By Todd Cohen

It's all about supply and demand.

The nonprofit sector, accounting for 8 percent of the U.S. economy, represents a vast, overlooked market - particularly in its need for technology assistance.

For years, a small and largely invisible constellation of individuals and organizations worked - for the most part independently of one another - to meet that need. From a handful of groups dedicated to helping other nonprofits use technology to thousands of consultants, this tech assistance movement - much like the Internet - was loosely organized and fragmented.

But also like the Internet, years of incremental and sporadic growth eventually triggered a big leap forward, thanks to the dawning recognition that meeting nonprofits' tech needs is smart business.

In November 1997, Microsoft invited a group of nonprofit leaders to talk about how to deliver better tech services to nonprofits.

That conversation coincided with conversations that those nonprofit tech veterans were having with one another about the need to coordinate existing tech resources, create new ones and integrate all of them.

One month after the Microsoft meeting, over coffee at a Starbucks cafe in Washington, D.C., half-a-dozen of those leaders agreed to put their ideas into action.

What has emerged over the past year as a result of the ideas discussed at Microsoft and Starbucks is the National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology, a growing network of nonprofit leaders who aim to make technology indispensable, accessible and affordable to nonprofits.

Funded by Microsoft and a handful of foundations, the National Strategy is not a corporate entity; no one owns or controls it. It's also not a finished product, but a work in progress being created voluntarily by individuals working together to produce a blueprint to help nonprofits better use technology.

To find common ground, the National Strategy partners (including me) have agreed on four core principles: fair exchange of tech resources; fair compensation for tech know-how; making technology second-nature to nonprofit work; and creating tech tools others can use and adapt easily.

By agreeing to those principles, anyone can become part of an emerging "Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network," or N-TEN. (The principles will be the focus of a future column.) The new network will be based on the idea that nonprofits should share technology tools, skills and know-how, and help one another help themselves make the most productive use of computers and the Internet.

Underlying the National Strategy is the belief that technology will transform the nonprofit sector and help it fulfill its mission of making our communities better places to live and work.

Yet despite technology's potential, nonprofits lag far behind the business sector in their use of technology.

Nonprofits also have failed to recognize the enormous influence they can exercise over the tech industry so it will design products tailored to meet the specific needs of nonprofits. No single individual or organization, of course, speaks for or controls the nonprofit community, which consists of fiercely independent yet increasingly interdependent organizations.

Today, in the wake of government retrenchment by the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, nonprofits face the enormous task of fixing the big problems in our communities with fewer resources.

Nonprofits represent an important and powerful market with untapped demand for technology products and services. The National Strategy aims to help create a network that will enable the nonprofit market not only to give voice to its technology needs but also to help ensure that those needs are met through tools and services that are inexpensive, widely available and easy to use.

In the theory of capitalism, the so-called "invisible hand of the marketplace" shapes the economy. The National Strategy aims to help the invisible sector gain the upper hand in shaping its own future - and in the process help sustain a civil information society.

Next Wednesday: Who are the National Strategy's partners and funders, and what are their goals?

(Note: Starting next week, this series on the National Strategy will run Wednesdays and Fridays.)

Previous columns in the series on the National Strategy:
Doing good by plugging in (3/5/99)

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com