By Todd Cohen

In more than three years as a Ford Foundation program officer responsible for strengthening the nonprofit sector and philanthropy worldwide, Michael Seltzer recognized that information technology held a major key to the future health of civic society.

So last October, when he was named acting chair of the master's program in nonprofit management at the New School University in New York, he looked for a way to help nonprofit leaders harness the power of computers and the Internet to advance their mission.

Seltzer hopes this fall to launch a graduate initiative in nonprofit technology. That initiative - to include research, academic and executive training and public education - is part of a growing movement to integrate computers and the Internet into the work of nonprofits.

For the past year, a group of leaders known as the National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology has tried to find ways to map, support and coordinate existing tech efforts while nurturing new initiatives.

The National Strategy, which consists of two dozen partners (including me), supports new projects that provide tech assistance to nonprofits and also serve as models that any community can use in deciding how to create tech resources to meet local needs.

In addition to the New School initiative, two other new projects illustrate the National Strategy's goals - NPower, which provides tech help to Seattle-area nonprofits, and Technology Works, an emerging tech assistance network to serve nonprofits in Washington.

All three projects aim not only to help nonprofits use hardware and software to be more effective, but also to help them find ways to put technology to work to better serve people.

And by serving as models that any community can adopt or adapt easily and inexpensively, each project is more likely to appeal to funders.

NPower, for example, grew out of research by Microsoft, which found a widespread need for tech support -for nonprofits and also for groups that provide tech help to nonprofits.

Microsoft teamed up with other Seattle-area funders, including the Medina Foundation, the Boeing Corp., the Seattle Foundation, and US Bank, to create NPower, which opened its doors March 1.

While the new group will provide tech education and resources for local nonprofits, a priority is to serve as a model for any community that wants to create a similar organization.

"An underlying philosophy of everything we do here is, 'How can we do it so if somebody wants to replicate it, they can,'" says Joan Fanning, NPower's executive director.

The business plan that Fanning wrote for NPower, for example, was designed to be a model for anyone interested in creating a local tech assistance provider in their community - and copies are available for free.

And with $150,000 over three years from Boeing, NPower is creating tools to measure the effectiveness of its work and the impact of technology on nonprofits' work. Those evaluation tools will be available free to any tech assistance provider or nonprofit to use in measuring their own work.

Across the continent, Technology Works is being planned, thanks to funding from Microsoft, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Los Altos, Calif., and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Trellis Fund and Fannie Mae Foundation, all in Washington. A final plan is expected in June.

Like NPower, Technology Works aims to create a model other communities can turn to in deciding how to serve local nonprofits.

Unlike the NPower, which provides a broad range of services under one roof, Technology Works may be an informal network that pulls together existing tech resources and helps create new ones.

The network could include:

• A stable of "circuit riders" - missionaries who deliver hands-on tech consulting and training to nonprofits.
• A Web site with information on local tech assistance providers.
• A "foundation service bureau" to train and educate foundation leaders about using technology themselves, and about nonprofits' tech needs.
• Tech training for nonprofit executive directors and managers.
• Convening groups that provide tech assistance and sell hardware and software.
• Finding and training volunteers to provide tech help to nonprofits.

Jennifer Keller Jackson, a Rockefeller Technology Project consultant advising Technology Works, says the National Strategy inspired the project and is helping to guide its formation.

She's looking, for example, to tech assistance providers in other cities - including NPower in Seattle, the Information Technology Resource Center in Chicago and the Fund for the City of New York - for ideas about how to structure Technology Works.

The National Strategy also supports the nonprofit tech initiative at the Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at the New School University. The new initiative initially would certify circuit riders, then add a tech concentration in its master's program and finally offer a master's degree in nonprofit technology.

Seltzer hopes the university can be the National Strategy's academic partner. "A movement is afoot now throughout the country," he says, "but no university is serving as an anchor in a comprehensive fashion to advance the use of new information technologies in the nonprofit sector."

Technology offers unprecedented tools that nonprofits can use to do a better job. The National Strategy aims to build a network of tech resources, akin to a giant toolbox, that any nonprofit or community can use.

Next Wednesday: The National Strategy aims to create a Web portal site that would identify the full range of tech resources, link nonprofits to them and connect citizens with nonprofits.

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)
Microsoft opens window on nonprofit technology (3/17/99)
Building an online tech co-op for nonprofits (3/19/99)
Coordinating tech assistance for nonprofits (3/24/99)

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com