Technology and resilience

Generically, technology is the manner in which an organization transforms input resources (such as labor, equipment, facilities, and supplies) into outputs (e.g. clients served) and outcomes (e.g., health improved). While in recent times, technology has been largely associated with computers and digital communications, technology-related resilience strategy should be thought of more broadly as the alternative means and methods through which a nonprofit organization can achieve its mission. Successful technology-based resilience strategies work because they offer nonprofit organizations some combination of complementarity, redundancy, and innovation to their current ways of addressing their missions and achieving their outcomes. In recent crises such as the 2020-2021 pandemic, nonprofits have been enormously resourceful in employing new technologies to deliver their services online or to reorient their services to accommodate crisis-related constraints on consumer and staff mobility. Nonprofits have also employed technology to expand their markets, providing new opportunities to both adjust their operations in the current crisis and to build their resilience for future challenges.