Charities Offered Help With Millennium Bug

May 20, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute

A Seattle non-profit group called NPower, which provides technology assistance to other charities, is organizing a “Y2K Day of Service,” during which more than 200 volunteers will help 140 local non-profit groups test their computers and software for possible year-2000 problems.

The year-2000 problem arises because much of the computer hardware and software still in use today identifies years by the last two digits only. Those older systems may malfunction when faced with the year 2000.

The volunteers will be trained to use software to test for Y2K problems and to generate a report for each non-profit group that lists which of its machines and software programs cannot handle the year change, as well as possible solutions for the problems.

One of the software programs will also allow NPower to create a data base of all the problems identified at the participating charities, which the group will use to design free seminars and other follow-up projects to help non-profit groups solve the problems.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact NPower, The Nickerson Marina Building, 1080 West Ewing Place, Suite 300, Seattle 98119; (206) 286-8880; http://www.npower.org.

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.