Versatile software engineer with a background in .NET consulting and CMS development. Working on regaining my embedded development skills to get more involved with IoT opportunities.
I spent almost 2 years as the web administrator for a non-profit professional association in the DC area. First off, I hated that job title! It feels like it's a hanger-on from the 90s. Now that I've got that out of my system, the resource constraints are a huge issue. I had the impression that there had never been a competent developer at the organization before me; they went out of their way to put together a benefits package which was actually pretty decent, although in DC it seemed like I could never make enough money to live comfortably.
There's a lot of politics you will have to play. There was NOTHING in terms of best practices or website policy when I came onboard; things were done in a really inefficient manner because "that's how we always have done it!" My boss was really supportive and fought hard to help me make changes, but there were a lot of people dragging their feet at every opportunity. Ultimately, this is why I quit.
Most of the companies specializing in non-profit technology are producing absolutely garbage software, so be prepared for a lot of frustrating integrations with SOAP web services or 'REST' APIs which only have a single method and return 200 when exceptions are raised. I felt like some of these companies were knowingly taking advantage of the fact that most non-profits lack IT knowledge...they would charge us $200/hr to fix their software and I would generally catch them outsourcing the work.
You're going to be dealing with people problems moreso than technology problems, and as an outsider, you probably won't have any power to address those. Unless you have a lot of support from leadership, you are going to struggle to accomplish anything. The core issues that needed to be solved boiled down to open communication and trust between employees and management, and all the software in the world wasn't going to fix that.
If you are really passionate about it, by all means go for it, but be realistic about outcomes. I wouldn't sell myself short...they might already be paying contractors $200 an hour to butcher their systems and if you can't get the resources you need even after non-profit price incentives and tax breaks, the organization has bigger issues than their website.
Don't expect to play with a lot of exciting technology, you are going to be dealing with a lot of legacy systems. You'll be paying for terrible decisions someone made ten years ago. My position had been vacant for a while when I joined so they had contracted out the redesign of our website, which was a disaster. They would pay consultants big money to gather detailed requirements on what they needed from their systems, and then pick something that didn't meet any of the requirements and looked most similar to the current suite of programs that didn't work.
I spent almost 2 years as the web administrator for a non-profit professional association in the DC area. First off, I hated that job title! It feels like it's a hanger-on from the 90s. Now that I've got that out of my system, the resource constraints are a huge issue. I had the impression that there had never been a competent developer at the organization before me; they went out of their way to put together a benefits package which was actually pretty decent, although in DC it seemed like I could never make enough money to live comfortably.
There's a lot of politics you will have to play. There was NOTHING in terms of best practices or website policy when I came onboard; things were done in a really inefficient manner because "that's how we always have done it!" My boss was really supportive and fought hard to help me make changes, but there were a lot of people dragging their feet at every opportunity. Ultimately, this is why I quit.
Most of the companies specializing in non-profit technology are producing absolutely garbage software, so be prepared for a lot of frustrating integrations with SOAP web services or 'REST' APIs which only have a single method and return 200 when exceptions are raised. I felt like some of these companies were knowingly taking advantage of the fact that most non-profits lack IT knowledge...they would charge us $200/hr to fix their software and I would generally catch them outsourcing the work.
You're going to be dealing with people problems moreso than technology problems, and as an outsider, you probably won't have any power to address those. Unless you have a lot of support from leadership, you are going to struggle to accomplish anything. The core issues that needed to be solved boiled down to open communication and trust between employees and management, and all the software in the world wasn't going to fix that.
If you are really passionate about it, by all means go for it, but be realistic about outcomes. I wouldn't sell myself short...they might already be paying contractors $200 an hour to butcher their systems and if you can't get the resources you need even after non-profit price incentives and tax breaks, the organization has bigger issues than their website.
Don't expect to play with a lot of exciting technology, you are going to be dealing with a lot of legacy systems. You'll be paying for terrible decisions someone made ten years ago. My position had been vacant for a while when I joined so they had contracted out the redesign of our website, which was a disaster. They would pay consultants big money to gather detailed requirements on what they needed from their systems, and then pick something that didn't meet any of the requirements and looked most similar to the current suite of programs that didn't work.
This pretty much is what goes on. Scott knows charity.
On the smaller ones, no $200 consultants (just someone's cousin).