As we’re nearing the end of October, we hope you’ve made time this month for some of your favorite fall activities, even if you had to make some slight (virtual) adjustments this year.
Last Tuesday, our CEO, Ryan Ozimek, sat down with Build Consulting's Kyle Haines for a virtual fireside chat to discuss how Microsoft is expanding its offerings and presence in the nonprofit tech world. They had a lovely, informative discussion, complete with penguins, hot cocoa, and ski lodges. We’re pleased to share the webinar recording from our friends over at Build Consulting. Grab your furry hats and something hot to sip on and get up to speed!
For those looking to skip the cocoa, we picked three key takeaways from the webinar and highlighted some thoughts from Ryan and Kyle.
Open Source is the Future (and the Future is Now)
Ryan and Kyle began their fireside chat by diving into the topic of open source technology. Open source software is simply technology released under a license that enables anyone to use the code for any purpose, with the software often continuing to develop rapidly across public collaborations. Ryan reflected on his time working with Joomla, an open source content management system, where he got to see the early possibilities of open source taking hold. In more recent years, there has been a particular shift toward open source software, which has ushered in an era of increased developer transparency and greater empowerment for individuals and organizations.
Microsoft has supported a good amount of the momentum behind the open source movement with the nonprofit community recently. Around this time in 2017, Microsoft launched Tech for Social Impact, pledging to help move 300,000 nonprofits to the cloud, while offering a number of products at free or deeply discounted rates. Since then, Microsoft has accelerated the movement to increase resources for nonprofits, something we’ve seen most recently with the announcement of Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement for Dynamics 365, an open source fundraising application for the nonprofit community.
This shift toward open source has tremendous implications for nonprofits when it comes to creating custom solutions for an organization’s needs.
“I mean, to be able to have full access to your data, to be able to have access to data in a way that it could be repurposed in different ways, to be able to have access to how your data is being managed, where it exists, and the easy ways to connect with it. I think that’s been an ideal that many organizations have wished they could have.”
He added that with the nonprofit community being as wide and as varied as it is, tools need to be flexible, affordable, and expandable.
With such key players like Microsoft shifting many of their offerings to open-source, we are moving into an “open by default” era, as Ryan calls it, that takes the focus off of tech companies and vendors and puts it on communities and their standards.
CDM and CDS are Changing the Game for Citizen Developers
In the Microsoft space, there is what is known as the common data service (CDS). We’ll try not to get too technical, but it’s essentially a data layer that lies beneath every product in the Microsoft ecosystem. Whether you are using an Office app like Excel or a Dynamics solution like Fundraising and Engagement, your data can be accessed via the CDS.
Additionally, there is the common data model (CDM), which is the standardized way of storing data within a database based on a particular industry (like our nonprofit community), which can be used by all Microsoft applications. The CDM allows for consistency of data and meaning across applications. For our purposes, the CDM makes app development much simpler and faster, since developers don't need to focus time on thinking about the way to store data, and instead can focus on the way an organization can engage with that data.
Based on the ways CDM and CDS have changed app development, Kyle said it appears Microsoft is “nurturing an environment of citizen developers, not just developers. People who have an idea, who want to build an app and don’t have any coding experience.”
Later, he described how the CDM eliminates a massive, time consuming step in app development.
“If we can get those who are building nonprofit solutions in the technology space, to stop having discussions about how to structure data, how data should be collected, how it should be linked and we can move instead, into something more entrepreneurial, like actually building solutions, I think that’s the emphasis that the community needs to be in.”
Ryan added that the CDM will help eliminate shadow apps (software that is not supported by an organization's IT department) and redirect energy to building purpose-driven, effective apps that use the same data language as the products in the ecosystem in which they live.
Dynamics CRM is Laying the Groundwork for Future Database Growth
We’ve talked about Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement at length in several of our most recent blog posts. If you're in the Microsoft ecosystem, and even if you're not, there's a lot of compelling features and benefits to this new open source fundraising solution. Sitting atop Dynamics CRM (the Microsoft customer relationship management offering), it’s open-source, free, and ready to use with familiar Microsoft products. Plus, out-of-the-box it provides fundraising solutions that support donor management, event registration, receipting, and much more.
With such a big new entrant jumping onto the field of fundraising solutions, Ryan and Kyle tossed around some questions about what organizations should be doing now in preparation? Do organizations start to consider moving and consolidating data in a new ecosystem?
Looking Ahead at the Next 12 Months
The new software seems to be perfect for large organizations that are already using Microsoft for their business and CRM functions, but how will implementation of this tool change for smaller nonprofits? How can consulting partners and product companies like Soapbox Engage help bridge the gaps?
Wrapping up their discussion (and maxing out on hot cocoa), Ryan and Kyle chatted about what we can likely expect during the next 12 months.
They mused about the long term goal of Microsoft. Is it to build more solutions internally and deliver them directly to the community? With multiple decades as a partner-led company, that's unlikely. They shared that it seemed more likely that Microsoft would stay focused on creating infrastructure and core offerings that its partner community could build and expand upon.
Wrapping things up, Ryan shared that a key step to further success for this ecosystem would need to be growth around the common data model. Specifically in the Microsoft space, he shared that he's looking forward to seeing how the developer community grows and extends what’s happening in the CDM and in Microsoft communities. Since both of these tend to complement each other right now, there seems to be much room to grow in the nonprofit space.
When it comes to the empowerment of nonprofits, Ryan shared the unique times we're living in, and the need for open, transparent, and interoperable systems.
"We're at a point in history where societies are demanding more of the charitable and public service communities than ever before. Software that recognizes the diverse needs of this community, and supports a rich ecosystem of providers to contribute unique solutions, is likely going to be the straightest path towards solving the most pressing needs of the next decade."
More Resources
Interested in diving deeper into what Microsoft has been up to in 2020? Take a look at some of our other posts for more information.
Donations
Events
Petitions
Forms
Shop
Directories