January 26, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
CompuMentor, a technology organization in San Francisco, has started a project to help nonprofit organizations take advantage of a new generation of low-cost Web tools.
The centerpiece of the project — TechSoup NetSquared — is a Web site that features profiles of charities using Web 2.0 technologies in their work.
Marnie Webb, a CompuMentor vice president, describes Web 2.0 technologies as free or low-cost Internet tools that individuals and charities can build on or use for their own purposes. Many times, says Ms. Webb, the tools become more valuable as more people use them: “It’s social in a way that capitalizes on frequent use.”
As an example, she points to the photo-sharing site Flickr.
“If I’m the only person putting my pictures up, it’s not that social, but it might be a great way to show photos of my new baby to my mom,” says Ms. Webb.
But if lots of people are sharing photographs, she says, site users can start to look at collections of photographs that share a theme. Being able to gain access to a wide variety of photographs that show homelessness or poverty, for example, could help a social-services group find images that strike a chord for a lot of people.
GhostCycle, a Seattle advocacy group and one of the organizations profiled on the site, is collecting information from local residents about cycling accidents and using Google Maps to show where the accidents took place.
Using a tool like Google Maps, which opens a part of its back end to allow users like GhostCycle to show data visually, has several benefits for nonprofit organizations, says Ms. Webb. Chief among them, she says: The group doesn’t have to buy expensive mapping software.
“It also means that, because it’s Google and because it’s open and a lot of people are using it, it’s probably pretty easy for me to find a volunteer or a contractor” to help with the project, says Ms. Webb. “That might be less true with a very expensive, proprietary, inside-the-firewall piece of software that might require more training.”
The project is also asking nonprofit organizations about the barriers that stand in the way of their adopting new Web technology. In the future, NetSquared plans to provide advice, how-to articles, and even pieces of software code to help charities overcome those obstacles.
CompuMentor will hold a conference in San Francisco May 8-9 to bring nonprofit organizations together to discuss these emerging technologies and to share advice and success stories. The organization is currently holding monthly gatherings, Net Tuesdays, in San Francisco to discuss such issues.
To get there: Go to http://www.netsquared.org.
