By Todd Cohen

Thanks to the explosion of information technology and the Internet, the nonprofit sector is on the verge of remaking itself as the critical player in healing and repairing our communities.

First, though, the sector must learn to harness and develop the unprecedented technology tools now within its grasp.

The National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology is an emerging network of leaders dedicated to helping ensure that nonprofits have quick, easy and inexpensive access to the most productive technology tools and services.

Getting a handle on the National Strategy, however, can be tough. A few analogies might help shed light on what it is and how it will work.

First, consider the nonprofit sector. The U.S. has a million or so charitable nonprofits. They account for 8 percent of the economy and one in 10 jobs. We call it a sector and it's powerful. But it's also largely invisible and disjointed. No one owns it or speaks for it.

Next, consider the Internet. It's an unseen, global web of electronic circuitry linking millions of individuals and organizations. By its very nature, it gives anyone with a computer, modem and phone line the ability to communicate easily and inexpensively with anyone else on the system - enormous power and influence they otherwise might not have.

Now, imagine the National Strategy as a big store or marketplace - a kind of online co-op to which all nonprofits could belong and at which we could find the tech tools, skills, know-how, ideas and partners we needed to help us do our jobs better.

Like the nonprofit sector, this co-op wouldn't be a single entity, and no one would own it. And like the Internet, the co-op would function as a circulatory system through which nonprofits could exchange tech resources and entrepreneurial expertise.

The co-op needs a name that's easy to remember, and National Strategy is too vague. So let's call it the "Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network," or N-TEN.

By joining N-TEN, nonprofits could work together to integrate computers, the Web and entrepreneurial thinking into the way we work, communicate and serve our communities.

What's more, the network would be a powerful vehicle to engage nonprofits, business, government and citizens in America's civic life.

That's the vision of the partners (including me) who have worked on a voluntary basis for the past year to develop the National Strategy.

The partners believe the price of admission to N-TEN should consist simply of agreeing to four core principles - the fair exchange of tech resources; fair compensation for tech know-how; making technology second-nature to the way nonprofits operate; and creating tech tools that no one owns and that anyone can obtain, use and adapt easily.

The principles are interconnected:

• Because knowledge is power, the sector as a whole will become stronger by exchanging tech tools, skills and knowledge fairly.
• Tech know-how, in turn, will flourish in an environment in which people who have it are compensated fairly and integrated into the life of the nonprofit organizations they serve.
• Nonprofits will make the most productive and innovative use of technology only when it becomes integrated into the way we think, work and communicate - a concept known as "technology transparency." That will require continual learning and evaluation about the way we use technology and its impact.
• Technology will transform the nonprofit sector when tech tools, skills and knowledge are inexpensive and easy to obtain, use, adapt and recreate. That will require that those who develop tech tools and resources make them - to the extent possible -- "open systems" available to anyone, rather than proprietary knowledge controlled by individual entities.