By Shane Thacker

Whether for reasons of economy, flexibility or the power of working together, the idealized wall separating nonprofits and for-profits has had a lot of cracks lately.

Partnerships between nonprofits and businesses are becoming increasingly common, with each giving and gaining value specific to their worlds. Sometimes the most difficult projects can require the strengths of both sectors.

One organization familiar with that concept is Women in Technology International, or WITI, which has just started a new Internet portal targeted at women who work in scientific and high-tech fields.

The idea of a company starting a Web portal is not new, but WITI's portal concept is slightly different. The site is being produced through a partnership between WITI and the nonprofit WITI Foundation.

WITI is a business that produces conferences on women and technology. The business grew out of -- and now supports -- a foundation that produces content for the conferences and provides diversity programs for employers.

The mission of the WITI Foundation is to help women advance in technology fields. Its goals include increasing the number of female executives at high-tech companies, making women more technologically literate and promoting science and technology as viable careers for young women.

The foundation was started in 1989 with the purpose of creating a way for women in technology to get together and communicate.

With the boom in the Internet, starting portal sites became increasingly attractive. The WITI Foundation began as an e-mail network, joining women in a web of communication. The idea was to use the portal to address women's issues and deliver tech news they could use.

However, says WITI CEO Karan Ericksson, simply developing a good portal site can cost over $1 million -- before launching it. Covering those costs was not a task the WITI Foundation could have faced alone.

"Nonprofits have found it difficult to both get the message out and sustain themselves," Ericksson says. "By aligning with a for-profit, they can get the message much further."

Ericksson says any good portal site needs traffic -- and traffic is generated only through compelling content.

By giving women a place to network and find information important to them, the WITI Foundation fulfills its mission and provides the content for its commercial arm.

"Nonprofits must understand who their partners are going to be," Ericksson says.

Not knowing your partner can lead to conflict if the respective goals of the partners clash down the road, she says. For WITI, the question was both easy to answer, because WITI shares goals with its foundation -- and complex, because WITI has sponsorship agreements with other corporations.

Despite that caution, the growth of the Internet may make partnerships a much more attractive option in the future, says Ericksson.

"The Internet is all about cross-linking," she says.

She says the Internet is creating a need for nonprofits, grant writers and companies to work together, allowing each participant to fill a useful role, while encouraging each to communicate and plan closely with the others.

The result of the partnership involving WITI and the WITI Foundation is a portal that features such items as news feeds on a variety of topics; WITI4Hire, a posting board for job ads and resumes that also offers career advice; and WITI Connections, which allows other organizations to put links and event schedules on the Internet.

In the future, the site will be more interactive through chat and forums, as well as reviews, advice and continuing education, Ericksson says.

Shane Thacker can be reached at
shanethack@mindspring.com