Tech Citizenship
2009
A hub for using technology for the social good
By Julie M. Donnelly, Mass High Tech Staff
Once a month, the Technobabes get together for a dinner out. There might be martinis or the occasional discussion about shoes. But the main focus of the group is to talk about using technology to do good. The group’s listserv includes 50 tech-savvy women who either work for, or consult with, nonprofit organizations.
“The executive director of a nonprofit is usually an expert at keeping opera alive, or advocating for social justice, or advancing medical research. But she isn’t usually an expert on harnessing technology to help the organization,” says Deborah Elizabeth Finn, who launched the group casually several years ago. Finn is a consultant who helps nonprofits move forward with their technology systems. She said there was a need for a women’s nonprofit tech group because “much more than half of the nonprofit workforce is women, but the IT departments are dominated by men,” Finn said.
The group shares career advice and information about new job openings. Some of the members also participate in two higher-profile co-ed nonprofit tech groups—the 501 Tech Club and the Ethos Roundtable—both of which are underwritten by the Cambridge-based Tech Foundation.
The mission of the Tech Foundation is to “deliver technology, expertise and capital to help nonprofit organizations serve humanity.” The foundation sponsors monthly networking events for the 501 Tech Club at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. The Ethos Roundtable meets beforehand, with a structured topic and speakers. The next event, in December, will spotlight a new application developed by three MIT students called “Procrasdonate.” It’s a Firefox browser plugin that allows users to monitor how much time they spend on sites such as Facebook and harness that procrastination time for the social good. Users agree to donate a certain amount per hour of site visitation, say 50 cents, and at the end of the week, the application tallies it up and donates it to a charity of the user’s choice. The user pays through an existing Amazon.com account.
Josh Shortlidge is a member of the Roundtable and plans to be at the event. Shortlidge is a technology consultant for Arlington-based Data Collaborative and says half of his clients are nonprofits. During the downturn, his clients’ budgets have been stretched thin, and sometimes IT is the first thing to go, he said, adding that many in the field are focused on trying to get nonprofits to share resources wherever they can.
“Not just technological resources, but to use technology to reach out if you have extra space that isn’t being used, or let’s say an accountant that has some down time—things like that,” he said. Shortlidge said there is a lot of duplicated effort out there among nonprofits, and they can learn from each other’s success in using technology in innovative ways to drive the mission of the organization. He said chief among those efforts is to get longstanding, traditional nonprofits up to speed on Web 2.0.
While some established nonprofits face challenges to get up to speed the ways web-based interactivity can help their causes, others have been spawned by the social media revolution. Alicia Staley, a three-time cancer survivor and a systems analyst at the quasi-government agency MassHousing, launched the Staley Foundation in 2007.
Staley says her organization would simply not be possible without help from Facebook and Twitter. “We have never sent out a mailing. We have never spent one dollar on marketing.” But the nonprofit has raised $80,000 to support the needs of cancer survivors. Staley said there is zero overhead. The organization runs virtually, with volunteers spread out geographically, including some family members in Switzerland. The Staley Foundation has no office space and doesn’t even use conference calls to get the work done. Instead, the nonprofit uses the application Basecamp to share documents without having to send them back and forth via e-mail. Her volunteers can work on projects when it’s convenient for them, no matter the time zone.
She said the most rewarding part of running the organization is that social media networks have allowed her to easily connect with cancer survivors all over the world. And Staley credits the collaborative nature of the tech community with helping get her organization off the ground.
“I randomly fell into Twitter, and the first person I met that way gave me about a hundred actionable ideas I could try.”
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