nonprofit advocacy use of computer telecommunications
Computer telecommunications as used by nonprofit advocacy organizations
Paul E. Hyland
Management Science 290
January 5, 1993
Prof. Darleen Fisher
Case Studies: Computer Telecommunications
As Used by Non-Profit Advocacy Organizations
(*File 1 -- Body of Paper)
(File 2 -- Appendicies)
Computer and telecommunication technologies have recently been
advancing and becoming intertwined at an ever increasing rate.
Organizations of varying sizes and resources have taken different
approaches in exploiting these new technologies to enhance their
effectiveness. Non-profit organizations in particular are often
more hesitant to move into the use of new information technologies
in their operations. Either there is little money to spend on
technology or on new projects, or nobody on staff has the
knowledge, the time, or the vision to see what can be done and act
on it.
This study will first give an overview of the new
technological environment. Then it will examine three non-profit
public interest organizations, each with a different size and
structure. It will examine how they have integrated such
technologies into their structures and how easily they have adapted
to the changes that such tools have wrought in the way they conduct
business. Finally, it briefly treats a few other notable efforts.
Part I - Computer Telecommunications Tools and Resources
The technologies that I will describe can be roughly divided
between online systems and networks, although there is significant
overlap between the two. Here I will briefly describe the
capabilities offered by these resources; Appendix A contains more
detailed definitions of terms and technologies.
Online systems are usually single computers on which a user
would have an account providing access to a variety of services,
such as information files, discussion groups, real-time
conversations with other users, or electronic mail (e-mail).
Examples of systems useful to activists include Econet/Peacenet,
Compuserve, CapAccess, or local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs).
Many of these systems are also connected to networks, and provide
the access point to network services described below.
Networks are interconnections of computers, from a small Local
Area Network (LAN) in an office to the global Internet, with its
millions of users. Other networks that are of interest include
BITNET, which is a network of university mainframe (large multi-
user) computers, and Fidonet, which is a global network of BBS's
that exchange messages via dial-up lines between 12 and 1 AM, PST.
Usenet is a special case. It behaves very much like a global
online system, but is really a network of systems exchanging news
and discussion in over 1000 conferences, called newsgroups.
Part II - Case Studies
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
In 1981, a group of computer scientists at Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC) established an electronic mailing list to
discuss the threat of nuclear war. Eventually, the participants in
this discussion group decided to form an organization to connect
their work as computer professionals to their social concerns;
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) was founded
in 1982. It continues to be propelled by the concerns of computer
scientists at Xerox PARC, Stanford, MIT, and other elite
institutions in the field of computer science, but has broadened
its base to include anyone who is interested in exploring the
impact of computer technology on society and in trying to steer
this effect in a responsible direction.
CPSR is a membership organization, with about 3000 members.
It is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and has offices in
Washington, DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are four full-
time and four part-time staff members; at the same time, it is a
grassroots organization with an elected leadership and board of
directors that takes an active role in its operation. The
geographical distribution of the staff, and even more so of the
board, make electronic media such as telephones and e-mail critical
for its efficient operation.
CPSR has long utilized electronic mail to streamline internal
communication among its leadership, staff, and other activists
close to the organization. From the initial anti-nuclear mailing
list, the number of lists used for internal communication has
swelled to approximately fifty, maintained manually as aliases on
a computer at Stanford University. The main e-mail address for
CPSR is cpsr@csli.stanford.edu, which is used for information
requests, changes of address, and the like; there are other lists
for the board of directors, board committees, chapters, and working
groups that deal with specific issues. Much of the business of the
organization is conducted via these channels, and to operate
effectively in the leadership of CPSR, one essentially needs to
have a computer account with Internet e-mail access.
It would be logical for an organization such as CPSR, with its
distinguished background in computing, to take full advantage of
computer networking for its communication needs. (After all, much
network technology that is in widespread use today, like Ethernet
local area networking, traces its origin to Xerox PARC.) However,
CPSR did not immediately embrace such technology for all of its
communications. In the early 1980's, computer telecommunications
were readily available only to people at institutions performing
advanced computer science research, often for the military; this
included major universities and other research laboratories. CPSR
did not want to exclude from its public dialogue people who were
interested in its issues but who lacked access to these
technologies.
There have thus been limited attempts over the years to use
electronic mail more as an outreach mechanism, as well as for
membership communications. These projects have been undertaken
mostly by local chapters, at the grassroots level. Most chapters
have distribution lists for local and national announcements. The
Portland chapter has been distributing an electronic newsletter to
its members and to other chapters for years; two or three other
chapters have recently begun doing the same. The Washington office
has done something similar with an electronic publication called
CPSR Alert, which is intended to provide news about CPSR work in
Washington and upcoming policy issues of note. Many chapters also
maintain electronic mailing lists of their own, to inform members
and friends of events and issues.
Several chapters have used other mechanisms for electronic
outreach as well. On the online system called the Well, there is
a conference area dedicated to CPSR discussions. This area
contains much of the information CPSR distributes electronically
through other means, and several discussions on issues related to
CPSR work. Other chapter-based efforts include anonymous ftp
archives and local Usenet newsgroups.
In the Fall of 1991, CPSR set up an automated mailing list on
a computer at the George Washington University (GWU), using BITNET
Revised Listserv software. This technology allows anyone with e-
mail access to the Internet or BITNET computer networks to add
themselves up to the CPSR mailing list, to change details of their
registration, or to request files stored in an archive, all without
manual intervention. Appendix B contains the announcement notice
for this service, which includes instructions for signing up.
After about six months of testing and refining the settings,
it was decided to use the list as a moderated mechanism for
distributing CPSR announcements and other news of interest to
members. Postings are limited to five items per week, in order not
to drive away subscribers by overwhelming them with e-mail. The
Listserv system also allows automated file retrieval, and this is
used to provide access to longer items or items that appeal to a
limited audience; it also used to store and make available archives
of items posted to the mailing list. Appendix C contains the file
CPSR ARCHIVE, which is a listing of files currently available on
the server.
This fall, the public mailing list effort was expanded by the
installation of Unix Listserv software on a commercial computer in
California which is connected to the Internet. This system
contains copies of the files stored on the GWU computer; it also
has several mailing lists for interest groups involved with a
variety of CPSR issues, such as privacy, the workplace, and CPSR's
use of electronic communications. The files on the Unix Listserv
are available via e-mail, just as on the other system, but they are
also available via several Internet interactive mechanisms, such as
anonymous ftp, Gopher, and WAIS. These facilities are still being
tested, but when they are generally available, files and other
information will be easier to access using a variety of methods.
In order to solve the problem of access to computer
telecommunications, several initiatives are underway to make these
information resources more widely available. CPSR will publicize
various free or inexpensive systems on which users can gain access
to the Internet, and may negotiate discounts for its members based
upon group rates or in exchange for CPSR information provided to
the system.
In addition, several CPSR chapters (particularly those in
Seattle, WA and Washington, DC) are working on free public access
online information systems which will provide Internet access. The
DC effort is called CapAccess; it is discussed in more detail in
Part III. The Portland chapter is experimenting with fax-back
systems as well, to provide access to those lacking computers with
modems. Such access efforts are expanding very rapidly, as cost
barriers to entry are falling and it is becoming feasible to share
the benefits of these systems beyond the technological elite.
Center for the Study of Responsive Law/Essential Information
The Center for the Study of Responsive Law (CSRL) and
Essential Information are two organizations founded by Ralph Nader
over the last twenty-five years. They are non-profit research and
education organizations, funded primarily by grants, donations, and
publication sales. They share office space in Washington, DC, but
they perform distinct projects with separate budgets. Together
they employ about twenty people, plus interns and volunteers. I
will refer to them collectively as the Center.
The Center operates on a shoestring budget, and relies on many
office machines that other operations would discard as outdated.
Several of the personal computers around the office are quite old,
and Nader eschews computers himself, preferring to write on a
manual typewriter. However John Richard, the Center's chief of
staff, is very comfortable with computers and is a major advocate
of new technology, as long as funds can be found to support it.
Recently, Essential Information acquired a Sun Microsystems
workstation. This was accomplished through a partnership with the
company that developed Arc/Info, a popular geographic information
system (GIS) package. The GIS workstation is used to examine
relationships between demographic information, like race and
income, with such data as crime statistics and mortgage lending
rates. An attempt is then made to demonstrate the power of this
technology to advocacy groups, who might be able to use it to
strengthen their analyses.
A Sun workstation is a powerful piece of equipment,
particularly compared with much of the equipment at the Center.
Naturally, such a resource would best be shared, to make it
available to as many as possible, and to keep it busy during
otherwise idle time. Such a system is also ideally suited to
inter-networking (that is, networking via the Internet). The
system administrator of the Sun has a background in implementing
such networking, having worked at a commercial Internet service
provider; he is also interested in pursuing networking solutions
for wider communication and resource sharing at the Center. Thus,
a dial-up connection to the Internet was established via UUNet
Technologies, through which electronic mail and Usenet news are
routed. Interested staff members at the Center are provided Unix
accounts on the Sun. They can exchange e-mail with one another and
with other Internet users, read Usenet news, and basically have an
electronic point of presence on the Internet.
At about the same time as the Sun was being brought online at
Essential Information, a project under CSRL was starting to
investigate possible ways to use the Internet for outreach
purposes. The Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP) was created to ensure
equitable access to government resources that are funded by tax
dollars. (Examples include public mineral and timber resources,
patents rights for drugs developed at government expense, and
government electronic information.) Successful attempts were made
to enlist supporters via Internet electronic mail for several TAP
initiatives. These projects seek to broaden public access to
online government information at a reasonable price, in addition to
another project which advocates citizen involvement in cable
regulation. Messages were sent to several electronic mailing
lists, and posted to Usenet newsgroups and to several online
services; these messages sought signatures to letters to political
leaders, and offered further information. Each appeal garnered in
excess of 200 responses, at very low cost. The appeals were
initially sent from an assortment of e-mail addresses, but this
process has since become centralized on the Essential Information
Sun workstation. Appendix D shows the different electronic media
outlets that one such announcement was sent to, along with partial
results. Once such an announcement is publicly made, it is
impossible to determine exactly how many people received or read
the message; it effectively takes on a life of its own.
The Center is currently pursuing funding for additional
projects in the area of utilizing computer telecommunications for
outreach by and communications among activists. The current focus
of such requests is a project of Essential Information called the
Multinationals and Development Clearinghouse, which is a project to
provide community and environmental activists in the third world
with a way to share information on activities of multinational
corporations in their countries and the means to communicate with
colleagues around the world. The use of computer
telecommunications technologies could be a real help to such
activists in their work, allowing timely communication of important
information and providing a cheap alternative to travel.
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a very large international environmental
organization, which was founded in Canada in 1971. It has over
four million members worldwide, from 158 countries. Greenpeace has
38 offices in 23 countries, with a staff numbering nearly one
thousand. It is one non-profit organization that has used computer
telecommunication technology effectively for a long time.
Central to Greenpeace's electronic communications is a system
called Greenlink, their internal electronic mail and messaging
system. Employees dial into Greenlink like any other online
system. U.S. users can access the system via Sprintnet (formerly
Telenet), at the rate of $15 an hour (or $.25 per minute). Besides
sending and receiving e-mail, users can also read or download
Greenpeace press releases, news headlines, and longer research
reports, as well as search a list of addresses and phone numbers of
all Greenpeace offices in the U.S. and abroad. Bulletin board
conferencing is included as well, so that users can participate in
online discussions open to anyone in the organization. A gateway
to Econet, and therefore to the Internet, is being contemplated to
allow Greenlink users to exchange e-mail messages with a larger
group of people.
In a move to cut costs by reducing wasted time online,
Greenpeace developed a program called OTTO. Based upon Procomm
scripts, OTTO allows off-line composition and reading of e-mail,
and automates the process of signing on, uploading, and downloading
mail. This program was recently distributed to offices around the
world, and has gained wide acceptance from users over time. Even
though users were already familiar with the old way of doing
things, the command structure on the Greenlink system is cumbersome
and not particularly intuitive, particularly in the area of
preparing and sending mail. The resulting ease of use, in
combination with the fact that OTTO would let users specify whether
they wanted to immediately log off after handling mail or to remain
on Greenlink to read press releases and the like, eased the way for
acceptance.
Greenpeace telecommunications capabilities need to reach
beyond the offices that employees work in. An integral part of the
operation of Greenpeace consists of non-violent protest actions,
the oldest of which were carried out on ships such as the Rainbow
Warrior. Greenpeace maintains a fleet of eight ships, along with
two helicopters, a bus, and a hot-air balloon. In order to
maintain constant contact with the ships, they are equipped with
satellite telephones. In addition to providing voice
communications, computers on board can dial into Greenlink just
like those in offices. A special version of OTTO was developed for
this purpose, optimized to minimize time online; this was needed
because the satellite telephone time is very expensive, costing $10
per minute.
Greenpeace does extensive online news tracking and database
searching in support of its activists and researchers. One ongoing
operation scan's online wire services and selected databases daily
for stories of an environmental nature. This information is then
distributed via Greenlink in a daily file containing the
introductions to these stories. The same staff has access to over
2000 online databases, and has developed an expertise in searching
these efficiently and cost-effectively. They will perform searches
on request for researchers around the world, charging the requestor
for the more costly searches.
Greenpeace keeps copies of these stories, press releases, and
other items in its own database. If any staff member wants the
text of a story in the daily press summary, it can be requested and
will be sent via Greenlink. Likewise, whenever a user wants a more
extensive search, this database is searched first, before incurring
additional online searching expense. There are now over 500
megabytes of information in this database. It uses a program called
IZE, which is an intuitive full-text database program that users
can learn quickly.
In the late 1980's Greenpeace started distributing
environmental information electronically to the public, via Econet.
On Econet, it maintains three conferences, gp.press, gp.news, and
share. gp.press contains all of the press releases generated by
Greenpeace. gp.news contains the daily news summaries. Both of
these provide the same information available on Greenlink. share
contains information on Greenpeace's database efforts, and allows
users to contribute items to Greenpeace or to alert other users to
related information.
Compuserve in 1990 started a conference called the Earth
Forum, and Greenpeace uses this mechanism to distribute public
information. to a much larger audience. There is a file area in
the Earth Forum dedicated to Greenpeace information, which consists
mostly of the press releases, but also has documents describing
Greenpeace and its various programs, and several longer documents
such as fact sheets and reports. There are plans to offer a
similar service via America Online in early 1993.
Greenpeace also operates a computer bulletin board system
(BBS) called Environet. This system operates on a Intel 286-based
PC, with six incoming phone lines, running TBBS software.
Environet contains copies of all Greenpeace press releases and news
summaries, longer articles from Greenpeace and allied
organizations, and information on Greenpeace ship movements,
addresses and phone numbers. There are also six conferences in
which people can participate in discussions, on issues ranging from
disarmament to toxics. It is open to the public and free for
anyone in San Francisco, and a toll-free 800 number is provided to
qualifying organizations that are not local to San Francisco.
Environet is also looking into adding Fidonet capability, enabling
its users to send e-mail to other Fidonet and Internet systems, and
making its information available to many other BBS users worldwide.
Appendix E shows the primary menus on Environet.
Other avenues being explored for Greenpeace electronic
information dissemination are the creation and use of Usenet
newsgroups; a BBS system (Galacticomm) that allows users to search
online text databases; connection to the Internet to facilitate
these and other services such as anonymous ftp of Greenpeace
documents; and a fax-back system for retrieving documents without
a computer.
Part III - Other Electronic Initiatives
PACH
A group of activists in 1989 decided to use the network to
raise support for a project to push for reduced military aid to El
Salvador. Money was raised to purchase copies of an Amnesty
International report and to send them to every U.S. Senator, along
with a letter urging cessation of the aid; copies of the letter
were also sent to the press. The letter was drafted, through many
revisions. Dozens of signatories were recruited. All of these
things were accomplished electronically, without the group ever
talking on the telephone or meeting face-to-face.
As an outgrowth of the El Salvador project described above,
several of the participants decided to start a more long-term
project called the Progressive Alliance Clearinghouse (PACH). The
first PACH project was an electronic mailing list, the Activists
Mailing List. Initially this was managed by a person and called
AML, but as it became too large, it was moved to Revised Listserv
and called ACTIV-L; there are now over 1000 subscribers to this
list. In order to reach a broader audience, it was decided to
expand this list into Usenet; after a somewhat contentious approval
process, the newsgroup misc.activism.progressive was created, with
a readership estimated at 19,000 and growing.
ACTIV-L and misc.activism.progressive carry the same
materials, which number approximately 20-30 postings per day. The
bulk of these materials come from Peacenet and Econet, and some of
the others are reprints of articles in magazines, lists of
resources, and items submitted by subscribers. An upcoming project
would add to this list several progressive student newspapers.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was formed by a group
of network users outraged by the abuse of power displayed by the
government in the investigation and prosecution of alleged computer
criminals, commonly referred to as hackers (though there is
considerable debate regarding the proper terminology to use when
referring to various sectors of the computer underground). This
organization concerns itself with the murky area of laws in the new
frontier being created by the new medium of computer
telecommunications, including civil liberties and the proper role
of government in fostering the technology and promoting goals like
universal access.
EFF is remarkable in that it is an organization that grew up
on networks. In the beginning there were a series of discussions
on the online system The Well and an electronic newsletter
emanating from a user-id on that system. Now its office has
several Unix machines, including one that is dedicated to being a
public information server. They also have a dedicated T-1 link to
the Internet, to handle the load for anonymous ftp services; they
have rapidly become one of the busiest ftp sites on the entire
Internet. Recently, they began offering access to their archives
via the Gopher and WAIS protocols as well. Included in these
archives are the EFF electronic newsletter, papers and testimony
produced by EFF, archives of electronic discussions, and various
other electronic publications and material from other
organizations, including CPSR. Appendix F contains an electronic
announcement from EFF concerning Internet access to its resources.
CapAccess
Several of these organizations, along with many others around
the country (or the world) are involved in projects to provide free
or inexpensive public access to the telecommunications technologies
being discussed here. Examples of relatively established systems
include Cleveland Free-net, a project of the Case Western Reserve
University; the Santa Monica Public Electronic Network (PEN) run by
the city of Santa Monica, CA, and the independent Community Memory
Project in Berkeley, CA. Each of these offers a different model
for a free, community based information and communication service.
Two CPSR meetings in 1992, a Local Civic Networks Roundtable in
Washington, DC, and the Directions and Implications of Advanced
Computing conference in Berkeley, CA, have engendered a national
discussion and information sharing network of people involved in
organizing such systems.
Last spring, a committee representing a broad cross section of
community interests and services in Washington, DC, started
planning the National Capital Area Public Access Network
(CapAccess), a free, non-profit information service for the DC
metro area. It has been in testing and development since the fall,
and will be ready to go online this spring. It will be housed on
a powerful workstation, a Sun SparcStation 10, accessible via 20
dial-up ports and an Internet connection. The initial software
will be Freeport, which is the same system that Cleveland Free-net
developed, and that is used by a network of Free-net and other
systems known as the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
It offers news and information file areas, conferencing, and
electronic mail, and uses Usenet for communication between sites
and for its conferencing capabilities. It also enables the
establishment of gateways to other systems and services directly
from it's menu structure.
The goal of CapAccess is to provide a sophisticated
information system and numerous useful information resources to the
community at no charge. Even those without computers and modems
will be able to use the system, through a network of public
terminals that will be set up in libraries, government buildings,
schools, and the like. It will provide information on educational
opportunities, jobs, government services, social service agencies,
and events, along with library catalogs, electronic classrooms, and
discussions on a wide range of topics.
Systems such as these will be important for activists to use
for their public information campaigns, where they are available.
They provide a low cost entry point into the world of computer
telecommunications. If an organization is already using computer
telecommunications tools for outreach, then these systems should be
fairly easy to incorporate into its strategy. Public access
networks provide access to these communication technologies to many
first time users, and the focus of the information contained on
them is toward public service or the public interest, so they
should be an ideal fit for the information that public interest
groups have to offer.
Conclusions
There are many examples of innovative ways in which computer
telecommunications are being applied by public interest
organizations. However, the ones presented here are generally the
more technologically savvy organizations, or served causes or
constituencies that fit naturally with these methods. Even then,
these groups have often moved slower than might have been expected
to take advantage of online systems, electronic mail, and other
forms of networking. Many other organizations lag well behind
those presented here.
However, with more of society moving into the information age,
non-profit organizations would be well advised to investigate what
these technologies could do for them. Access barriers, both
technical and cost, are falling every day; and more effect might be
gained from the effort than would be imagined. Of course, use of
this technology is likely to have a significant impact on the way
an organization operates, often in unforseen ways. It would be
wise for any organization, particularly one with a tight budget, to
plan for such change as much as possible, and to be prepared to
deal with the unexpected, as it enters this largely uncharted
territory.
Member login
Not a member yet?