The most creative nonprofits kept their eyes open, looking for inspiration in how to apply technology. — That's the paragraph that most impressed me from a report I just read. The 18 page report, dated July 2007, makes extremely interesting reading.

The University of San Francisco interviewed 28 nonprofit organisations in California, then came up with a report: Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits (220Kb PDF).

This research examines how small nonprofits use technology and what it means for a nonprofit to use technology successfully.

All the nonprofits in this study had less than $1 million in annual revenues, in most cases considerably under this amount. The missions of the organizations varied widely – some were involved with the rights of immigrant communities, some with farm workers and some with people with disabilities.

[Thanks to : New Report: Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits | TechSoup Blog for the link.]

Of course, in this blog we aim to provide some of that inspiration.

In composing this post I wanted to quote extensively from the report, but I'll refrain and limit myself to the following few snippets.

While the staff of the smallest of the nonprofits we talked to might still primarily operate out of their homes, all had access to computers, printers, e-mail and the internet. … technology advances that as recently as 10 years ago were seen as luxuries are now standard.

The most successful nonprofits did their research. Technology was a part of their strategic plan. They knew it was necessary and they budgeted time to discover the best solution.

The simple lesson of this research is that nonprofits can no longer survive using staff members’ personal email and internet connections, old computers that are not networked, and rudimentary phone systems. Technology requires continual investment if nonprofits are to be most effective in accomplishing their missions. All the nonprofits we surveyed, including those who struggled with technology, were doing interesting and important work. None of them could do it without the assistance of technology.

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