By Todd Cohen

After years in the wilderness, a handful of pioneers who provided tech assistance to nonprofits were ready for a change. They had worked independently of one another for the most part. But in the fall of 1997, frustrated about inadequate support, they agreed to join forces.

The matchmaker was Microsoft.

The company long had contributed software to nonprofits and funded their tech initiatives. But it had become clear to Jane Meseck Yeager, the software maker's program manager for community affairs, that nonprofits typically knew little about technology or how to get help in putting it to the most effective and efficient use.

So the former public policy researcher and database management consultant undertook a study of tech assistance for nonprofits and their use of technology.

"We needed a good understanding of what technology assistance was and of what the communication needs of nonprofits were," she says.

She convened focus groups of nonprofits from the Seattle area and of technology assistance providers from throughout the U.S. One of those groups included veteran tech assistance providers who had been talking among themselves about the need to better coordinate their work.

The idea, says Rob Stuart, director of the Rockefeller Technology Project and a member of that group, was "how to stimulate the availability of quality service to the nonprofit community."

Based on her research, Meseck Yeager found two widespread needs -- strengthening the ability of tech assistance providers to work with nonprofits, and helping providers better coordinate their efforts nationally to ensure that tech help would be available to meet the particular needs of nonprofits in individual communities. A national strategy was needed, in short, to address both national and local needs.

"We certainly learned through our experience that the solution will be different at each level," she says.

At the same time, the group that included Stuart of the Rockefeller Technology Project continued to talk about how to pull together the people and organizations dedicated to helping nonprofits on tech issues.

That group also concluded that a national strategy was needed - and submitted a grant proposal to Microsoft just as Meseck Yeager was completing her research.

"Different people's lightbulbs went on," she says. "It was good timing."

Based on the tech group's proposal, Microsoft agreed to fund the development of a "national strategy for nonprofit technology" -- but only if other funders would participate.

"It won't work without a community of funders," Meseck Yeager says.

The planning process took place in 1998, thanks to $25,000 each from Microsoft, the Surdna Foundation in New York and the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Va.; $35,000 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Los Altos, Calif., and $15,000 from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation in Washington, D.C. Microsoft, Packard, Meyer and other funders contributed additional money to support local initiatives related to the strategy.

Meseck Yeager says the National Strategy is a vehicle that allows Microsoft to combine its philanthropic and business goals.

"Effective corporate contributions programs meld their business philosophy with their giving philosophy," she says. "We have an interest in helping people obtain technology so they can be more effective in what they do. We see the National Strategy as helping organizations pursue their missions.

"These tools are needed. Let us help provide them."

While no one owns the National Strategy, it has been spearheaded by Stuart and Marshall Mayer, formerly of Desktop Assistance in Helena, Mont., and now of the Rockefeller Technology Project, and Deborah Strauss of the Information Technology Resource Center in Chicago.

Over the past year, roughly two dozen National Strategy partners (including me) have worked to create a set of initiatives to make tech resources as accessible and affordable as possible to nonprofits. (A list of the partners is at the National Strategy's Web site at www.nsnt.org/.)

Those initiatives, which I'll look at in future columns, include model organizations to provide tech assistance; a Web site to identify tech resources, link nonprofits to them and connect citizens to nonprofits; an online tool nonprofits can use to assess their tech needs and find resources to meet them; an online clearinghouse to distribute donated hardware and software; and a virtual foundation to support tech initiatives.

The National Strategy partners are on the verge of launching those initiatives.

Combined, they are designed to help individual nonprofits and the sector integrate their use of technology into the way the sector works.

Microsoft has helped open a giant window for the nonprofit world. Through that window, thanks to the support of a handful of foundations and the hard work of a growing group of nonprofit leaders, the sector now has within its sights the vision of a seamless network of technology resources that are easy to find, obtain and use.

This Friday: The ticket to joining the National Strategy consists of agreeing to four core principles - the fair exchange of tech resources; fair compensation for tech know-how; making technology second-nature to nonprofit work; and creating tech tools that no one owns and anyone can use and adapt easily.

Previous columns in the series on the National Strategy:
Doing good by plugging in (3/5/99)
Lending a hand to an invisible market (3/12/99)

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com