http://funredes.org/mistica

MISTICA: TIC y ONG

From: Maria Saenz ([email protected])
Date: Fri Oct 13 2000 - 12:00:57 AST

Hola, les mando copia de un mensaje interesante en una
lista de discusion en Estados Unidos sobre temas
importantes para el "tercer sector". Maria

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [CHARITYTALK] Is the growth of technology
a help or ahinderence to you andyour organization?
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 10:02:30 -0400
From: Jane Garthson <[email protected]>

> From: "I CAN! America, LLC" <[email protected]>
> Do you see any other trends that have not yet blossomed into huge
> problems, opportunities or markets? For the next few weeks, let's talk
> about what the group on the CharityChannel forums feel about the
> future.

The trend I see is a democratization within Boards.
Formerly, if there was
an issue to be discussed between meetings,
conversations would be one-on-one
with the chair or a committee chair, who would then
distill what they had
heard into a report to the Board. Now such discussions
are many-to-many via
e-mail, and it's easier to copy other key players and
involve them.

> Is the growth of technology a help or a hindrance to you and your
> organization? In what ways? What would you like to see developed for
> NPOs that we do not have right now?

Small organizations without monies for printing and
mailing can benefit
enormously from the Internet, but many are still
without sufficiently
competent staff or volunteers to develop and maintain a
good web site (and
certainly without the funds to out-source). It's a new
form of
have/have-not gap.

What I find needed is a better standard for e-mail
attachments, whatever the
software or platform that created them was, so that
dispersed board members,
virtual volunteers and others can exchange information
without constant
problems of who can open what! For example, as a
national Treasurer, I send
out Excel worksheets of in-year financial updates, but
not all the board
members have a spreadsheet program, so I am still
incurring the time and
cost of long distance faxes to those people. Acrobat
readers are free but
there is a cost for software that creates Acrobat
files.

Jane Garthson

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