How does this help?
posted in Church, Information Technology |
While working on a printer for a representative of a large Christian organization (that shall remain nameless) the other day, I was trying to explain the benefits of using something like OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office. My reasoning was along the lines of cost, security, access, and information preservation, but I was rebuffed by his comment that they get a major discount on MS Office because they are a non-profit with a lot of people. “It only costs us around $100 or so”, he says. Here’s the thing…. they have over 120,000 people working for them. All of them have MS Office.
So, let’s see just how dedicated we are to reaching out to people…. that’s $12 MILLION dollars that could have been used for outreach, but it was an “acceptable” amount of money to just throw out of the budget - every two to three years - because it’s software that “we’ve always used”. Now add in the $40/year spent on anti-virus software, another $4.8 MILLION dollars. Oh, let’s not forget the client access licenses for the servers, plus the cost of the server operating system, plus the cost of the hardware upgrades needed for every operating system upgrade, just so 95% of the people can do their web browsing, email and documentation……. It just boggles the mind that a Christian organization that is “focused” on reaching out can just blow that much money.
Of course, everyone does it - even small Churches. It just looks worse for that organization since they have so many people. I just wonder how many more people could be reached if all Christian organizations would take a little time and come up with an IT infrastructure that showed as much financial good stewardship as they put into all other areas of the budget.
Obviously, there are some situations where money must be spent on some particular IT or software solution. But blindly paying for something is just such a waste… there are too many people to reach.
……. sometimes I feel that I’m shouting at the deaf ……..