By Todd Cohen

Nonprofits can find it tough to figure out which hardware and software they need - and how to use it.

Just getting technology to work can seem like a major breakthrough. But without tools to measure their effectiveness and impact on services, computers and the Internet can be wasted resources.

Joan Fanning, executive director of NPower, a new Seattle nonprofit that provides tech assistance to local nonprofits, believes nonprofits need to find ways to measure the use and benefits of technology.

"While there is good anecdotal evidence indicating that technology can have significant positive impact on a nonprofit organization's ability to achieve its mission, currently there is no measurable data supporting this assumption," she says.

Fanning is a partner in the National Strategy for Nonprofit Technology, a growing group of leaders (including me) who want to help nonprofits integrate technology into their operations.

She has developed a prototype for online software that the National Strategy plans to develop into a series of tools that any nonprofit could use to assess its use of technology, compare it to what other nonprofits are doing and evaluate how it affects services. The prototype can be found on the Web at <http://www.sustain.org/nsnt/>.

The National Strategy is an emerging marketplace for tech resources and know-how, tentatively called the "Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network," or N-TEN. It would seek funding to create the tools, which would take up to three years to develop and would be available free on a cooperative Web site that N-TEN wants to help create.

The Web site would be a nonprofit "portal" or online entry point for anyone wanting resources about and links to the nonprofit world.

The tools would include:

• A "benchmarking" tool. It would identify the best uses of technology by nonprofits in the areas of operations, strategic planning and internal and external communications. It also would show the best ways to continue paying for technology and to train staff to use it. And the tool would provide links to resources to help nonprofits put technology to the best use.

• Standardized "survey-and-assessment" tools. They would help nonprofits track and measure their use of technology for planning and budgeting, agency operations and internal and external communications. Nonprofits also could use the tools to find out how their use of technology compared to that of groups putting it to the best use.

• Tools to analyze organizational data. They would help nonprofits measure the impact of technology on their services and compare themselves to other nonprofits.

All the tools would be designed to work together. A nonprofit, for example, could use the "survey-and-assessment" tools to find out how well it was using technology.

It then could send organizational data used in the survey-and-assessment tool to the National Strategy Web site - with the nonprofit's privacy protected.

Next, the nonprofit could ask the Web site to produce reports comparing its use of technology to the best uses, or simply to give a comparison to similar organizations.

Fanning says such a system would help individual nonprofits take stock of their own tech use. The system also would help establish and continually refine standards for the best uses of technology, and would track change in how the sector uses technology.

Surveys have been conducted in various regions of the U.S. about the use of technology by local nonprofits, she says. But because those surveys are not standardized, it's tough to compare them. As a result, uniform standards are not available to help guide nonprofits or groups that provide them with tech assistance.

With the tools and National Strategy Web portal site in place, Fanning says, a group that provides tech assistance to local nonprofits could go to the Web site and download a blank survey form. It then could use the survey to measure tech use in its community. The survey results, in turn, could be compared to results from similar communities. And the tech assistance provider could send data about tech use in its community back to the Web site.

"With that information," she says, "we start to refine best practices and start to get a sense of baseline information and track change over time in technology use. If people are sending data back up, then we're adding to the collective data base."

Trying to fathom technology can seem complicated. The measurement tools that the National Strategy wants to help create are designed to make it easier for nonprofits to find the most effective and productive way to use computers and the Internet.

Next Wednesday: The National Strategy hopes to help create an online marketplace to coordinate the exchange of donated hardware and software - and help ensure that nonprofits use it productively.

Previous columns in the series on the National Strategy:
Doing good by plugging in (3/5/99)
Lending a hand to an invisible market (3/12/99)
Microsoft opens window on nonprofit technology (3/17/99)
Building an online tech co-op for nonprofits (3/19/99)
Coordinating tech assistance for nonprofits (3/24/99)
Forging tech tools any nonprofit can use (3/26/99)
An online marketplace for nonprofits (3/31/99)

Todd Cohen can be reached at
tcohen@mindspring.com