Gathering Vendors’ Knowledge
Vendors know a whole lot about the areas in which they work. It’s not shocking – after all, who among us spends all day, every day, thinking about and talking to people about online donations like the online donation vendors do? Just their knowledge about the typical concerns of the nonprofits they talk to would be enormously useful. And I’ve certainly learned a ton about online donations, especially on the technical side, while researching this report.
It’s not clear, however, how exactly we can best get at this knowledge so that nonprofits can benefit from it. There are a lot of vendors who are great and honest and genuinely want to help the sector – but the inherent conflict of interest is a problem. If I were to ask a vendor what types of things people are looking for, the vendor is presumably going to tell me that people are looking for what their product offers – it’s just too far from their obvious best interest to say otherwise.
Food for thought.
It’s not clear, however, how exactly we can best get at this knowledge so that nonprofits can benefit from it. There are a lot of vendors who are great and honest and genuinely want to help the sector – but the inherent conflict of interest is a problem. If I were to ask a vendor what types of things people are looking for, the vendor is presumably going to tell me that people are looking for what their product offers – it’s just too far from their obvious best interest to say otherwise.
Food for thought.
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2 Comments:
This is a great question. I'd love to chew it around with you. Vendors in the npo sector (by and large - there are scoundrels everywhere) are committed to being honest, to working in the client's interest, to revealing any possible conflicts. But we need to sell our products and services.
The flip side of this problem from the vendor's point of view is that all of our client's are non-profits: they tend to believe they deserve a better break than dirty old for-profit companies. Michael Gilbert published a delicious rant by Putnam Barber about this in his NonProfit Online News a while back.
We plan to open a lot of our support--positive and negative--up to the public over the next several weeks. We're not interested in making money from the support side--we want consultants and customers to know as much as possible, including limitations. So does airing support laundry help?
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