Transcript Tsunamis, Moss and Car Batteries; Insights from the Nonprofit World Ed Granger-Happ Save the Children March, 2006

Tsunamis, Moss and Car Batteries;
Insights from the Nonprofit World
Ed Granger-Happ
Save the Children
March, 2006
Tsunamis
• Think 9/11 with downtown Manhattan
flattened and a quarter-million people lost
• How do you back-up your business in
Banda Aceh?
• Where do you back-up?
• With what team do you back-up?
• Coming into work or finding your family,
what comes first?
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Banda Aceh – Ground Zero
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Tsunami Questions
• Is having all your people in the same
location a good idea?
• Is having all your servers at one location a
good idea?
• Who cares how good the generator is?
• Are your sleeping bags packed and ready?
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What is this large object?
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a very large ship 5 miles inland in the middle of the road
Mosquitoes not Moss
• In 2000 in Haiti an email server dropped offline.
• What happened?
• Mosquitoes clogged the cooling fan
– Several hundred mosquitoes had been sucked into the
power supply over the years and froze the fan motor
• The server over-heated, crashed and would not
power up
• Bring on the mosquito nets
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Dhaka, Bangladesh
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Other Stories
• In Afghanistan email kept failing each day
– Generator power gets turned off nightly
– When the power gets turned off, email servers don't
work
• In Malawi, when they flushed the toilets the
servers crashed
– Had wired the servers to the same circuits as the pumps
that the toilets use to move the waste. Flush the toilet,
take too much power, bring down servers.
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Network Director’s Quarters
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Car Batteries
• Iraq in 2002: electricity sources destroyed
in Baghdad and Basra.
• How do we power a temporary office for
voice and data?
• Car batteries
• The ubiquitous, global power supply
• Our office-in-a-box (NRK) runs on it
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Katmandu Field Office
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Security is Physical
• When Red Cross workers were assassinated in Chechnya
in 1996, the world changed for nonprofits
• No longer immune from combat like the Red Cross of old
• Now we are a target
• The insurgent bombing of the UN headquarters in
Baghdad in 2003 was turning point for STC
• Security budget went from $0 in 2002 to $569K in 2006
• Physical security is primary; systems security is
secondary
• Now matching travel with security bulletins: CRG and
Amex ticketing
• Virtual roll calls: sat-phones and HF radios to stay in
touch
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Nepal Server Room
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The New Philanthropy
• 1950: Good corporate citizen
– Giving back to the community
• 1990’s: Employee-driven philanthropy
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Kosovo refugees (1999)
Hurricane Mitch (1998)
Working for companies parents would be proud of
It’s not about marketing
• 2005: Strategic philanthropy
– The Cisco Fellowship Program experiment
– Cisco leadership training
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Collaborate or Repeat
• Collaboration on a level where any
information or project is shared
• Consortia like NetHope are taking relief
work to a new level
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2001: Two compelling hypotheses
2006: 17 members and $5.2B in aid
Cisco store
Microsoft grants
50+ satellite dishes installed
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Network Relief Kit
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Corporate Partnering
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Cisco – Fellowship Program
Microsoft – Software grants
Baker & McKenzie – Pro Bono contract work
Pepperidge Farm – AD tutoring (Mike A.)*
Horizon BC/BS – BPR tutoring (Rose B.)*
* SIM member/contacts
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Transitioning to a Nonprofit
• Patience – universal participation will drive
you nuts
• Tolerance for messy, drawn-out decisions
• Bleeding edge technology is rare
• High-level Tech company contact is common
• Everyday you have impact
• Learning that a good IT decision means that
more kids get fed
• You are valued beyond your expectations
• Pursuit of success to pursuit of significance. 18
What’s the most important skill?
Triage
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Lessons from Nonprofits
• Look for the "giving-back" factor
– Enlist staff in projects that give back to
the community
• Motivate and retain IT staff
• Asset for corporate marketing
• While doing good for those in need
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Lessons from Nonprofits (cont.)
• Think constituents, not competition
– Nonprofits focus on how their
constituents benefit, not on issues of
competition.
– Partnering and collaborating with
other organizations—even
competitors—can create new
technologies and partnerships that
otherwise would not exist.
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Lessons from Nonprofits (cont.)
• Triage like an Emergency Room
– Prioritize projects and stakeholders
– Even with limited IT budgets, CTOs can
accomplish new initiatives.
– The key is to upsize your primary
stakeholder project lists and downsize
your secondary stakeholder list.
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Lessons from Nonprofits (cont.)
• Find and communicate meaning in
the work
– NGOs must motivate their IT
employees without the benefits of stock
options, stock savings plans, and
bonuses.
– All work has meaning
– The work environment counts big time
(e.g., self-directed schedules matter to
IT professionals)
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How can you help?
• In an emergency, volunteer for HQ work
(not in the Field, Dave Clarke, ARC)
• Advising, coaching and mentoring
• Slots in your training programs
• Share international bandwidth (satellite
transponder space)
• Donate PC & laptops at end-of-lease
• Unrestricted cash
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All that’s left of home
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Questions?
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