Volunteer groups offering technology information and consulting services to nonprofits have been popping up across the country. One major reason for this proliferation is that most nonprofits cannot afford the to pay for the services of high-priced technology professionals, the New York Times reports.

The Lenox Hill Neighborhood House is typical of groups that can't afford the wages of high-tech professionals. David Kirchoff, director of community service and education for Lennox House, told the New York Times he had a good technology person who left for a job paying five times as much on Wall Street.

Lenox House has tripled the number of needy residents in the Upper East Side of Manhattan it's been able to help, however, thanks to the support of technology volunteers like Carl Goldschmidt, the article reports.

Goldschmidt, a 27-year-old software engineer, set up a database for the organization to track programs and participants. After his Lenox House experience, Goldschmidt founded Voluntech.org to help other nonprofits use technology.

Through Voluntech.org, 80 volunteers have been working with at least 40 nonprofits setting up Web sites and databases, and teaching Internet courses, the article reports.

The article lists other organizations similar to Voluntech.org, including Mouse -- which helps New York City public school use technology -- and long-established CompuMentor, which offers low-cost consulting to nonprofits and schools.

"These places (nonprofits) really need us," Goldschmidt told the Times. "They can have the most caring staff in the world, but you can't get anything done today without technology."

Technology-adept volunteers have become as vital to nonprofits as corporate donations, according to Shannon Leskin, chief executive of Philanthropy News Network, which hosts the Nonprofits & Technology national series of conferences.

Nonprofit groups must educate themselves to meet the information-technology industry halfway, Leskin told the Times.

"When we first started the conferences a year ago, there was a heavy focus on the Internet. But then we had to take a step back and look at basic infrastructures, like phones and hardware and software. We had people having epiphanies when they learned they could bookmark a Web site," she says.

Vanessa Rudin, a former software analyst and current executive director of the nonprofit Project Enterprise, says her group is one that has received volunteer tech help.

Rudin's group provides loans to people who are below the poverty line but want to start businesses of their own. She told the Times that most small nonprofits need help with databases and Web design, but don't know where to begin.

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