The Potential of Telecommunications
for Non Profit Organizations
by Mary Gardiner Jones and Nancy Chasen

Over the past decade, public interest and non profit organizations have watched while business organizations and others with more substantial resrouces have computerized their operations and used the new telecommunications technologies to expedite their work and enhance their communications and non profit capabilities.

The time has come for non profit organizations to explore these possibilities their own operations. Computers are no longer strangers to non profit organizations. A recent survey by the Consumer Interest Research Institute (CIRI) found that many non profit organizations have computers. They are used principally for information processing - word processing, organizing membership lists and cataloging potential funding sources. Most groups have touch tone telephone service, the other essential element for telecommunicating. Some organizations have already begun to use their computers for information exchange and retrieval. Be adding a modem and communicatons software to their personal computers, these organizations can connect their computers to data bases and to electronic mail services, electronic bulletin boards and electronic conferencing and publishing facilities. Cable and telephone technologies may offer them similar opportunities.

There may not be many non profit organizations today which have the equipment or the need to perform all of the electronic telecommunications services. Yet any organization with a small microcomputer or communicating word processor can acquire some communications capabilities for a reasonable price. In many cases, national offices have adequate equipment but few of their members, directors, branches or fellow organizations with whom they would want to communicate electronically have corresponding equipment. Yet some of the telecommunications services can benefit an organizations headquarters even if it is the only one with the equipment and the capability.

It seems assured that as home computers proliferate, ordinary lay people will be able to take more and more advantage of the new technologies. The costs are steadily declining and interest and familiarity with computers is just as steadily increasing. Already, these services are becoming available to individual members of the public either through libraries, government agency public offices or neighborhood shopping centers or through the use of cable videotex and telephone technologies. Non profit organizations should be able to anticipate using these telecommunicating services in the not too distant future to facilitate communications with their individual constituents or clients.


Electronic Conferencing
=======================

Case: Public interest groups want to put together a coalition of a broad spectrum of organizations in order to support or oppose a proposed law or regulation. The coalition will try to adopt a unified policy statement or strategy. The task requires in-depth discussion over a period of time with organizations and individuals in different parts of the country. Scheduling a convenient time or times to meet is difficult and travel is expensive and time consuming.

Case: You want to prepare a background paper on the implications of recent changes in consumer access to credit. You are anxious to review comments on the data and policy implications from the public interest community, the business community and academia. The broadest possible interchange of opinion is important. You need a way to "meet" with minimum time and expense involved.

Case: A consumer leader has made a particularly provocative speech and you are interested in the reactions of other consumer groups. The subject is one that bears discussion over some period of time and in some depth.

Electronic conferencing represents a new form of highly interactive communications for widely dispersed groups. It differs from electronic mail which is one-way communication directed to particular known addressees. Bulletin boards are not really suitable for in-depth exchange of ideas. Moreover, posted messages and responses appear randomly and are not always associated together as is the case with conferencing.

Information retrieval and electronic publishing are more typically one-way communications with limited interactivity and essentially controlled by the publisher/data base owner.

The high interactivity of electronic conferencing means that all the participants of the conference can not only communicate back and forth with the conference sponsor. Of greater importance, they can also communicate with each other. Thus electronic conferencing to some is the only - and most important - truely interactive telecommunications service. It has the potential of making national headquarters and chapters more equal since all can have access to the same data base. A spokes-of-the-wheel organization, with national headquarters typically controlling access to information, is replaced by a more truly circular organizational structure with chapters talking to each other as much as with national. Thus an organization desiring to forgo some hierarchical control over chapters may experience in return enhanced initiative and imaginative ideas from its members. Electronic conferencing may also be a valuable tool for organizations wishing to communicate with their peers with no single organization or individual on the netowrk in a hierarchical "top" role.

Electronic conferencing is a many to many form of communication. It is best suited for the kind of in-depth discussions and debates that are difficult to undertake by telephone or through the mail. Electronic conferences can be used to share ideas, to discuss priorities, to plan conferences or other events, to share research, to coordinate and manage projects and generally to explore mutual interests with board members, chapter directors or other people who are widely dispersed geographically. This forum allows organizations to tap ideas of many diverse groups in discussions that can continue for days, weeks or months facilitating the exchange of imaginative ideas, thoughtful research and discussion or novel strategizing.

Conferencing goes a long way toward solving the problem of how people of similar interest, separated by great distances and perhaps unknown to one another, can meet and discuss their mutual interests. Conferencing lets you get together with people who choose to enter a particular conference because they are interested in the subject matter. It gives you the opportunity to ask a diverse group of people, either known or unknown, the same question, and then be able to discuss the various reactions of the conferees. Time zones, phone schedules and physical distance are not considerations. People can sign in and out of the discussion at their convenience and without disturbing any of the other participants.

What Are Your Organization's Telecommunications Needs?
======================================================

In order for non profits to know whether they can benefit from these new telecommunications opportunities, answering the following questions may help you to focus on what your needs really are:

1. Do you want to exchange information, texts, or other
materials with other organizations or individuals?

2. Do you want to access issue oriented and other information in
existing data bases that would facilitate your
organizations's participation in policy debates?

3. Do you want to ask questions of the public with the hope of
a broad response?

4. Do you have events or issues or products (pamphlets, tapes,
newsletters, etc.) for which you want to create publicity?

5. Would it be valuable for you to exchange information,
opinions, and ideas quickly with your members, field organizers
or other definted groups of people on a given topic?

6. Do you want to have a dialogue or continuing discussion on a
given topic with your members, field staff or other group or
promote such a dialogue?

7. Do you want to develop new revenue sources for your existing
information products and services?

Getting Started
===============

Any organization interested in creating some type of telecommunications capability for itself should first develop a very careful list of applications for which it believes these servcies would be helpful to it in its work. Once it has worked out such a list, it should explore the possibility of obtaining corporate or private foundation support. The beauty of these telecommunications services is that their costs are separable (e.g. equipment and software, data base construction or network creation). Thus a start can be made with a relatively modest investment which can be expanded as experience is gained and benefits can be demonstrated.

Moreover, use of some of these services can be revenue producing. This makes funding requests in this area especially attractive to foundations and should facilitate an organization's ability to find outside funding sources. A local community trust foundation, for example, might be intersted in making a modest grant to a non profit organization in its community to enable them to explore, perhaps on a pilot basis, the value of some aspect of these services in their work. There are many foundations interested in the application of telecommunications to improve the effectiveness with which non profits can deliver their services.

Once potential funding sources have been identified, it should not be too difficult to find out whether the particular foundation would be intersted in funding the cost of the equipment or the actual creation of a data base or the setting up and operation of a pilot feasibility study to evaluate which of the telecommunications services would be most useful to the organization and what level of usage they could expect.

In short, once an organization determines how these services could meet their needs, the means to achieve their goals may not be wholly outside their reach.

Telecommunications Resources with Nonprofit Experience
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Apple Bytes Alternative Media Center
New York University
725 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Ms. Catherine Dunford
The Community Memory Project
2617 San Pablo Ave
Berkeley, CA 94702
(415) 841-1114

Mr. Christopher Fisher
Bulletin Board Directory of North America
PO Box 4150
Vero Beach, FL 32964

Metasystems Design Group, Inc.
2000 North 15th Street, Suite 103
Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 243-6622

New Era Technologies, Inc.
1252 Columbia Rd. N.W.
Washington, DC 20009

PeaceNet Project of the Disarmament Resource
Center in San Francisco
3228 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Sam Simon
IBI Bulletin Board on Telecommunications Policy
1660 L. Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005
(703) 734-1796 (BB)

Telecommunications Cooperative Network
370 Lexington Ave.
New York, NY 10017

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Author's note: This material is excerpted from a booklet, "The
Potential of Telecommunications for Non Profit Organizations,"
published by the Consumer Interest Research Institute, 1631
Suter's Lane N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007 (202) 333-6035.