Sean O'Brien, W. Alton Jones Foundation

Sean T. O'Brien, Ph.D., is a circuit rider for the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Va.

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) suffered from some of the same technical troubles that affect many small nonprofit organizations -- old equipment and no staff expertise to upgrade its system. Based in the Ben & Jerry's headquarters (can you say "Free ice cream"?) in Burlington, VBSR benefited for many years from hand-me-down Macintosh computers from B&J. Recently, however, as VBSR became more comfortable with and dependent on technology, its needs and skills were outpacing the donated machines.

VBSR is supported by the W. Alton Jones Foundation (WAJF) for its work on "environmental tax shifting" in Vermont (it does lots of other good work too). The basic idea is to tax things we don't like (e.g., waste, pollution) and to use these revenues to stop taxing things we do like (e.g., employment). Northwest Environment Watch has produced an easy-to-read introduction to tax shifting, and the Center for a Sustainable Economy has a nice weekly email list with news from around the nation and world related to tax shifting.

At the suggestion of Kristen Goddard, the WAJF program officer for VBSR, I visited Burlington this spring to perform a technical assessment. This involves drawing out of an organization details about what they are trying to do and helping them determine how technology can facilitate their work. Technical assessments (and the planning process that results) are not about the latest and coolest techno-toys, but about choosing the right technology for the job. The goal is to create a reliable system that requires little maintenance, is reasonably priced, and won't be obsolete in six months. I like to think of technical assessments as the beginning of a "co-independence" relationship, as opposed to the sort of "co-dependence" relationship that often results from work with for-profit technical assistance providers.

But I digress.

It was clear that VBSR needed to invest some of its hard-won funding into technology if it was going to continue to produce the excellent work that allows it to win such funding. For a variety of reasons (which would just upset the Mac enthusiasts and Microsoft haters out there), VBSR decided to change over to a Windows-based local area network (LAN). As an umbrella group for socially conscious businesses and individuals in Vermont, VBSR was able to obtain donated computers (from IBM via AmeriCorps/TeamTech), low-cost computers from its members, and donated labor. WAJF also kicked in enough money to buy a computer and some accessories. And about week of my life.

Thus, in July of this year I found myself in Burlington working with VBSR and a dedicated volunteer (and fun co-laborer), Larry Gold. Together we transferred several gigabytes of data from the Macintosh computers to the hard drive of one of the new computers. We then established a simple peer-to-peer network using the built-in networking capabilities of Windows 98. This arrangement allows all of the computers in the office to "see" each other and allows users to access selected files on other computers on the network. It also enables all of the computers to share a single printer with no switch boxes or user intervention of any kind.

We also included one of the Macs in the network to enable VBSR to continue to access its accounting data and to retrieve any data that was not transferred during the mass migration (unfortunately, this computer was fried by Hurricane Floyd!). The biggest challenge was setting up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS, also knows as modem sharing or using a proxy server). ICS can be one of the greatest strengths of a LAN in a small office -- it allows all of the computers on the LAN to share a single Internet connection as though each computer were connected to the Internet directly. It can be a little tricky to get ICS to work and it took me much of a weekend (and a couple pints of mint chocolate cookie). Finally, I decided to use the ICS functionality built into Windows 98 second edition.

(By the way, ONE/Northwest has some very nice resources for nonprofits looking to establish LANs or interested in performing technical assessments on themselves)

In summary, at the end of several fun and grueling days, VBSR had a functional LAN, with a regular backup system for the PCs, Internet Connection Sharing, printer sharing, file sharing, and email access from each desktop. Other than the computer killed by Floyd (it's important that all of your electronics are plugged into a good-quality surge protector at the least, or even better, an uninterruptible power supply), the LAN and shared resources are working smoothly with very little user intervention. Hooray!