information between systems. Maybe members can’t find what they need without contacting someone. Maybe you’re paying for five platforms when three would do. Maybe an important process depends on one employee remembering how it works.

Or maybe you’ve been told your organization needs an AI strategy, but nobody has stopped to ask what problems AI is supposed to solve.

These are technology problems, but they’re also business problems.

Before we choose a solution, we need to understand the problem.

Start with what matters.

My approach to technology strategy starts with your organization’s goals.

1. Identify the priorities

What are the most important things your organization needs to accomplish?

Not the technology goals.

The actual goals.

Increase membership. Improve retention. Generate more non-dues revenue. Deliver better member services. Reduce operating costs. Increase staff capacity. Improve education. Reach more people.

Technology comes later.

2. Find the constraints

What’s stopping you?

This is often where the real opportunity appears.

A membership problem might actually be an onboarding problem. A marketing problem might actually be a slow follow-up process. A staff capacity problem might be dozens of small manual processes consuming hundreds of hours every year.

We look for the constraint that, if improved, would have the greatest impact on the organization.

3. Consider the options

There is almost never only one way to solve a problem.

We might consider:

changing or eliminating the process
using features in software you already have
automating repetitive work
connecting existing systems
replacing an expensive or poorly fitting platform
adopting an open-source alternative
using AI to assist your staff
using AI or automation to handle parts of a workflow
building something custom

Then we compare the options based on impact, cost, complexity, risk, and how quickly they can produce value.

4. Design the workflow

A strategy isn’t very useful if nobody knows how to implement it.

Once we’ve identified the best approach, we map out how it should actually work.

What triggers the process? What information is needed? Which systems are involved? What gets automated? What still requires a person? What happens when something goes wrong? How do we know whether the change worked?

The goal is to get from “we should do this” to “here’s how this works.”

Sometimes the answer is AI.

AI is one of the most powerful additions to the technology toolbox in a long time.

There are things organizations can realistically automate or improve today that would have been difficult, expensive, or impossible just a few years ago.

That’s worth exploring.

But AI isn’t automatically the best solution.

If a normal automation can do the job more reliably, I’ll recommend that. If an open-source application solves the problem for a fraction of the cost, let’s use it. If the software you’re already paying for has a feature nobody knew about, even better.

And if your organization doesn’t want to use AI at all?

That’s fine too.

There are plenty of ways to improve systems, automate work, reduce costs, and increase staff capacity without it.

[Explore AI Strategy]

What can we improve?

Technology strategy can touch almost every part of an organization.

For associations and nonprofits, that can include membership and renewals, member onboarding, education and learning systems, events, communications, customer or member support, internal knowledge, reporting, forms, data entry, websites, e-commerce, CRM systems, email, document management, board and committee workflows, staff processes, integrations, software costs, and repetitive administrative work.

The important question isn’t whether something can be improved.

There’s almost always something we could improve.

The question is:

Which improvement is worth doing first?

Find the expensive boring stuff.

Some of the best technology opportunities aren’t particularly exciting.

They’re the tasks somebody does every Tuesday because that’s how it’s always been done.

The spreadsheet that has to be manually updated.
The same information entered into three systems.
The report that takes half a day to assemble.
The $12,000-a-year platform you’re only using for two features.
The process everyone hates but nobody has had time to rethink.

Saving five minutes isn’t interesting.

Saving five minutes on something 10,000 times a year is.

Part of technology strategy is finding those opportunities and figuring out which ones are large enough to matter.

Use what you have before buying something new.

One of the easiest ways to waste money on technology is to keep adding tools.

Before recommending another subscription, I want to know what you’re already paying for and what it can actually do.

Sometimes the best improvement comes from connecting two existing systems, enabling a feature you already own, consolidating several tools, or changing the workflow around them.

When something new really is necessary, then we can evaluate it based on the problem it needs to solve instead of its feature list.

Open source belongs in the conversation.

Associations and nonprofits can spend a surprising amount of money renting software.

Sometimes that’s absolutely worth it.

Sometimes it isn’t.

I believe open-source software should be considered alongside commercial products when it can give an organization more control, lower long-term costs, better interoperability, or simply a better fit.

That doesn’t mean “open source everything.”

It means treating it as a real option instead of assuming another monthly subscription is the only way.

[Explore Technology Optimization]

Built from inside an association.

I’ve spent roughly a decade as Technical Director for the American Institute of Building Design.

That means I’ve dealt with technology from inside an association rather than only advising one from the outside.

I’ve worked with membership systems, online education, e-commerce, websites, communications, support systems, forms, integrations, automations, internal workflows, boards, committees, volunteers, vendors, legacy systems, and limited resources.

I’ve also learned that the technically impressive solution isn’t always the useful one.

The system has to work for the organization and the people actually using it.

[More About Me]

Let’s find what would make the biggest difference.

You don’t need to know which software you need.

You don’t need to know what to automate.

And you definitely don’t need to know where to put AI.

That’s part of the work.

Tell me what your organization is trying to accomplish and where things aren’t working as well as they should.

We’ll start there.