By Todd Cohen

Seattle

Barbara Dingfield, director of community affairs for Microsoft Corp., is retiring July 31 after four-and-a-half years with the software giant.

Her departure leaves open one of the top jobs in corporate philanthropy in the U.S.

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, Microsoft contributed $25 million in cash and $75 million in software.

Dingfield oversees a staff of 12 people, which manages the company's community affairs activities, including corporate and employee giving and volunteer programs.

Microsoft has begun a search for a successor and is looking for an experienced manager from the world of corporate giving who can provide leadership in developing new programs. The company hopes to fill the job by this fall.

Dingfield, an economist who formerly was an executive with Wright Runstad & Co., a regional commercial real estate development firm in Seattle, says Microsoft increasingly will help support nonprofits' tech use by backing community-based organizations that provide tech support to local nonprofits.

Microsoft, for example, has been a key player in the creation of NPower, a new nonprofit in Seattle that provides tech support.

In the fiscal year that began July 1, Dingfield says, Microsoft plans to support similar efforts in at least two other communities.

"The challenge is to really figure out how to provide technology consulting services and training on a local basis," she says. "How can you really create community-based services that help nonprofits with technology?"

One of the communities in which Microsoft is likely to contribute such support is Washington, D.C., where efforts are underway to create Technology Works, a collaborative effort to provide tech support to local nonprofits.

Dingfield says that ensuring the delivery of technology to nonprofits will require hard work on the part of donors and nonprofits alike.

The staff and boards of nonprofits, she says, need to "recognize the benefits that technology can bring to the organization."

Unlike businesses, she says, nonprofits are driven by their mission and can find it tough to decide to invest scarce dollars in technology.

Nonprofits also need to recognize the benefits that technology can have for their productivity and their ability to communicate with larger networks of people, she says. And nonprofits must do a better job of educating funders about the benefits of technology.

For their part, she says, funders must overcome their lack of knowledge about technology. Donors, she says, often don't use technology themselves, and can be uncertain about the impact it can have on nonprofits.

"There are two challenges here," she says. "One is for nonprofits to communicate effectively what the technology will do to serve their mission. The second is for the donors to educate themselves on what technology is all about."

Technology companies also face the challenge of developing software and other products designed for the nonprofit market, Dingfield says.

"We as software developers are increasingly addressing that marketplace," she says. She's also learned, she says, that effective corporate philanthropy involves more than simply writing a check.

"Particularly in the area of technology and nonprofits," she says, "the corporate sector can be effective, not just in making cash grants, but also in providing our know-how -- be it training, staff and providing our products -- and teaching them how to use them effectively.

"In the nonprofit sector, which is not up to speed, we in the corporate sector can really help by providing some of our good thinking."

Dingfield has been active in civic and volunteer work in Seattle for more than two decades. She is president of the boards of the United Way of King County and NPower, and serves on the boards of the Seattle Housing Resource Group, the Pacific Northwest Grantmakers Forum and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, her alma mater.

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com