Since I got back from Nepal last winter, I've been looking for a "business model" that communicates what we do, that sets out HOW Worlds Touch will work with clients...or should we call them partners...? Where will we get funding and how we will position WT with funders, potential donors, etc.
When I got back from Nepal last December, all I knew was that working with technology in the developing world was my passion, something that brought together my love of travel, my fascination with different cultures and how we can bridge language and cultural barriers, my latent 60s penchant for leftie political attitudes and technology--databases and web sites, in particular.
I have discovered a whole huge network all over the world: a movement to localize technology, so that it is freed from its dependence on English, a movement to free technology from Microsoft and its corporate ilk, in the Free/Libre Open Source Software community, a modus operandi, eCircuit Riding--where a technical consultant rides a circuit of five to ten nonprofits, none of which could support a tech consultant alone. I have found discussion lists where international eRiders help each other out with arcane software and hardware questions, where the political issues of the day are debated. It was from my techie discussion lists that I realized the severity of Hurricane Katrina...and also grew to appreciate how many techie people gave unselfishly of their time and skill to help out.
I'm interested in how the technical consulting organizations who help nonprofits outside the "rich" countries actually keep their heads above water. Here, we expect 85 per cent of our funding to come from individuals, our friends and neighbors, people who hear about what we do and want to help. I'm wondering whether international organizations deal with the same rule of thumb.
My partner Gilda says if they are based in the states they have to become self-sufficient, while if they are "local," that is, Water Aid Nepal, for instance, they can and do live on international funders like Water Aid UK or Save the Children Norway (a big funder of the Disabilities Project in Bhaktapur).
One of the people who started and maintains the international eRiders web site, http://www.eriders.net, is named Theresa Crawford. She's a technical consultant to the Advocacy Project.
It turns out that their exec director, Iain Guest, is in Nepal right now, or at least that's what it looks like.
http://www.advocacynet.org/
This is an outfit that is involved in a cause...a particular cause with lots of international buddies, supporters, cause members... and when you look closely at what they offer their international "partners," it's technology. They do web sites. They provide eRiding support. They do exactly what we are doing-- support people who want to change the world with tools that make it easier, more effective and can connect the local orgs with the international orgs/people with resources to help them accomplish their mission.
Our mission is exactly the same: provide technology assistance that is geared to LOCAL needs, LOCAL requests. They have simply chosen a particular issue to work on. We have not. Most outfits that do nonprofit technology like to work with groups, with communities of nonprofits (people doing water projects, for instance, or disability orgs-- two of our possibilities in Nepal), but the nature of the work is such that we don't always have that luxury. NetCorps here in Greensboro (whose Vista volunteer is part of my nonprofit tech circle) works with whichever nonprofits are willing to pay them, and some who can't pay.
We're looking for social justice and the alleviation of poverty, but that's a pretty wide swath. Can we afford to narrow it, the way the Advocacy Project has? Can we afford NOT to narrow it, since obviously THEY are able to communicate how they want to change the world more easily than we have so far been able to...?
Read the Nepal diary of the executive director, "an adjunct professor at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where he teaches courses in human rights in international affairs, and human rights and conflict."
On my Worlds Touch field voyage, I plan to meet all sorts of locals providing the kinds of services we provide, as well as the organizations they are working with, other orgs that could use technical services. I think I'll come back from that
trip with a much clarified image of what Worlds Touch can and should be doing in the World. If nothing else, I'll know what the "competition" is doing, accomplishing, and how. Always a key in any business plan.
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