Charities Put the Web to Work

Non-profit groups broaden their view of what the Internet can do for them

As their initial fascination with the Internet has faded, non-profit groups are changing the way they use its vast capabilities. What many charities first saw as simply a way to showcase their efforts — much like an electronic billboard — has now become an integral part of how many carry out their day-to-day work.

Almost daily, charities are pulling down static, text-only Web sites and replacing them with sites that incorporate interactive features, such as searchable data bases and on-line forums for people to share their views. Many charities are also experimenting with multimedia technologies such as on-line video and audio.

Some examples:

* The Leukemia Society of America last month broadcast live audio on line from a press conference it held in conjunction with the march in Washington to increase federal spending on cancer research. The broadcast attracted more than 350 listeners during the event — and has drawn many more since.

* Youth Service America, which works to promote volunteerism among kids, has put more than 5,000 volunteer opportunities into a data base on its Web site. People can search the items using their zip codes. About 70,000 people visit the site each month.

* Mothers Against Drunk Driving has set up four on-line “chat rooms” to allow people whose lives have been affected by drunk driving to hold electronic conversations with one another. Charity officials say the on-line discussions help them engage people who live in areas too sparsely populated to sustain a local MADD chapter.

* The National Wildlife Federation in June started an internal, employees-only Web site to allow its 400 workers around the country to tap into information about the organization’s programs and internal operations. Staff members can use the Web site to find out everything from a fellow employee’s e-mail address to the budget of a particular project.

*The California Community Foundation now posts all of its publications on line, which enables it to save money. Every time someone downloads a copy of the group’s annual report from its Web site — which has happened more than 1,000 times so far — the foundation saves about $4 in printing and shipping costs.

“People are now looking at their Web sites and saying, ‘How can we use this to save money or to streamline delivery of services, versus just throwing money at this Web site?’ ” says Lisa Silverberg, national training director for HandsNet, which provides technology help to non-profit groups.

As some charities redouble their on-line efforts, others continue to make their Internet debuts. The number of registered Internet addresses that end in .org — the designation usually used by non-profit groups — has jumped from an estimated 500 in 1992 to more than 114,000 as of June, according to Network Solutions, the company in charge of registrations.

The .org addresses account for about 5 per cent of the total, while about 90 per cent end in .com to signify commercial users. Addresses with the designation .edu, usually used by universities and other educational non-profit groups, account for less than 1 per cent overall. (Some charities do use .com or .edu in their addresses, however, so it is hard to tell exactly how many non-profit organizations have sites.)

Of course, some charities continue to resist the allure of the Internet, whether for philosophical reasons, a lack of funds, or a lingering fear of technology. Many once-promising sites, put up by non-profit groups in a rush to get on line, litter the Internet like cyberspace ruins, woefully out of date and almost never visited.

Still, as more and more organizations begin to recognize the potential of the Internet to accomplish their goals, many are deciding to invest additional time and money in their Web sites.

Until last year, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (http://www.glsen.org), in New York, which works to eliminate homophobia in schools nationwide, viewed its site as more of a frill than a necessity. The site was updated less than once a month, consisted mainly of text-only pages, and was run entirely by a volunteer.

But after a survey of its members found that 5 per cent — or about 300 people — said that they had first heard about the group through the Internet, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network decided it was time to take greater control of its on-line image.

“What that told us is that people are viewing our Web site, it’s having an impact, and the revenue from our Web site could justify investing more money in it,” says John Spear, the charity’s national field director.

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network decided to get help from Mediapolis, a New York Web-design company, to upgrade its site. Mediapolis donated many of its services, charging the charity just $5,000 for work that would normally cost about $10,000; it also donates software that it normally charges customers $50,000 a year to use.

The non-profit group, which has a budget of $1.7-million, now spends about $300 each month to maintain the site. About 400 visitors per day use the site, which gets updated at least five times each week. Features include an electronic “report card” that grades the largest school districts on how they deal with homosexual issues. An on-line bookstore allows users to purchase publications like Telling Tales Out of School: Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals Revisit Their School Days.

The site also offers an on-line registration form for the group’s national conference, which has been used by about half of the people who have signed up for the event.

Sometimes, perceived competition from groups that offer similar services has driven charities to invest more resources in their Web sites.

The California Community Foundation overhauled its Web site (http://www.calfund.org) in December. Allan Parachini, the foundation’s vice-president for communications, says that one motivation for upgrading the site was to keep pace with for-profit entities, such as Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group, that provide similar philanthropic services to donors.

“If we’re not competitive in Internet sophistication with those entities, we won’t be competitive for those funds,” says Mr. Parachini. “And we are determined to be competitive for those funds.”

The foundation spent $6,400 to transform its site from what was essentially a “bulletin board,” according to Mr. Parachini, to one that features on-line video and the group’s informational tax returns, among other things. The community foundation has budgeted about $27,000 this year to maintain it.

Many charities that collect huge amounts of information are finding that Web sites offer a good way to make it available to the public. Studies and collections that previously gathered dust in charity file cabinets and museum storage rooms can now be searched easily by people on line.

The Environmental Defense Fund (http://www.edf.org) has developed a “Chemical Scorecard” based on 150 different government pollution data bases. By typing in a state, county, or zip code, users can call up copies of government reports filed by nearby companies. They can also learn what chemicals are found in their area, as well as click on a button to fax a letter to a company. In the first three months that the scorecard was on line, about 250,000 people visited the site.

“The scorecard gets this pollution information out well beyond the experts and environmental activists and into the hands of the simply curious, the same people who look up weather reports on line,” says David Roe, an environmental lawyer who helps oversee the Web site.

Youth Service America (http://www.servenet.org), which also allows visitors to search for information using their zip codes, plans to expand its volunteer-opportunities data base to cover every zip code by 2000. One of the ways the organization hopes to raise visibility of its site is by persuading corporations and non-profit groups to provide a link to the data base. Timberland, the boot company, was the first corporation to sign up.

Many museums have built data bases with photos of their artwork. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (http://www.thinker.org) has 75,000 pieces of artwork in its on-line data base — about 70 per cent of its collection. A few months ago the museum added a “zoom” function that allows users to enlarge any portion of an image so that they can see minute details of the artwork. Previously, even people who visited the museum in person had access to only about 2,200 paintings and other items at any one time.

“We’re committed to putting 100 per cent of our collection on line,” says Dakin Hart, assistant to the group’s director. “We’re just guardians of the art, and our primary responsibility is to make it available to the public, who owns it, in as meaningful a way as we can.”

Information posted on Web sites can also help save lives. The International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (http://www.iapac.org), revamped its site in July, in part to provide doctors around the world with the latest information about AIDS treatments. Through its new Web site, the association was able to create an on-line publication to keep doctors informed about treatment alternatives after Abbott Laboratories announced that it would no longer produce Norvir, a popular anti-viral medication, in capsule form because of production problems.

One of the main ways charities are beefing up their Web sites is by adding interactive features that help get people involved in the groups’ causes. Many sites now allow people to contribute their own messages or stories for others around the world to see.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving gives visitors to its Web site (http://www.madd.org) the ability to create and view on-line tributes to victims of drunk-driving accidents. People who have been injured in car wrecks, or relatives of those who have been killed, can post pictures and short written memorials on the site.

The combination of interactive Web pages and data bases works well not only for getting information to the outside world, but also for getting information to employees within an organization.

By clicking on the “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” section of their organization’s internal Web site, employees of the National Wildlife Federation (http://www.nwf.org) can get a description of the project, its objectives, the name of the project manager and other employees involved, the percentage of time each employee spends on the project, and a list of the foundations that contribute to it.

Then, because the information is stored in data-base software, a user can click on an employee name in the project file and link to a staff directory data base that gives that employee’s phone number and e-mail address. By clicking on a foundation’s name, a user is linked to the foundation data base, which provides more details about each grant maker.

“What we find is that if staff update these data bases in their own departments, we’re not having to create anything new to update the information for the rest of the organization,” says Mary Cortina, special assistant to the president for information technologies. “For the first time we’re having an opportunity to look across the organization in real time and keep track of all the things that we’re working on.”

Ms. Cortina says an internal Web site works particularly well for groups like hers that are “very regionalized and decentralized.”

She adds, “This just empowers employees to know what’s going on, even if they’re not sitting in the main hub of the headquarters.”

As more and more computer users gain the capability to use audio and video on line, some non-profit groups are incorporating such multimedia tools into their Web sites.

Charity officials say that on-line broadcasting has the potential to broaden their audiences by providing people in faraway locations with an easy and inexpensive way to see and hear events.

To broadcast the audio of a press conference on line, the Leukemia Society of America (http://www.leukemia.org) hired Broadcast.com, a Dallas company that specializes in such events. The press conference was held to promote a symposium on immunotherapy that took place in conjunction with “The March: Coming Together to Conquer Cancer.” About 150,000 people came to Washington last month as part of the rally to seek more federal dollars for cancer research.

More than 350 people listened in during the press conference, which featured three cancer specialists. The audio of the event will remain available indefinitely on the Broadcast.com Web site, which gets about 500,000 visitors each day.

“It’s basically opening up your local press conference to the entire world,” says Julie Farin, public-relations director for the Leukemia Society.

Ms. Silverberg, of HandsNet, cautions that the average computer user still struggles to use many on-line video and audio features. She also notes that for smaller non-profit groups, video can be prohibitively expensive to put on line.

“People need to think wisely about things that put up barriers to the people you are trying to reach,” she says.

Despite all the technological advances that enable charities to carry out their work, many people believe that the most promising applications of the Internet have yet to be discovered.

Andy Goodman, a consultant in Los Angeles who has worked with environmental groups, compares the Internet to the early days of the record player.

When Thomas Edison first invented the phonograph, Mr. Goodman notes, his list of possible uses for it started with reading to the blind, followed closely by recording speeches. It was not until near the bottom of the list that he got to listening to music.

“We’ve invented this new technology called the Internet and everybody thinks they know how to use it,” Mr. Goodman says, “but most people are still reading to the blind.”