Technology Grantmaking Toolkit: Practical tools for technology grantmaking in Canada's voluntary sector

TEMPLATE - Strategic Technology Plan

Overview

This section is intended to provide an overview of your organization and its strategic goals. It is also intended to make a link between your strategic goals and your technology goals.

About Our Organization

A quick description of what your organization does and who it serves. It might also include a copy of your mission statement.

Organizational Goals

A bullet list of the goals / objectives in your organization's current strategic plan. If you don't have a current strategic plan, a list of program areas and projects could be included here.

Technology Goals

Mapping the connection between your strategic goals and your tech goals. This can be done in table format as outlined in the following example:

This section describes the current state of technology within your organization. It is based partially on answers to the 'technology capacity probe' questions outlined above in the toolkit.

Technology Assets

A bullet list or table describing where an organization has strengths and assets in terms of technology. Should include infrastructure, staff and volunteers, contractor relationships, databases and other internal systems, web sites and online systems.

Technology Gaps

A bullet list or table describing technology gaps. Using the 'capacity probes' will often help to surface these gaps.

Technology Infrastructure

This section should describe the infrastructure that an organization has – computers, internet connections, printers, etc.

Overview

Provide an overview of existing systems. For small organizations, all that is needed is a simple table like the one below.

Additional information

Provide additional information about technology infrastructure needs. Questions to consider include:

• How many staff need full-time computer access? How many additional computers are needed for part-time staff and volunteer computer access?

• How many locations does the organization have? Do all locations have a LAN, a printer and high speed Internet access?

• Are there areas where software upgrades and replacements are needed?

• What is the plan for providing technical support for staff and volunteers?

Training and Support

This section describes the approach that will be taken to providing training and support within an organization. Issues and challenges to consider in this section include:

• Providing ongoing training to deal with turnover of staff and volunteers.

• Defining baseline technology skill sets and a method for ensuring that relevant staff and volunteers have these skills.

• Creating a process for writing technology training objectives into staff members’ personal development plans or other annual planning/evaluation processes.

• Accommodating different learning styles by offering access to different kinds of training – mentoring, mini-classes, formal classroom training, and self-paced online training. Most kinds of training can be found from outside training providers, which keep costs low and quality high.

• Promoting just-in-time learning by keeping a collection of up-to-date reference books and offering staff and volunteers a collection of technical support bookmarks that provide useful reference material.

Web Site and Online

This section describes an organizations current and future web site and online strategy.

Audience

A brief profile of the main audiences that the organization is trying to reach online. Also include a description of the information and services that these audiences are seeking on the web site.

Web site description

An overview of the baseline functions needed to meet the needs of the audiences described above (e.g. a calendar of workshop dates or an e-newsletter). This can be done using a simple bullet list or table.

Web site upgrades

Description of new features and functions that need to be added to the web site in order to meet objectives outlined in the strategic tech goals section of the plan.

Web site marketing

Description of methods that are or will be used to regularly market and promote the web site.

Strategic Tech Projects

This section provides a list of strategic technology projects that an organization is envisioning during the period covered by the plan. Each project should include a short description, a budget estimate and information about how to get a full project plan.

Action Plan

This section provides a description of all the tasks required to implement your technology plan.

Technology Budget

This section provides a high level technology budget. To make things simple, just base the top line of this budget on the TCO calculations described in the Toolkit. An example is provided here: