By Todd Cohen

Richard Zorza believes in the "big-bang" theory of nonprofit technology.

A breakthrough strategy is needed, he says, to help ensure that the most productive hardware, software and technology services get into the hands of nonprofits as easily and inexpensively as possible.

When computers and the Internet are as indispensable to running a nonprofit as are phones and volunteers, the sector will be a more collaborative and effective force for doing good.

Yet today, with computers and the Web connecting people and organizations globally, and transforming the way we live and work, nonprofits are bringing up the rear, lacking the resources and know-how to get wired, plug in and go online.

And funders, despite throwing dollars at individual nonprofit tech initiatives, have failed to wrestle with the critical question of how to ensure that technology is accessible and affordable to the entire sector.

As vice president for technology at the Fund for the City of New York, Zorza uses technology to solve real-life problems by creating models that help other organizations think about how to put the Internet to work to solve their own problems.

He's created a number of such models, such as an Internet-based program to help victims of domestic violence obtain legal protection and prepare the papers they need to take to court.

And as a partner in the National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology, a growing network of nonprofit leaders, Zorza wants to take the cause of technology a giant step forward, kick-starting efforts to get the sector booted up.

The National Strategy is spearheaded by Rob Stuart and Marshall Mayer of the Rockefeller Technology Project, an arm of the Rockefeller Family Fund in New York, and Deborah Strauss of the Information Technology Resource Center in Chicago.

Supported by a handful of funders, roughly two dozen partners who make up the National Strategy have spent the last year studying how technology can be used to help the sector better fulfill its mission. The group has looked at existing projects - and supported new initiatives - that can offer lessons for the entire sector.

Above all, the partners have worked to identify the technology needs of nonprofits and the technology resources available to them, and to design a blueprint to most productively match supply and demand.

Much has been accomplished. What remains to be done are the equally important tasks of patching the pieces of the blueprint together - and sending a wake-up call to the sector and those who support it about the critical difference that a coordinated national technology strategy can mean for nonprofits and the people we serve.

"We need a 'big bang' to change fundamental assumptions about how the sector moves forward - a new way of thinking and of working together that shatters old assumptions and creates a new sense of possiblity," Zorza writes in a draft mission statement for the National Strategy.

"This 'big bang' must work to provide a radical increase in resources and effectiveness" for funders, nonprofits and groups that provide technology assistance to nonprofits.

The work of the National Strategy is not widely known. And because the strategy is both unprecedented and still evolving, even the partners (including me) can find it tough to sort out.

In a series of columns, I'll to try to explain the National Strategy. In the next column or so, I'll look at the strategy's roots, the planning process the partners have followed, the core principles they have adopted and the outcomes they hope to achieve.

Future columns will look at the main ways the National Strategy hopes to make a difference, and at model projects that show how that difference might be made - from better technology planning and training to more widely available and more affordable and useful hardware and software.

While the idea of the "National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology" can seem hard to grasp and overly ambitious, it's actually pretty straightforward and down to earth. The goal is to make sure that nonprofits have the tools they need to do the best job they can in helping to heal and repair our communities.

Next week: The National Strategy stems from the recognition that the nonprofit sector can transform itself through technology only when nonprofits and the technology industry recognize the sector for the powerful market it is.

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com