Budgeting and allocating resources

Because many social technology tools are free, and some people commit a lot of personal time creating content, it may be tempting to think that there really are free lunches in the online world. However, all systems require maintenance and facilitation. There will be costs, and these either have to be paid for from new revenues, or from other budgets.

A few years ago it might have been normal to expect to spend anything from 20,000 to 100,000 or even more on the development of a new online platform, with a specialist agency and software vendors. This has changed for several reasons. First, there are a lot more free or low-cost tools available that enable people to construct sites for themselves. Secondly, organisations need to be in many places online, not just in their own ‘home’ site. Thirdly, projects and programmes change rapidly, and it doesn’t make sense to invest large sums in sites that may not be appropriate in a couple of years.

The leading social media agencies like Headshift now advise non-profit clients to look at the lower-cost options for sites first. The Landscape Institute wanted to add a social network to its main site, for its world-wide professional membership. Instead of commissioning an agency to do the work, Paul Lincoln, the director of policy and communications, used the free commercial system Ning to create Talking Landscape. Your ability to budget for use of technology depends very much on how much you know about what’s out there, and also how exact your requirements are. (See the section on Building the technology for more on this.)

Although external software and technical development costs may be much lower, you will still need to budget for the people costs (see Building the team). The difficulty here is knowing how large or small the task of engaging and supporting your community will be. Fail to engage your audiences and you could have technical and community staff sitting idle; but a big success could overwhelm your small team. Budget initially for staff time to grow the community proactively – contacting people, posting content, testing and refining the software – and then create scenarios for different levels of success and growth. Set trigger points, such as hiring a part-time community manager when you reach 1000 users, hiring a technology steward when you get above five tech support calls a day, etc. Budget for unpredictability.

It’s hard to know how much money you really need, so it may actually be better to begin from the opposite direction. Innovation projects are always risky (and all new technology projects are innovation projects); so instead of working out how much you need to make it happen, a smarter approach is to ask what value the project has to your business. How much is it worth spending? How much can you afford to lose if it doesn’t work? Start from there and you will be able to find some way to introduce technology within the budget you have available. If you spend a large amount of money there is a lot of associated pressure to 'make it count,' so by spending less you buy yourself the freedom to experiment. Tailor the budget to fit the business needs and not the other way around.

Keep your powder dry

All too often, technology projects are seen as just that: a mission to build or implement a tool and then send it out into the world. The biggest mistake you can make when structuring your project is to spend all your money on the technology and leave nothing in reserve for promoting it and attracting users, refining it based on user feedback, and looking after the community you have created. And if you know exactly where all of your time and money is allocated, you have no way to respond to unexpected turns of events, good or bad.

1. Budget several times more for people than hardware and software.
2. Set aside at least a third of your budget for design, copy and user testing, and a third for marketing activity and community engagement.

Structure your project in phases, and review carefully after each phase to see where you can spend your resources with most impact. You will quickly find that things don’t work out as you expected, and you’ll need money and time to respond, support what’s working and minimise any problems. Try to run a short pilot phase first, or a public prototype, and then build on that. Focus on the quick wins and low-hanging fruit at first, and keep shifting the lower priority or higher difficulty tasks into later phases. Give yourself realistic short-term targets, set new objectives for each phase, allocate a few more resources, and move forward step by step.