Nonprofit Tech Professionals Creating Principles

Imagine our community of nonprofit technology professionals having a set of principles to guide our work and let other communities know us better.

Most groups of professionals have principals or codes of conduct that their members agree to abide by - except nonprofit technology professionals (NTPs) in the USA. We would like to facilitate our community generating and agreeing to a set of principles/ code of conduct. The UK Circuit Riders have already articulated and presented a set of principles appropriate for them, that many have signed on to follow. Now we think it's our turn.

We are presenting a draft set of principles as a starting point for discussion. NTEN has agreed to host the discussion through an online affinity group. Over the next 90 days, we ask all of you to review our draft, comment, contribute and discuss (see process schedule below).

At the end of ninety days we will put all of the feedback and discussion together into a set of principles built by the community. We will then encourage all nonprofit technology professionals to sign on to the principles and abide by them.

We are looking for basic principles applicable to the broadest range of nonprofit technology professionals - staff, consultants, vendors, professors and others who identify with our community.

Sign up for the discussion forum where you can view the initial draft, comment and discuss.

We look forward to the conversation - including in-person discussion and input at NTC - and we will contact this list again when the final draft is ready.

We hope you will  join us in taking another step to professionalizing what we love to do.

Beth Kanter, John Kenyon, Michelle Murrain, Marc Osten

Process Supporters (organizations for identification purposes only):

Sue Bennet, Project Director, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Peter Campbell, Earthjustice & TechCafeteria
Teresa Crawford,  Director Advocacy and Leadership Center, Institute for Sustainable Communities
Jeff Forster, Robert Morris University, Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management
David Geilhufe, Philanthropy Program Manager at NetSuite
Dave Greenberg, CiviCRM
Mary Gross, Director of InfoTAP, a program of Nonprofit Management Solutions
Allen Gunn, Aspiration Tech
Cheryl Hanback, Web & Graphic Design
Phil Klein, Pen & Pixel
Eric Leland, Leland Design
Sheldon Mains, Nonprofit Tech Consultant
Ryan Ozimek, PICnet
Laura Quinn, Idealware
Jon Stahl, ONE/NW
Michael Stein, Internet & Media Strategist

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Process

3/13 - Initial email to the community
3/19 - 3/21 - Opportunity for discussion at NTC
3/11 - 6/11 - Comments and discussion via NTEN Affinity group
6/11 - 6/23 - Comments incorporated, last draft up for comments
7/7 - Final draft posted, ready for adoption

Comments

[Drew Bernard]

This is great, John. It's good to see my boy Jon Stahl is down with the vision here at ONE/Northwest :)

I think one of the hardest things that really should get added somehow is that we put the missions of our clients first, not the tools. This is often the thing that helps us keep from giving clients more than they can swallow and keeps our many bottom-lines in balance.

[John Kenyon]

Thanks, Drew! I totally agree and there is a point in the draft about this.I hope you will join the community conversation on the NTEN Affinity Group discussion forum - link in the original post.

[Ivan Boothe]

Love it! I am definitely signing on.