It's good to have a local peer group - especially if you're a techie working in a nonprofit environment, or a nonprofit professional charged with responsibility for your organization's technology infrastructure.
The internet makes it possible to build a community in which geography is mostly irrelevant, and email distribution lists that focus on nonprofit technology, such as the Information Systems Forum, capitalize on this. However, there are also good reasons to know your colleagues in the immediate vicinity. For example:
- You need to vet a local vendor or consultant.
- You need to hire someone or find a job locally.
- You need a buddy who will drop by your office and give you some hands-on help with a hardware problem.
- You need colleagues who will meet you at local cafe to gossip, ventilate frustrations, and brainstorm.
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In some regions, the 501 Tech Club's main focus is an email distribution list ("does anybody know a secure data storage firm that will pick up tapes from our main office once a week?"). In a growing number of 501 Tech Clubs, there are also regularly scheduled get-togethers ("our next meeting will be at the cafe on Wednesday at 6:00") that are coordinated by members of the group on a volunteer basis. It's somewhat like a highly specialized MeetUp.
Here in Boston, our 501 Tech Club events, ably coordinated by Merove Heifetz of Earthwatch, usually draw about ten people: techies who got religion about the nonprofit sector, nonprofit professionals who got religion about technology, introverts, extraverts, IT strategists, tech support providers, database developers, web site designers, and folks in other fields who are looking to cross over.
If there isn't a 501 Tech Club in your area, I think that you'll be surprised at how quickly you can start one. The first step is to contact the team at N-TEN.
NPtech
