Practical Data for Nonprofits: Part 3 — Why is it so hard to change something in my database?

The technologies that run key parts of most operations — Quickbooks, Salesforce, Apricot, even that custom Filemaker database from an undisclosed number of years ago — are nothing at all like Excel or Google Docs. But because each type of system sits on a computer, it’s really common for folks to expect that one what one can do, the other can do. The tension is between the ways we use consumer tools like Excel that have a single purpose and aren’t tied to anything else, and the ways that systems which are tied to anything else must be designed.