Charting your NGO's Tech Journey: A Strategy Game
Goodlearning foundation , 15cr+ org, runs residential direct implementation of their education program in 5 centres, for this an app called 'residentlearning' tracks vocational education, health, parent engagement, amongst other things, is launched with the help of partner A. 3 years later, another app called 'scaleprogram' was launched, which is used by govt schools in the state adopting the 'Goodlearning' vocational education curriculum; here education outcomes are tracked. This is launched and run by Partner B. For context, the organisation does not have technology capacity and has high reliance on partners and their technology decisions. ‘Residentlearning’ app took approximately 6 months by vendor A to develop and deployed over a year. Scaling deep model is done through the ‘resident learning program as an experimental testbed to prove evidence of impact while the ‘scaleprogram’ is a scale up program that involves govt and partners.
Challenge 1: Vendor Exit
The following year Partner A shares that they will shut down their business in the next 6 months. You must decide how to continue running 'ResidentLearning' while managing scale needs.
Challenge 2A: Partner B Struggles
Partner B struggles with their evolving needs, technology development across platforms, differentiated asks from the two teams on areas such as building apps for dashboards to visualize insights, adding forms for new initiatives etc; Partner B proposes to increase costs to make ends meet.
Challenge 2B: New Partner Issues
The new partner is struggling with integration and compliance issues.
Challenge 2C: Internal Team Struggles
The internal team faces skill gaps and resource constraints.
Discussion Areas: Risks/Pros and Cons Funding and lower cost tech designs Prioritization of upskilling of internal staff but capacity constraints Use case driven design to reduce feature set needs and simplify tech design Platforms vs custom tech design
Challenge 3: Funding Cuts
FCRA funds are reduced by 50%. Your team must rethink the tech strategy for sustainability.
This is an open discussion. Name assumptions, identify risks, propose strategic adjustments, and prepare discussion notes.