Nonprofit Organizations Are Starting to Put Online Events to the Test

By NICOLE WALLACE

While many charities hope the Internet will eventually provide an inexpensive way to broadcast video and bring people together from different parts of the globe for lively online chats and discussions, only a few organizations have started to hold such events.

Among the approaches they are taking:

• The National Coalition for the Homeless recently used satellite-broadcast and Webcast technology to give more than 600,000 schoolchildren across the country the opportunity to tune in as homeless children shared their stories with legislators during an event on Capitol Hill.
• CARE USA is using chat technology to add an interactive element to what had been a static informational site. The international-development group eventually hopes to use the chats to better connect its donors to the organization’s work overseas, by giving them a way to talk with relief workers and CARE beneficiaries.
• Webcast technology is helping the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation make health-policy events, such as Congressional hearings and press conferences, available to policy analysts and journalists who cannot attend in person.
• Two Web sites that are dedicated to helping nonprofit organizations learn about the newest technologies — Helping.org and TechSoup — have been sponsoring week-long discussions during which charity officials pose their questions to nonprofit technology experts. The technology on which those two tech-savvy organizations have chosen to hold discussions: the humble message board, a format that got its start before the World Wide Web.

Nonprofit leaders whose organizations hold such Web events say that the technology should not be a charity’s first priority. They stress that, to make an event successful, a charity’s mission has to be the driving force behind it.

“The first question should not be, What communications techniques can you use?” says Drew Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “It should be, What’s your mission and what are you as an organization? What you do in communications flows from that.”

Web-event veterans also emphasize that online events don’t just happen by themselves, any more than offline events do.

Charities that decide to hold Web events need to make sure they can commit the money and staff time necessary to make the events run smoothly and build up an audience for them.

Vital to the success of any Web event is spreading the word.

Most organizations are using a combination of online and offline promotion techniques, including e-mail, postal mailings, announcements to related organizations, and Internet links from other Web sites.

“You can’t just dump a message board there and wait,” says Susan M. Tenby of TechSoup. “You’ve really got to bring your users in.”

Jillaine Smith, of the Benton Foundation, believes that one of the best ways for charity leaders to learn more about online events and decide whether they are right for their organizations is to become a participant in such events themselves.

“Without having to invest in the time to actually do it themselves,” she says, “they can participate, see what works and what doesn’t, and then be a little bit more informed if they do decide to apply this technology for their own work.”