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The report is full of interesting information on how nonprofits (mis)(ab)use technology to manage their organizations.

APIs

Page 9 of the report discusses data integration:

Data Integration

Many of the data integration challenges cited by organizations could be alleviated by a concerted effort by vendors to provide better access to APIs for their tools. Rather than every organization independently developing processes to manually import, export, and merge data, increasing the availability and quality of vendor APIs will help minimize lost resources on data integration.

An increased availability of scripts or programs to automate the transfer of data would also help address organizational difficulty with data integration. For example, vendors could provide a tool that pulls data to the VAN from theDatabank and back with minimal user involvement.

My experience with these APIs is pretty poor. FirstLogic used WDSL and SOAP. Catalist returned comma- or tab-separated text. Blue State Digital’s fundraising tools didn’t even have APIs to get, say, lists of donors.

So how should an API work? Kellan Elliott-McCrea, who works on flickr, explains what an API should do for you:

Political and nonprofit vendors: do this: complete APIs. REST. XML. JSON. Performant. Bulk data.

With Flickr you can get out, via the API, every single piece of information you put into the system. Every photo, in every size, plus the completely untouched original. (which we store for you indefinitely, whether or not you pay us) Every tag, every comment, every note, every people tag, every fave. Also your stats, view counts, and referers. […] Flickr actually goes a bit farther, not only can you get your data out, but it gets enriched as it passes through the system. […] This isn’t the exhaustive list, just a few of the things Flickr does to respect, and collaborate with the people who share their time and data with us.

Excel

Excel is almost always the wrong tool for the job. Whenever someone tells me they want something in Excel, I immediately start discounting other things they’re saying.

So what do nonprofits do wrong? Using Excel as a database:

• 32% use Excel for voter registration data (p. 10)
• 29% use Excel to track membership (p. 13)
• 27% use Excel to track volunteers (p. 13)
• 26% use Excel to track donors (p. 13)
• 26% use Excel to manage their mailing list (p. 14)

Excel is not a database. If you’re using Excel, you’re doing it wrong.

Cory Booker was by far the highlight. This man is inspiring.

“The biggest thing we’re going to have to repent for as a generation is not the violent wars and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.”
— Cory Booker, paraphrashing Martin Luther King, Jr.

The seven principles of Privacy by Design are:

• Proactive, not Reactive; Preventative, not Remedial
• Privacy as the Default
• Privacy Embedded into Design
• Full Functionality – Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
• End-to-End Lifecycle Protection
• Visibility and Transparency
• Respect for User Privacy

Any system you build should take these in to account.

She wrote me back:

Like her colleague Diane Feinstein, she is having trouble finding competent correspondence staff.

Note the key paragraph here:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-NB) introduced the companion Senate bill, S. 1431, on July 9th, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

NB is New Brunswick, Canada. Last time I checked, Canada was a sovereign country. Bill Nelson is the senator from Florida.

The form letter I got back is simply wrong. She wrote “However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.”

The House passed “a single comprehensive bill” (HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act) on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 11:15 PM eastern time — over a week before this letter was sent.

Here’s Feinstein’s reply in full:

From: senator@feinstein.senate.gov
Subject: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Date: November 16, 2009 8:37:42 AM PST

Dear Mr. Schreiber:

I received your letter regarding healthcare reform, and I appreciate hearing your concerns about citizenship verification.

At this time, there is still no single healthcare reform proposal or plan. The Senate Finance Committee and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions have each passed separate bills on healthcare reform. There are also three bills that have been approved by separate committees in the House of Representatives. However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.

Both the Congress and President Obama have been explicit that health care reform should not expand coverage to undocumented immigrants. As such, all of the healthcare reform bills currently contain provisions to prohibit the undocumented from accessing the proposed subsidized or public benefits-which is consistent with current laws that do not allow undocumented immigrants to access federal healthcare programs such as Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Like you, I believe that- whatever the final bill- the verification measures in these bills should not have an adverse impact on U.S. citizens or legal immigrants in this country. It is my hope the Senate bills can be merged to achieve the goal of expanded, affordable coverage for Americans, and I will certainly be mindful of the points you raised in your letter as this process continues.

If you are interested in accessing additional information on my views on healthcare reform, I encourage you to visit the “In the Spotlight” link on the front page of my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov/. I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your opinions, and I invite you to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 if you have any questions.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletterSignup.Signup.

A while ago, I wrote about Stories of Health, our project to document how America’s broken health care system affects us all.

On the eve of Congress’ historic health care vote, I have some more stories to share.

Since that time, we’ve continued to travel. We spent a week in Los Angeles, where we heard from folks like Nina, whose parents had to sell their house to pay their health care bills.

Thanks to the Angela and Nancy at Health Access, we had the good fortune to meet Carla and Susan, two amazing doctors at LA County hospital. If you heard what Carla told us after the camera was turned off, you’d have been as inspired as I was to know there are such amazing doctors out there. It’s incredible what they get done with such limited resources. Carla’s a primary care physician, not a specialist, and the wait to see her is three months.

Three months.

On the way back, we stopped in Bakersfield, where we met the amazing Matthew Cruise. Matthew’s a Vietnam war veteran who went on to start a microfinance NGO, Pull Up from Poverty.

Despite having insurance, Matthew’s wife is going to go to India to have her hip replacement surgery performed. Why? Because the trip to India and the cost of surgery is still cheaper than their 20% patient responsibility.

We have had the good fortune to work with Meghan Newell, a fantastic video editor who put these together:

If you need another reason to call congress here are 65 more.

Call for Grace, who lost her husband.

Tell your sister to call for Liz’s sister, who doesn’t know how she’ll pay her emergency room bills.

Have your cousin call for Steven, whose premiums have increased 107% in 30 months.

Have your best friend for Margriet, who can’t read this diary entry because she can’t afford her Glaucoma medication.

Have your Mom call for for Toni, so her children won’t go without health insurance.

Just call.

Operation Hey Mackey! – Whole Foods, Oakland from Jamie LeJeune on Vimeo.

via Venice for Change.