Eric Leland's blog

Often we here contracts called a necessary evil, full of legalese, unintelligible, draconian. Contract signatories on both the service provider and recipient side trade horror stories of bogged down contract processes, debating "what-if" doomsday scenarios of project failure, rights and liability that seem to hurt project relationships more than help.

While contracts often come bundled with these negatives, I see contracts and contracting processes offering a terrific opportunity to establish strong, successful partnerships. While there are clearly important legal protections a strong contract offers, what's important for me is contracting as a tool for really understanding relationships better.

I really appreciate certain powers of contracting, including how these processes can:

(1) Detect the "Pink Elephant in the Room"

Contracting processes are like radar, seeking out uncomfortable truths. These are often discovered in subtle ways, such as a shift in seating position, a glance, falling asleep... In one negotiation this year over the phone, my contracting partner very quietly scoffed at some of the needs I expressed. It became evident that we were not a good match, and I did not go any further with negotiations.

In text, various passive voice sentence structures often refer to the pink elephant without actually pointing right at it. I found this one in a recent contract: "Client must be notified of any project scope increases resulting in additional cost, and consultant must receive approval of these costs prior to performing additional work." Who will notify the client exactly? Who gives the consultant approval? The lack of project decisionmakers may be the elephant here.

(2) Seek Common Ground

Ok so finding a pink elephant can be awkward. The good thing is, we found it, and now have a good excuse to talk to it. We all want a successful project, now I can simply ask my contracting partner what they need. "Are you concerned about keeping to the timeline? Ok, what can we do to make sure we can make good decisions and stay on task together?" We could just shuffle the contract paper back and forth, compiling huge collections of changes tracked in multiple colors, but I find it more effective to simply use conversational language first to work it out, then try out a few sentences together that can form the basis of the contract language.

(3) Clarify Meaning

With all the varieties of agreements out there, as well as experiences with successful and failed projects, we come to the table with lots of preconceptions. This happens a lot in billing practices. Some people expect the invoices to delineate time and materials, even if the contract is fixed fee - it just seems like the right definition for an invoice. Some may expect no deposit, or payment after the full project is completed, bi-weekly invoices, etc, etc. People have different understandings of what sign-off means - when can I expect delivery, and how to I communicate if it needs more work? Intellectual property is often a difficult issue. Some folks simply assume a blanket "we own everything you give us" policy without realizing what it means to their contracting partner, or whether they actually need all that control.

(4) Support the Work Plan

I appreciate contracts that do a good job integrating the work plan. For instance, the schedule in the work plan should accommodate the contractual obligations to deliver and provide feedback on deliverables within a certain time. If these are properly bundled together, the workplan helps to make the contract less "offensive", less of a weapon for both parties and more as a common platform for executing the project.

(5) Test the Strength of the Relationship

This is the biggest advantage of contracting processes. Often the conversations prior to contracting are about whats possible, how great the project is, how skilled the consultant is, how amazing the client is, and focuses on reasons why we are a good fit. But after the honeymoon is over, do you still get along? Can you actually work out a difference of opinion? There is no shame in discovering that you cannot. Every year I have projects that get to this stage, and should not go any further. It's likely a huge benefit for both parties to recognize as early as possible that the relationship is not working, even if the match on other levels is great. Missed expectations emerge often, and require strength of communication and trust to work them out to the advantage of all.

"80% of your time will be spent writing good content." I must have repeated this phrase 100 times this year in various presentations and website project meetings. Logically, I know its a solid statement, but it's always good to be reminded by just doing it.

It's now taken me weeks longer than expected to write stuff for our new FivePaths company website under development. Sometimes I just want to say on one page, "We build websites, databases, and know a lot of important technology stuff. Maybe we can help you." Its hard to look inside yourself, and the team and projects you know so well, and generate compelling ways to describe it.

So naturally, I have procrastinated. Many times now. And sometimes while procrastinating, I looked for magical software tools to help me... somehow... Surprisingly to me, there are some:

Storyist (storyist.com)

We often recommend storytelling as a compelling frame for writing content for the web. Storyist is a terrific Mac software designed to help novelists generate and organize their story. Of course I bought it immediately, and lost at least 30 minutes exploring the metaphor of the story for our website. I could generate "characters" (ie clients, partners, etc), "plot" (our services), organize images, and walk through all of these as "chapters", organizing and reorganizing what comes first and next. I have tried organizing my thoughts in similar ways using a wiki, but found the story frame much more useful.

WebSort (websort.net)

Here we have a software combining index cards with surveying. I could set up a free account online and start generating cards containing categories and subcategories, and mix them around in different ways. Very compelling, especially when you are as overwhelmed as I was with all the great ways to organize website concepts. Its like magnetic poetry for building taxonomies. Particularly cool and essential for real card sorting activities, you can invite folks to sort your cards the way it works best for them, and then analyze the results.

WriteRoom (hogbaysoftware.com)

Distractions really help fuel procrastination. When writing web content, there is nothing more distracting than the other five screens I have open on my computer (my email, Facebook, calendar, etc). Sometimes I need help focusing on just one thing at a time. WriteRoom basically brings your Mac back to the days when portable computers meant two people and a large cardboard box. It gives you a nice black screen to type bright green letters. Everything else is gone from sight. This is as far as I got, although I understand you can change the colors of the background and font to a less headache inducing combination.

WhiteSmoke (whitesmoke.com/mac/)

Ok I actually never tried this one, but it seemed really compelling as I was copy editing the About section for our new site, for the third time. They promise grammar, spelling and style checking, as well as a dictionary/thesaurus feature. They have software to fit various writing "profiles", including business and hi-tech writing. I wonder if it is like online translations, which still struggles to tell the difference between someone from Berlin and a jelly doughnut. Ich bin kein Berliner.

I like tools that just work, even when they do not necessarily do everything I could hope for. Most database tools have features that do not work well, that I just wish they would have not included at all. Our food has too much sugar and refined flour, our economy has too much credit, and our databases have too many features - all of which can lead to serious systemic problems.

In a follow up to my post last year covering Really Simple Databases, here are a few simple online donor management tools to consider.

DonorTools:

A relatively new donor management service that got its start providing donation services to churches. Since then the developers have grown the tool to be appropriate for all kinds of nonprofits with simple donor management needs. DonorTools tracks basic donor information with options for multiple salutations, addresses, and methods for contact. Donors are then "tagged" with one or more categories that you determine, creating a simple and robust way to categorize donors into a wide variety of groups.

Donations include options to track the source and the fund, and include options for tracking the gift type, splitting the gift and more. Viewing a donor provides a nice prominent view of their total giving, and their are buttons available to quickly find donations over preset time periods.

Online donation forms can be configured to automatically related donations to the correct fund. There is not a website management tool, but the donation forms can be linked to your site via "Donate Now" buttons, or using the various APIs available these forms can be rendered directly onto a website. Donating online requires either Amazon or Paypal, but DonorTools does not take any percentage of the transactions.

DonorTools current price is $30/month - they say this is for a "limited time", which does not surprise me given the nice array of features offered for this simple system. This price includes unlimited records and logins, including some basic levels of access control to the system.

BlackbaudNow:

While I maintain they made a very poor choice in naming their service, they did succeed in making a very simple & usable donor database. If you need a quickie website + online donation system up in a hurry take a look.

It really just tracks very basic contact info per donor - name, address, phone, fax, email - and a few extra tidbits such as contact type and birth date. There is a simple, integrated email blast tool - you either email everyone, or one person in your database, either text or html emails. Blackbaud teamed up with Paypal and ingeniously decided to offer their integrated donor and payment solution for a rather steep 4.95% + $0.30 per donation transaction. Other than these transaction fees, the BlackbaudNow service itself is cost free.

A very simple 6 page website tool is integrated, with over 20 templates to choose from. Only offers one login for managing the system. In general, I would expect that folks looking for a simple online donor management solution would be more satisfied with DonorTools over BlackbaudNow unless the integrated website feature is key. Check out Michelle Murrain's post as well for more information.

When comparison shopping, we have come to expect that companies will make outlandish claims about their stuff. Sometimes it's frustrating, but most of the time, I continue on numb to the distorted claims clinging to the brands all around me. For nonprofits in the business of providing a social benefit, its especially disheartening when I read similarly exaggerated claims about their accomplishments.

I see credible communication as a social benefit. Sandra Stewart, a colleague over at Thinkshift Communications, shared a beta "Credibility Quotient" to help quantify the credibility of initiatives. I found it useful as I thought about building nonprofit websites, and the kinds of messaging and communications strategies that become implicit in the architecture of the sites I build.

Thinkshift identifies several factors in determining credibility, including provable claims, accurate data, attention to challenges, relevance to the audience, consistency with actions and more. These factors and definitions show the different perspectives we can take when considering whether web content is credible, and helps to determine where to focus to fix any problems. For me, the details of the scoring and weighting are less important than the exercise in understanding what credibility factors are most important, and how to read content for these factors.

I remember dating, long ago. It was exciting to meet someone new, and often a lot of over-preparation leading up to it. Mostly it was fun to just get a date in my case. Most dates turned out differently than I expected, ranging from pleasantly surprised to simply disastrous.

One thing for sure - first impressions are critical.

With over 40 software reviews over the past several months now behind me, I have come to appreciate the value of software demonstrations. The vendor has their first chance to impress, and its importance to understanding the product cannot be trivialized. My context has been as a consultant to my nonprofit clients, as a researcher for reports and as a consumer myself.

While my dates with most demonstrations left me smiling, and in some cases wanting more, some left me feeling bitter, degraded, even used. You might be surprised at some of the bad tactics some software vendors use:

1. Interrupting the question: Several times I would ask something like "could you show me how to email...", with the vendor suddenly breaking in to show me some random html email template tool rather than "...gift acknowledgments in batch in response to all my new donations." Gee, thanks but no thanks.
2. Giving irrelevant answers: Its infuriating to ask a question, only to get a completely irrelevant response. The answer often starts with, "First Eric, I would like to show you X", and then never leads back to the question. How patronizing! They might as well say, "Oh Eric, that's a stupid question now, isn't it? I'll show you X instead."
3. Yelling: In some cases, I would continue to ask a question after being interrupted. Some vendors simply could not allow for a question to be fully stated, insisting on raising their voices or yelling their response, I guess in hopes of convincing me of how powerful they are.
   
4. The Venomous No: Amazing as it sounds, some software does not satisfy every requirement I have. Instead of giving a nice, clean "No", I sometimes got instead: "No, we can't satisfy every little detail." Generally, the "little detail", "edge case" or "minor feature" as they put it actually matter to me, go figure. One vendor actually told me "No, and I do not see why that would be important for anyone."
   
5. Disrespecting the schedule: Some vendors would schedule and reschedule meetings without apology, and would continue to talk well beyond the end point. "Just one more quick minute..." would end up being a 10 minute monologue on something, and my attempts to intervene often could not stop it.

Basic listening and communication skills are so important. Some demonstrations of quite advanced software ran so well, I got more out of those in 30 minutes than in over 2 hours with other comparable systems. Its important to not let the demo experience be a roadblock to discovering otherwise great software. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to assume back demo behavior may be indicative of bad service generally.

For my part, I learned to be a better demo consumer. Come prepared with very clear questions. Its important to have clear criteria defined in advance so as to not be unduly influenced by the unusually good or bad presentation you may receive. Provide them up in advance to the vendor whenever possible. Allow the vendor to fully explain their answer - it often answers several other questions. Set expectations at the beginning. Make sure to confirm the demo system works before the call. Allow plenty of follow-up time for notes and questions.