Why nonprofit tech workers should think about organizing into coops

BENEFITS

When individual tech workers organize into coops, their clients benefit from an integrated team, with access to more skills, knowledge and experience than one person can possess. Workers benefit from support and referrals from their team members. Further, workers may be able to take bolder leaps than they would without support (e.g., moving to F/OSS, embracing emerging technologies), and tech worker coops may be able to form a glue that helps to unify the non-profit tech field, keeping tech activists and NTAPS (non-profit technology assistance providers) from drifting too far apart.

INDEPENDENT vs. ORGANIZED?

There are clear advantages to being an independent non-profit tech worker: the freedom to manage one's own work, including which hardware and software to promote and support as well as choosing which clients and causes to work with; lack of organizational overhead (and consequent lower rates); flexibility in collecting fees directly; etc.

Then there are advantages to being a part of a larger organization: access to peers as technical knowledge sources and as a labor resource for backup and emergency support; an established marketing system and market identity; other support systems.

Tech worker coops can combine the advantages of both.

CASE STUDY: The tech underground (http://techunderground.org)

TU sprang up to replace a technology consulting service that was run by a prominent local nonprofit consulting agency, but failed due to budget problems. Where their model failed, our self-managed cooperative model is succeeding. Our fees (paid directly to consultants instead of filtering through layers of overhead) are low enough to save money for our respective clients, but high enough to support us. Client-consultant relationships are direct and strong. And unlike a set of unconnected consultants, we have all the strengths of a consulting team, increasing our reliability, knowledge, and geographical coverage.

The tech underground originally formed so that systems consultants could provide backup coverage for each others' clients, but our collaboration network has since expanded organically to engage all possible combinations of our diverse skillsets:

systems/systems collaboration

Systems consultants regularly provide backup support for each other and work in teams with clients that require a broad range of skills. We use our email lists as a source for answers to our toughest questions, advice and pertinent industry information.

developer/developer collaboration

Working together on a large database project for Youth in Focus (http://www.youthinfocus.net/), two developers undertook a substantial needs assessment. Once the planning stage was completed, the project was passed for build-out to a third developer whose area of focus matched the client's needs.

systems/developer collaboration

Systems consultants can work closely with database and web developers to roll out and support custom-designed systems. In the Youth in Focus example above, the client's systems consultant was a tech underground member charged with making the new database system accessible at multiple sites over a VPN.

hosting/systems collaboration

Systems consultants regularly refer their clients to our hosting team; consultants can rely on a host they've come to trust and whose systems they are familiar with. And if things go wrong, the lines of communication are already open.

hosting/developer collaboration

Most recently, Grist Magazine (http://www.gristmagazine.com/) chose a tech underground-led team to develop and host their next-generation CMS/RMS system.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Please contact TU (cooperation@techunderground.org) if you have questions or enthusiasm or concerns about working cooperatively, or join TU's Adam Bernstein at the "Forming Consultant Collectives" Birds of a Feather lunch at N-TEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (March 25-28 2004, Philadelphia).