“What happens if Kintera goes out of business?” Or Convio? Or any company that hosts your web site, processes your donations, manages your email subscription list or does all of that for you? It’s unthinkable. Right?

When a webmaster for a medium-sized nonprofit asked me what would happen if her vendor went out of business, I asked her how recently she’d downloaded a backup copy of her web pages and her database.

Webmaster: “Don’t they do that?”

Rick: “Of course, but what good is a backup copy at a firm that goes out of business?”

Webmaster: “Doesn’t the data legally belong to us?”

Rick: “Sure it does. But what if your provider isn’t paying their payroll tax, and Federal marshals walk in one day and seize all the servers? Within a year or two, a Federal judge would no doubt agree with you and return your data. I’ve heard of just such a thing when I worked in the direct mail business.”

“A year or two? We’d be out of business by then.”

Exactly. Know that (a) it can happen and (b) it is your job to worry about it.

So, here’s NPA’s 5-step plan for nonprofit online business continuity and peace of mind:

1. Talk to all your providers and start a plan that will give you a complete backup of all your critical data, in a common format, on a regular basis (at least monthly, but more frequently if your volume of activity is higher). This goes for web content, too.
2. If this isn’t already a feature of their service, negotiate a good price for it, set a timeline of no longer than 90 days, and hold them to it.
3. Test the data – if necessary, hire a database programmer to evaluate your backup data and make sure all the critical data is there. Be sure you can actually restore it to your “plan B” system and use it.
4. Review this plan at least annually as part of your organization’s overall risk management plan.
5. Join together with other users of your software to share information, tips, and backup plans. We’ve created a user group for Kintera users and another for Convio/GetActive users at Yahoo! Groups. We invite you to join now, and invite your colleagues to do the same. We’ll kick off activity at the end of the month.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Convio_Users
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Kintera_Users

Don’t you feel better already?

[Disclaimer: We are not predicting anything, and we don’t know anything more about the health of any of these firms than you do. In fact, Kintera is required to disclose financial information as a publicly traded company. Privately held firms have fewer such requirements, so their financial health is often less well known. Our goal is to help nonprofits understand how to safeguard their data and operations.]

April 2007