Getting wired: TechFoundation plugs in nonprofits. (Cyber Frontier).

Nonprofits now can go online to learn how to use technology, thanks to a deal between TechFoundation in Cambridge, Mass., and San Jose-based SmartForce.

SmartForce is providing 10,000 "seats" for its Web-based information-technology training to TechFoundation, which is developing nonprofit oriented teaching programs from SmartForce's curriculum of more than 2,000 courses.

A subscriber, paying an administrative fee of roughly $100, will get access to a password-protected Web site featuring the teaching programs developed by TechFoundation on topics such as local area networks, Microsoft Office and tech planning and budgeting. Each program will offer a "pathway" through a series of related courses. Subscribers can pursue their Web-based studies at their own pace, taking tests online and using multimedia features such as animation and audio tracks.

The deal is the latest move by TechFoundation, launched in October, 2001 at techfoundation.org, to deliver technology, expertise and capital to help nonprofits make more productive use of hardware, software and the Web.

The foundation provides and promotes technology grants, assigns yearlong tech experts to nonprofits, offers tech workshops and runs an online marketplace that nonprofits can use to buy hardware, software and tech services at deep discounts.

In addition to adding online training, the foundation aims now to weave together the services it provides. "We are attempting to build an integrated solution that brings together hardware, software and technology services, with the human expertise and finances needed to create a sustainable approach to information technology at nonprofits," said David Altshuler, TechFoundations's executive director.

TechFoundation employs 20 and has raised $3 million in cash, mainly From individuals, plus more than $2 million in contributions of technology and tech services. In the fourth quarter of 2001, the foundation awarded its first round of grants, giving a total of $86,000 to 10 nonprofits, mainly in New England, to help them acquire and use database technology. And last spring, the foundation awarded 12 more grants totaling $200,000 to nonprofits throughout the nation.

Projects funded with that second round of grants, which the foundation expects to match this year with $300,000 worth of contributed hardware, software or services, ranged from developing a voice mail system for homeless people in Boston to building a network to help 22 battered women shelters in Nebraska support their internal operations and provide tech access to their clients.

The foundation, which is raising money for a third round of grants it plans to make this fall, also launched a free monthly newsletter last December at imakenews.com/techfoundation that features news about tech grants available from other funders.

In addition to its grant program, the foundation last November hired the first six tech experts for its Geeks for America program, and assigned them to six nonprofits in the Boston area.

The geeks, for example, are working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston to provide safe and secure Web access for youngsters, building kiosks to tie together homeless shelters throughout Massachusetts and serving as the information technology department for the Media and Technology Charter High School in Boston.

The foundation is preparing to recruit its second class of "geeks" for the Boston area, and plans to expand the program to three more cities late this year or early in 2003, providing four to 12 geeks per city.

Unlike "circuit riders," who typically provide tech assistance to a number of nonprofits, each TechFoundation "geek" is assigned to only one nonprofit to provide full-time assistance. TechFoundation contributes to the geeks' salaries, which also are supported by local foundations and the nonprofits to which they are assigned. The Boston Foundation contributed $50,000 to help launch the program.

TechFoundation also has developed a series of TechConnect workshops that feature tech training. More than 750 nonprofits in eight cities have used the workshops, which focus on topics ranging from tech staffing and budgeting to strategic planning for technology and Webbased marketing for nonprofits. TechFoundation aims to offer the workshops in at least a dozen cities in 2003.

The SmartForce Web-based training is the latest offering in the foundation's TechMarketplace, which has sold more than $200,000 in discounted products and services from seven vendors, and expects to attract several hundred active customers and sell nearly $1 million in products and services this year, Altshuler said.

The SmartForce deal aims to help meet what TechFoundation has found to be a critical need among nonprofits for tech training. In a survey last spring by TechFoundation and Black-baud, the software-maker in Charleston, S.C., nonprofit executives ranked tech planning and internal staff training as key needs.

While three out of four executives from more than 340 who responded said technology was vital to meeting their organization's goals, for example, fewer than three in 10 said they had a written technology plan.

Staff training was ranked as the top tech need, with nearly eight in 10 respondents rating it "very important" or "important." But fewer than half of respondents said their boards approve training budgets needed for ongoing training and professional development.

TechFoundation aims to integrate its SmartForce training with its TechConnect program. "With a little help, nonprofits can access the technology and expertise they need to increase their ability to help people," Altshuler said. "It's a matter of connecting the dots. TechFoundation's programs represent our best understanding of how to bring business resources to non-profits to help nonprofits help themselves and dramatically improve their technological capacity and achieve their missions."

Rockefeller online

The Rockefeller Foundation is moving to digitize its internal business processes. In early 1999, the foundation launched Rocklink, an Intranet it developed in-house that initially was limited to providing information for staff members and letting them post messages.

But with seven offices worldwide and 30 percent of its 250 staffers typically on the road, the foundation needed a portal to give all staff access to the same information all the time, no matter where they were, said Fernando Mola-Davis, the foundation's chief technology officer.

So this past March, using a portal system developed by San Francisco-based Plumtree Software, the foundation moved to a full-fledged "knowledge gateway" that features more developed functions and collaboration, Mola-Davis said.

The portal is the delivery system for a number of applications, including the foundation's contact-information system and a series of business processes it has automated using software developed by Metastorm in 5everna Park, Md.

Replacing the former process of filling out and physically submitting paper forms to request authorization for travel, for example, employees anywhere in the world now can use the portal to submit their forms, which automatically are routed to their supervisors and to the foundation's travel office.

The portal also lets employees submit time sheets and review personnel policies, handles requests to mail publications, and reviews applications to attend the foundation's conference center in Italy.

Each foundation division also can publish information and documents about its programs on its own community page.

And the foundation plans to automate expense reports and, eventually, to create an interface between Rock-link and its automated grants-management system.

While the foundation is moving steadily to move its business processes online, it also is moving deliberately, said Brian Byrd, its assistant director for communications. "One of the things we are conscious of doing is not over-whelming everybody with everything suddenly being automated," he said. "It's been a gradual process, a cultural change."

Plugging the digital gap

While a growing number of Americans use computers and the Internet, many others do not because of income, race, ethnicity, geography or disability, and federal support is critical to closing those gaps, a new report said.

Despite gains in access to technology by underprivileged people that the Department of Commerce reported in February, big gaps remain, says the new report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Foundation and the Benton Foundation, both in Washington, D.C.

Todd Cohen is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper at www.philanthropyjournal.org. He can be reached at [e-mail]