In-person, not online: CharityChannel launching conferences. (Cyber Frontier).

CharityChannel, a 10-year-old free online community with nearly 50,000 subscribers to 13 e-newsletters and more than 150 discussion groups, is moving into the conference market. It's also searching for a new chief operating officer (COO).

The idea, said CEO Stephen C. Nil, is to build on CharityChannel's online content through an annual conference and regional conferences, and then to use the online community to continue the conference content and networking throughout the year.

"We say we're an online community of nonprofit professionals," Null said. "We're recognizing that we're a conference that never sleeps. We're performing all the functions on a 24/7 basis."

CharityChannel depends on a network of more than 100 editors, contributors to its newsletters and other volunteers. L-Soft International in Landover, Md., donates its USTSERV email product to CharityChannel.

Building on its year-round, round-the-clock operation, Nil said, CharityChannel has scheduled its first international conference for March 911,2003 in Palm Springs, Calif. People attending and leading sessions at the conference, and at yet to be announced regional conferences, will be able to stay in touch online throughout the year, Null said.

CharityChannel's search for a new COO is in the wake of the resignation of Michael Wyland, who hopes to launch a weekly radio show targeting both a mass-market audience of donors and volunteers, as well as a narrower audience of nonprofit professionals.

His departure after two years as paid COO is not related to the group's expansion into the conference market, he and Nill said.

"I have nothing but respect for them," said Wyland, who added he wanted more time to develop his radio project and write books about nonprofits.

"Being COO means you're focusing on operations rather than content," he said. "I found myself increasingly managing an organization rather than practicing my profession."

Wyland also has been a partner at Sumption & Wyland, a Sioux Falls, S.D., consultant firm that focuses on strategic planning and organizational development for nonprofits and government agencies for 12 years. He said that he was talking to two radio groups about producing a half-hour show focused on nonprofits both from business and consumer perspectives.

Nill, a partner at Nill & Johnston, a law firm in Orange County, Calif., said he and Wyland both hope to work together in the future. "Michael's interest is turning outward to the public world," he said.

Nil, a former development officer whose law practice focuses on tax-exempt organizations and charitable giving, formed CharityChannel after having created online discussion groups for a fund-development team he had recruited to raise money for a failing California nonprofit hospital system.

With a paid staff of four, including the COO, CharityChannel depends on advertising in its online forums and electronic newsletters for revenue, which is plowed back into operations and new products, said Nill, who works for free. "Revenue has always exceeded expenses," he said.

Tech firms merge

Consolidation continues among tech firms targeting nonprofits with two new mergers. Capitol Advantage, an Internet-directory and email-advocacy firm in Fairfax, Va., has merged with VirtualSprockets, an Internet firm in Poolesville, Md.

And Isoph, a firm in Chapel Hill, N.C., that develops distance-learning technology and content, has merged with SmarterOrg, a Washington, D.C., firm that helps nonprofits develop online training programs.

"There are really strong forces in software-based products and services that lead toward these kinds of mergers because people need to develop bigger market share," said Andrew Blau, principal of Flanerie Works, a New York City consulting firm that helps nonprofits and foundations develop technology strategies.

"Because development is often very capital intensive, the resources of larger firms are often very helpful in developing new products," he said. "And customers' buying decisions are often shaped by whoever has the biggest market share."

Capitol Advantage, with 900 customers and 43 employees, produces online directories and Web-based social-activism tools that nonprofits, member-based associations and other groups can use to wage email-lobbying drives.

VirtualSprockets, with 40 customers and five employees, produces tools for managing Web content and using email for marketing, fundraising and advocacy.

"Combining our technologies is really going to give a nonprofit a one-stop shop for a variety of tools," said Barkley Kern, COO of Capitol Advantage and former business manager for C-SPAN, which was the first customer of the firm's online directory product. "We've already got the ability to integrate our products."

The merger grew out of a request by the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, D.C.--one of several clients the two firms share--that their products be integrated, said Tom Yeatts, who was president and CEO of VirtualSprockets and is now chief technology officer for Capitol Advantage.

The two firms aim through the merger to integrate their products and create "one platform that is soup-to-nuts for the nonprofit industry and advocacy groups," said Yeatts, a former financial analyst in the division of research and statistics for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Both firms were profitable and are independently funded, said Kern and Yeatts. "We're tied to our customers, not our capitalists," Yeatts said.

The merged firm expects to build its revenue to $2 million next year from $500,000 this year and expand its staff to 20 from 12, said Jeff Cobb, its founder and CEO.

Cobb formed the firm in 2001 after serving as senior vice president for Quisic--now EDT Learning in Phoenix and previously known as University Access--a Los Angeles firm that created online curriculum for graduate business schools.

Isoph's clients range from the Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it's biggest account, to the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management in New York City, while SmarterOrg's clients include the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York City and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in San Francisco and San Jose.

SmarterOrg, for example, has helped CompassPoint develop an online budgeting course, and is helping Planned Parenthood develop an online initiative to train public-affairs officers at its 126 local affiliates.

Isoph is working with the Drucker Foundation to create online versions of classroom workshops it offers on collaboration. And as part of a major initiative by the Gates Foundation to distribute hardware and software to U.S. libraries, Isoph is designing a user interface for a public-access computing portal for libraries, as well as the technology and content for the portal's learning center that will register users and launch and track their courses.

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