The Independent Sector hosted the Spring Research Forum in Washington, DC onMarch 15-16, focusing on the theme of "The Impact of Technology on Civil Society." Three major "themes" seemed to emerge: the perceived lack of technology in the nonprofit sector, the push to "catch up,", and the unique strength of the nonprofit sector in the information age.
Considerable discussion was devoted to the notion that the Independent Sector (the nonprofit sector) lags behind in the acquisition and implementation of technology. As the use of technology accelerates many fear that nonprofits will be unable to keep up and compete. Competition for limited resources and reluctance on the part of many funders to invest in "hardware" has left many organizations with "hand me down" rather than cutting edge equipment.
Research presented at the conference revealed that nonprofits may be more "connected" than first thought. Several surveys showed increasing availability of hardware among nonprofit organizations causing many to question why there continues to be a perception that nonprofits are not keeping up with technology. Further research tended to indicated that the real problem is not so muchlack of technology, but rather lack of willingness to use technology. One striking study revealed a relatively high level of hardware was available, access totraining was available, but willingness to take the training and employ the technology was lacking.
Following the conference an exchange with the Director of a regional office for a national nonprofit organization seemed to support this concept. She shared her pride in their excellent hardware and software, but concern about the lack of employees trained to use the technology. She explained that her staff is reluctant to attend "general" training sessions. One major complaint isthat they only want to attend training sessions that are geared toward nonprofits.
There is often resistance to change and for many of us it is hard to even understand the language of technology. But, I do wonder if this resistance is fostered by ambivalence in the nonprofit sector between the "human services" and "technological services." The nonprofit world has always represented for me the "human touch" of our society. Perhaps we all fear that somehow technology will make the "human" service agencies less human.
The second theme, the rush to catch up, grows out of the perception that the nonprofit world is "behind" in using technology. The rush to enter the technological age has led agencies to jump without really considering the appropriate role of technology for their organization. This only adds to the humanfear that we are going to become more impersonal in our dealings with our consumers and the public at large. We tend to forget that technology is only a tool. Organizations are failing to take the time to critically examine the role thattechnology can have in helping them reach their mission while maintaining "human services". Technology should not be the driving force. Indeed, mission and vision are the driving forces and values are what keep us grounded. Technology is only as powerful as its ability to serve our mission.
The final theme is related to the need to stay focused on the mission. Though we are surrounded with talk of e-commerce, it was pointed out that over 60% of the Internet is devoted to the exchange of information. The strength of the Internet is its ability to transmit information anywhere, anytime. The strength of the nonprofit sector is its history and ability to provide good, accurate information. Increasingly the public does not trust the corporate world or our political world. But there remains a high degree of trust between the public and theIndependent Sector.
In our struggle to accept the changes brought about by technology and in ourrush to "get on board," we must guard against losing the high degree of trust we have with our constituencies. We must preserve the integrity of theinformation we share and play a leading role in ensuring access to that information for all people in our civil society.
I hope you will take a few minutes to share your thoughts on this provocative topic.