Last Friday we hosted a debate on Open APIs among some of the main vendors providing CRM services to nonprofits. Our participants included:

Mark Bolgiano from the Council on Foundations (moderator)

For profit vendors:

Tom Krackeler, GetActive;
Steve Wright, Salesforce;
David Lawson, Kintera;
Dave Crooke, Convio; and
Shaun Sullivan, Blackbaud

Nonprofit vendor - Nick Ballenger, Democracy in Action

Open Source developer - Zack Rosen, Chapter Three and Drupal

Nonprofit Organization - Peter Campbell, Goodwill Industries, San Francisco

The debate was spirited and remarkably forthright. The podcast of the conversation is available here, the backroom chat (edited) here.

And here is what you, the listeners and community, are saying.

Gigi writes from the trenches and her day-to-day experience exporting data from Salesforce to GetActive is telling:

"I've said this before, I'll say it again. Our mission is our fight against colorectal cancer. Our mission is not the technology....So vendors here's what it's all about to me when it comes to APIs...don't talk to me about how you're going to change and rock my world. It's not that I don't have the resources...it's that I can't afford to start over. I can't afford to worry about data integration and re-training users to adopt a new method. It's too traumatic. They're too busy saving the world from colon cancer to learn new tricks unless I can trick them into thinking they're not learning new tricks. Tell me how your product is going to fit in the world I'm already living in...then we'll talk. If you have to have an API to do it. So be it." (Judi Sohn at the Colorectal Cancer Coalition)

Michelle writes as a consultant and open source developer:

"APIs are here to stay. In fact, they are the future. The standards and technology have matured in such a way as to provide the potential for real richness in data integration, both inside organizations, between organizations, and with bigger, broader entities such as Google. The more that nonprofits understand them as useful to them, and demand them from vendors that provide (or build) software, the better, as far as I'm concerned." (Michelle Murrain at Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology)

We'll be summarizing more of what you write and say. In addition the next NTEN newsletter will focus on Open APIs and why they matter to nonprofits, so if you want to have a say, please send us your 100 to 150 word summary or rant, or ping us with your blog entry.

Data silos and breaking them within nonprofit operations and practices and communications is a huge point of pain, and it is not one that will go away any time soon. The issues are complex and varied, including security issues - real or imagined, business models of the vendors, and nonprofit realities and expertise in taking advantage of open APIs. We are looking forward to hearing from you and extracting the key points, as well as continuing the conversation both online and face to face.

For an example of a nonprofit putting open APIs to use, check out what Follow the Money is up to.