I sit in the unique "Open Source Software guidance seat" on the NPSP Advisory Board. I like to think of it as my "open source rocking chair", but I'll gladly take a good old fashioned "seat". Anyway, while this position doesn't necessarily have a defined role at this time in our charter (https://github.com/SalesforceFoundation/NPSP-Advisory-Board), I'd like to give it a bit more shape, as well as better serve you in this capacity through further transparency.
Think of it as helping me write my volunteer position description and goals. Pretty cool, right?
Regardless of your background or knowledge of open source software and the communities that make them so powerful, I'm interested in your input in two key areas:
1) What leadership efforts do you think the NPSP Advisory Board should undertake in support of our open source project?
2) What goals do you think the NPSP Advisory should aim to achieve with respect to our community's open source software foundation?
No thought is too crazy, no feedback is too short. Your input will help me map my role's areas of strength and opportunities for growth. I look forward to your contributions!
I believe in NPSP/SF in the nonprofit space. So I think the advisory board should:
1) Work to bring SF/NPSP power to new, or growing nonprofits (small or medium) so that the common denominator of CRM rises for all (nonprofits and their constituents)
2) Continue to look at common items needed by the majority of nonprofits and bring those into core NPSP functionality so the cost of ownership reduces, common denominator goes up, and best practices are promulgated. This doesn't always mean new features... it can mean better use or adaptation of existing SF core capability. Make accessible, highlight and enhance the inherent high value of the SF and NPSP platforms in relevant ways for nonprofits.
3) Enable large organizations to use the same tools to create the strongest possible user ecosystem and propagation of great ideas from large to small and vice versa.
4) Respect and foster the awesome application exchange and consultant ecosystem. Provide guidance or building blocks so that tools readily make use of and are compatible with NPSP features. This may mean setting some type of architectural agenda for features expected over time to come into NPSP or services offered by NPSP for eco system use.
5) Continue to keep an eye on "competitive" solutions and feature sets. NPSP can't be everything. But it ought to make sense for most small, medium, and growing organizations to adopt it. in most greenfield or transitional situations. And it ought to make sense to build on NPSP most of the time for leading edge or complex large enterprise needs.
6) Push hard on tools to help the communication problem that all nonprofits feel. Unlike most businesses or even most B2C, everything I read shows most nonprofit constituents don't have a preferred channel for communication with a nonprofit--it's not really work, play, personal, or social. They are scattered across email, phone, SMS, FB, twitter, and other social media channels. Email as a backbone for nonprofit communication is limping and getting staler. (More and more people are deciding email is for work, SMS is for personal, social media is for fun... so where do we fit in?) We need to be looking for and adopting core technologies to enable us to be ready to adapt. This seems like a great consortium problem. (e.g., how do we expand on the idea of preferred phone or preferred email to "preferred channel" and then make message delivery possible using the preferred channel transparently). If there is a threat to everything we are based on, I think this is it. Nonpaying nonprofits or low budget nonprofits have little access to automating or even capturing structure of channels other than direct mail, phone calls and email. I believe I will see the solution emerge for this within 5 years. It could very well leave some solutions in the dust with little steam to follow suit. I would be disappointed if that included SF or NPSP.
7) Continue to keep cost of ownership as low as practical and transparent for NPSP. That means clear feature maps that rollout smoothly. It means the continued focus of clear cost of adoption, adpation, and ownership messaging. It means rare disruption points (like the dreaded 2.x to 3.x upgrade).
8) Continue to oversee QC. That means continued thorough testing. It means continued discipline in what is in and out of continuous releases. That means continued careful planning of how features are introduced without disruption for upgrade customers and just "on" for new installations.
9) Continued view that documentation and training is part of the product. It means continued user documentation and training material in all formats (traditional docs, FAQS, how-to video shorts, trailhead, etc.).
10) Do no harm to the amazing HUB community. Develop and foster it and continue to offer opportunity to professional and lay developers to bring awesome developments to the code base, documentation, and feature set.
