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Agency Profile: NPower NY Recently TECH NEWS sat down with Barbara Chang, Executive Director of NPower NY to discuss how her young agency – less than a year old – has been reaching out to New York City nonprofits and how it has weathered the challenges presented by the September 11 attacks. Give us a little background on NPower NY. How was the organization born? What is your mission?
We were formed to help address New York City's critical need for an affordable nonprofit technology assistance provider. The mission of NPower is to help the nonprofit sector use technology more effectively in serving their communities. Our vision is a nonprofit community that puts technology to work with a resourcefulness and effectiveness equal to (or better!) than the private sector. At NPower NY we work to actively transfer skills and knowledge, with the aim of empowering nonprofits to help themselves. What were some of the considerations in opening an office in New York City? How do you see your role in terms of other technology providers to the city's nonprofits? Prior to September 11, what was the process of introduction and outreach like? New York City was the first affiliate to come out of this national expansion program. It all started when a core group of funders and other influential individuals got together in New York City around the topic of bringing technology services to the nonprofit sector. This meeting included representatives from JP Morgan Chase, Flatiron Partners, The Robin Hood Foundation and Accenture. At the time we were concerned about the lack of adequate IT staffing in nonprofits – a challenge that ultimately became a special workforce development project within NPower NY called the Technology Service Corps. What we ultimately realized was that staffing was only one of a series of challenges that nonprofits face when it comes to technology. Nonprofits also face issues with inadequate hardware, software, networking and infrastructure. In addition, we discovered that many nonprofits do not realize the potential that technology has to really make a difference in the way they service their communities – and that we have a lot of work to do in educating nonprofits about the ways we can apply technology solutions to meet the unique needs of each organization. In addition, considerations were made regarding existing resources and the size of the nonprofit community. In the five boroughs alone, nearly 20,000 nonprofits exist – a staggering number that surpasses any other city in the country. The profile of the nonprofit community is also different from other cities – many more large nonprofits, international nonprofits and foundations – and the challenges to meet the technology needs of this broad sector are enormous. For a city this size, there are few affordable technology resources that exist. Our goal was to bring a comprehensive resource to the community that would work with existing resources, not compete with them. The continuum of services NPower offers is what led to our agreement to pursue the NPower partnership – everything considered, it seems to make a lot of sense. As far as competition, there is just too much need to believe that competition should be a major issue. We are incredibly respectful of the work that other nonprofit technology assistance providers offer in this city – the TEAMing for TECHnology project of the United Way, Media Jumpstart, the LINC project of the Welfare Law Center, TechRocks, the Fund for the City of New York and others – and we support them in any way we can. How many staff members do you have in your New York office? What are the primary departments? Do you utilize outside consultants? We currently have 12 staff at NPower NY and we are incredibly fortunate to have a strong partnership with Accenture, the leading public technology consulting company. The Accenture/NPower NY partnership channels talented Accenture staff to NPower NY for one-to-four month rotations. During these rotations, Accenture staff work exclusively with NPower NY while being exposed to the nonprofit sector and receiving a hands-on work experience in a real world setting. NPower NY benefits tremendously from the high level capabilities. Our staff and the Accenture staff benefit from exposure to both nonprofit and for-profit business issues and expertise. NPower NY is a membership organization. Membership dues are determined on a sliding fee scale and are based on the organization's budget size. Members get discounts on NPower NY's services as well as a host of other benefits we hope will help nonprofits overcome their technology challenges. Some of these other benefits include Microsoft software donations for consulting projects as well as a growing number of other product discounts, alerts on new e-mail viruses and technology tips, and free admission to our Technology Discussion Series. When we start a consulting project we first seek to understand an agency's broader "service delivery" environment. We want to understand, as best we can, the challenges and constraints that face an organization. Then, within that mission-based framework, we listen to a client's technology visions and dreams, and, often, their frustrations. We determine at what phase the agency is in, what we term, the "Technology Project Lifecycle:" the planning stage, the budgeting stage or the ready to implement stage. We offer a wide variety of consulting services, including: Training: Customized training for organizations, as well as a regular course schedule covering everything from Technology Strategy and Planning to learning Microsoft Office Applications and Online Fundraising Techniques. Technology Planning and Budgeting: Inventory and Needs assessment, and development of technology strategies. Databases: Design, development and enhancement of databases. Networks: Assistance with implementing new networking technology. Web sites: Design and production of Web sites. Scheduled Support: Regular management and maintenance of networks (available to NPower NY members only). It's almost unnecessary to say that the attack on the Word Trade Center changed everything, but it truly had a tremendous impact on your NYC start-up. When did you first realize how significant a role you could play in the recovery effort? Was it quickly apparent or is it just in retrospect that the full scope of the work is clear? How has the response been? On September 11, the staff at NPower NY was in shock, stunned, paralyzed with fear and despair. I spent a good part of September 12 glued to the TV set wondering what this tragic event meant to our city. That afternoon, I received a call from Microsoft, asking NPower NY to work with them to distribute donations of software to the business and nonprofit community. When I returned to my desk that Thursday, I called up my colleagues in the nonprofit technology assistance community and collectively we realized that we had to respond in a more comprehensive way to the community that was affected. I did not realize the significance of our role until September 18, when we called a meeting to discuss the effort and 50 representatives from technology assistance providers, foundations and technology companies showed up to help. We initially anticipated a flood of inquiries and requests for assistance. Instead we received a steady and manageable number of requests and have successfully matched technology resources, both donated and purchased, for about 75 organizations. The effort would not have been possible without the assistance of our colleagues in the technology assistance community and, even now, months later, when we call them they are swift to respond. Our work assisting nonprofits affected by the events of September 11 is ongoing. And I believe that the full scope of our work is still unfolding. We started off assisting nonprofits with basic emergency technology fixes, to get them back up and running. We are now setting up offices for some of the new entities that were established as a result of September 11 and we are very anxious to take our lessons learned and share them with the nonprofit community. Tell us about the New York Technology Recovery Project that grew out of the September 11 collaboration. There really isn't a formal name to our effort, but the NY Tech Recovery Project is as good as any I guess! In order to organize the requests and make sure we could hold ourselves accountable for the funds we expended and volunteers we deployed, we set up a committee of technology consultants who were asked to make site visits to each of the nonprofits requesting assistance and completing a "certification." Basically, the certification assured us that the nonprofit was getting what it needed and that the technology would bring it to a point where the agency could become operable again. Due to limited funds we could not use these resources to make each organization completely whole, particularly if they had high-end equipment, but we did what we could to replace what they lost. In addition, Microsoft donated a volunteer who designed an online volunteer form that fed into an Access database allowing individuals and companies with technology skills and donated equipment to complete the form on our Web site. We could then use that information to make matches with nonprofit needs. All in all the process went very smoothly and continues to be used to this day. What are the major findings of the Recovery Project's report? What suggestions have been made for improving technology response and support in the future? NPower NY is working on a comprehensive report that outlines our lessons learned from working with affected nonprofits during the past few months. Basically we learned that nonprofits need to be more disciplined when it comes to data backup, that their infrastructure is not well prepared for power interruptions, that they need to take greater advantage of mobile technologies, that the power of the Internet is just beginning to be tapped with regard to using more advanced technologies such as voice-over Internet Protocol (VOIP), application service providers, and remote access. Take, for example, VOIP as an alternative to the traditional telephone service that was so sporadic after September 11. While little can be done when a key communications carrier like Verizon is interrupted, certain technologies can present alternatives to traditional telephone communication. VOIP refers to the transmission of voice as packets over Internet Protocol (IP) networks and can be integrated into traditional Internet connectivity to provide additional voice services. We hope to translate the lessons learned in the September 11 aftermath into a set of recommendations for the nonprofit community and even perhaps to be able to offer new services to nonprofits as a result of our learning. Has NPower's role or its agency goals been altered by the events of September 11? While we were engaged in the activities surrounding the recovery after September 11, we continued simultaneously to provide our clients with the services and offerings they have come to expect from us. What our work has taught us is that there is an important need for nonprofits to not only work to achieve their technology goals, but also how important it is to participate in the broader community and combine resources to help each other in a time of need. For more information, visit NPower NY on the Web at http://www.npowerny.org. You can also e-mail Barbara Chang at Barbara@NPowerNY.org.
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Training.... Per Scholas: Bridging the Technology Gap (July, 2005) Educational Opportunity Centers: Technology Training for Today's Jobs (June, 2003) Agency Profile: NPower NY (February, 2002) TECH-U-NET: Providing Technology Guidance to Nonprofits (November, 2000) Educational Opportunity Centers: Adult Workforce Preparation and Academic Development (July, 2000) Low Key, Low-Tech and Low-Budget Distance Learning and Training, Part II (December, 1999) Distance Learning and Training Can be Low-Key, Low-Tech, and Low-Budget (October, 1999) Staff Computer Training: Maximizing Return On Investment (February, 1999) FAQs and Beyond: Free Eduation and Training for Nonprofits, Part II (December, 1998) Fill Your Tech Jobs - Free - and Can We Train Your Displaced Worker Clients? (October, 1998) Learning the FAQs: Free Education and Training for Nonprofits (October, 1998) Other Articles of Interest.... Free Net and Web Resources for Your Organizations IT Professionals (July, 2000) Nonprofit Provides Access to Affordable Technology (May, 2000) Networking for the Small Nonprofit: The Asian American Federation of New York (December, 1999) Black Data Processing Associates Offers Training, Performs Community Service(October, 1999) Community Voice Mail Comes to New York (August, 1999) School-Based Technology Volunteer Program Helps the Disadvantaged. . . (August, 1999) BrookynX - A Guide to Getting Your Communities on the Net (October, 1998) |
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