From October I and others will be blogging on a range of issues impacting on voluntary and community organisations (including ICT) at www.3s4.org.uk. Hope to see you there…

Megan

Introduction

The internet is changing how individuals give to organisations, and how organisations fundraise from individuals, in three ways:

1. Marketing and communications: making connections with people and spreading messages
2. The giving transaction: how money changes hands and how a gift is acknowledged
3. Information and power: the relationship between a donor and an organisation

Each of these will present opportunities and challenges for how organisations fundraise from individuals in the future.

Marketing and communications

The first element of fundraising from individuals is to promote your cause, make a connection with people and to build relationships. The internet is now a well established communications channel for most organisations, with varying levels of investment both in terms of the technical infrastructure (what the site can do) and content (what information is available, how regularly it is updated etc.)

Early websites were like online brochures, disseminating information from the centre. However, new web technologies (often termed Web 2.0), and in particular the online communities and social networks that they support, offer the potential for what is sometimes called viral marketing. The flat, non-hierarchical model of networks can be a powerful channel for spreading a message. An organisation which has a network of ‘friends’ online can start a ‘snowball’ effect, whereby the organisation’s friends invite their friends to link with the organisation. These new contacts can then invite ever more people to link and contribute to the network, eventually allowing the organisation to reach people well beyond its original circle. For example, an American group, autistics.org, has made a splash on YouTube with videos in which people with autism describe their view of the world. Tens of thousands of views, supported by hundreds of comments and bloggers adding the films to their own websites, have enabled the message to spread way beyond the organisation’s traditional constituency. This is sometimes referred to as generating a ‘buzz’.

The internet facilitates the aggregation of individual interests into niche communities, allowing easy connections between people who are geographically dispersed. Marketers call this the long tail – they are interested in selling products with a limited niche appeal and the web makes this possible. The same is true for fundraising; the internet can help an organisation to easily reach and bring together the people who may want to support a cause, however specialised this may be. An example of how this can work can be seen in the case of the Open Rights Group which was set up when an individual started a pledge on PledgeBank committing to regularly donate money in order to set up a new organisation to campaign on digital rights, if a certain number of other people would also commit. The pledge was successful and a new organisation was quickly established.

The internet can also connect donors with the people and organisations that they want to support, or are supporting (for example, see www.globalgiving.com or www.kiva.org). Charities have always used ’stories’ or case studies to bring to life the impact of their work, but these weren’t often very engaging and there was a gap between donors and recipents. New technologies can help to close that gap; you can’t engage with a brochure but you can engage with real people through new online tools.

The giving transaction

ICT is changing the giving transaction, making it faster, easier and more efficient to collect money and to acknowledge receipt and even (ideally) to feedback to donors at a later date. Increasing numbers of organisations have online giving facilities either through their own websites or through portal websites like www.justgiving.com. The public now have higher expectations that they will be able to give online, particularly younger donors for whom the internet is the natural mode of transaction. Organisations that do not provide online giving facilities may increasingly lose potential donors who will not make the extra effort to find out about alternative ways of making a donation.

Two opportunities for increasing online giving are distributed widget fundraising and micropayments. Widgets are bits of online information attractively displayed on a website, which draw their content from another source. Anyone can add fundraising widgets to their blog or website and they update as the fundraising progresses, allowing visitors to see exactly how much has been raised at any time, and how much more you hope to raise. This is a powerful way to distribute fundraising through your online network, using your network’s own online spaces. It is now also possible to make very small payments with equally small transaction costs. Micropayments, as these small transactions are known, provide opportunities to harvest small amounts of money online by piggybacking on the payments that people are already making (e.g. adding a 10p donation when people buy products online through a particular store).

However, when thinking about new channels for giving, we need to be careful not to be too PC-centric. Too much emphasis may have been placed on the PC as the personal communications hub, with more thought needed on how we communicate and transact via the mobile phone. As phones effectively become computers, the development of m-commerce (and perhaps m-giving) will become increasingly important.

A question many people ask is whether online giving will increase the overall amount given. Some argue that the web provides new opportunities to fundraise from individuals, because of the ability to ‘click to give’. In other words, just the ease with which the public can now give is enough to increase giving. There are also new innovations, from text message giving to purchasing virtual yaks in Second Life, that some suggest could have a significant impact. However, online fundraising has been with us for some time and levels of giving have remained stable. It may be interesting to look at what happened with retail. Some predicted that new online shops would replace high street shops but with some exceptions (e.g. amazon), this just hasn’t happened. The emphasis now is on ‘bricks and clicks’ – in other words, successful businesses are combining a high street presence with sophisticated online websites. This suggests that the internet is unlikely to grow the market for charitable giving or to dramatically increase levels of giving, but that levels of online giving will increase at the expense of other methods.

Within the overall amount given, the internet may impact on where money goes. On the whole, people will still want to give to the same organisations – national brand names, local community organisations, or organisations they have some sort of connection with – but the internet does help to level the playing field to some degree. A professional looking website is now relatively inexpensive and there are free ways of spreading a message through the internet (e.g. through the social networks mentioned above). This may mean that some organisations can use the internet to increase the levels of money they raise from individuals, although the total amount given to charity is unlikely to change dramatically.

Information and power

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the internet’s impact on charitable giving is in how the internet is changing the relationship between a donor and an organisation. This is seen in how the public find out about charities and decide who to support, and what they expect from charities in terms of feedback and information.

The internet increases expectations of accountability – the amount and quality of the information that donors demand before giving, and that they expect to receive after giving.
The access to information that ICT facilitates is empowering citizens. For example, 8 out of 10 people going to buy a car from a showroom have apparently already used the internet to decide what to buy. This puts them in control of negotiations as they know what they want, and what other retailers are offering. Likewise, it has never been so easy to find out about and compare the activities and impact of charities. Informed with increasing information from online websites such as Guidestar and Intelligent Giving, the ability of donors to research their cause will invert the current power relationship with charities.

As a result, organisations will have to spend more time and resources on reporting and providing more personalised reports to donors. Providing just a pdf of an annual review on a website will no longer satisfy many donors. Some have questioned whether this shift of power towards donors could spell the end of unrestricted income from donations. Increasingly donors will want to know (and perhaps choose) where there money is going and what impact it will have. New organisations like kiva.org are facilitating these choices and effectively cutting out the middle man between donors and grass roots projects.

Another factor which may increasingly influence how donors select organisations to support is recommendations. In online environments, recommendations are particularly important with trends showing that people are more and more inclined to trust the opinions of those in their networks and other peers (a common example is the rating system on sites such as amazon). Future incarnations of Guidestar or Intelligent Giving may allow donors and other stakeholders to rate and comment on organisations. These collaborative approaches to rating personal experiences (as a volunteer or donor) might increasingly drive perception of the sector, rather than branding or advertising. If these information portals also allowed payments directly to organisations then such online communities could become even more powerful. This could be the basis for more effective, direct investment by supporters but will put more pressure on organisations to clearly demonstrate and communicate the impact of their work.

Loyalty to particular organisations may also be shifting. It seems to be true that younger people in particular are loyal to causes in the way that previous generations were loyal to organisations. Therefore it may become more difficult to sustain a relationship with a donor, although one solution could be to integrate financial support with forms of activism and campaigning support.

Conclusion

In the field of ICT and the VCS, online fundraising is an area which has received more attention than any other. There are undoubtably innovations and new channels for giving, some of these are gimmicks and are some genuine new opportunities for growth, though it remains to be seen whether any of them will have an impact on the overall amount given by the public. However, it is important not to focus our attention solely on the giving transaction. What will have the biggest impact on organisations is likely to be ways in which the internet can help to spread a message, and the way in which online information is empowering citizens and rebalancing power between donors and organisations.

If the late 19th century was the ‘golden age’ of mutual institutions, clubs and societies, the early 21st century is a new golden age of networks and online communities, a virtual replication of what went before. For many VCOs, online ‘social’ networks have the potential to be disruptive; that is, they have the power to change the model of organising upon which many VCOs, and particularly membership bodies, are based. The connections that ICT facilitates suggest that some organisations may increasingly be bypassed and that power may shift away from top-down hierarchical organisations and towards more fluid and participative networks where there is less need for a centralised ‘bricks and mortar’ coordinating organisation.

In particular, ICTs have ushered in new modes of communication and have changed individuals’ expectations of their interaction with organisations. Individuals, whether they are members, customers or just casual supporters, are increasingly expecting dissemination to be supplemented by opportunities for dialogue. Pushing information out from the centre is no longer sufficient; people now also expect organisations to pull in information from other sources. The idea that it is the network that generates content (ideas, policies, advice) is in some ways what the sector has always done and done well, but in other ways this represents a leap in the dark for organisations for whom being ‘on message’ is seen as an important discipline. As such, cultures of engagement present more of a challenge than technologies, which are increasingly cheap and easy to use. For VCOs willing to embrace them and to integrate them into their ways of working, the new ICTs present a range of opportunities to engage with new audiences and to build powerful networks of their own.

Some key strategic opportunities and risks
(This is a nice table in the report but tables in wordpress defeated me…!)

Membership
Opportunity: Membership organisation cements its position as the respected aggregator of knowledge in its field
Risk: Membership numbers fall as member benefits (information, networking etc) are increasingly freely available elsewhere

Information
Opportunity: VCO asserts itself as a source of trusted advice and draws on the expertise of its network of users, volunteers and other stakeholders.
Risk: By not undestanding changes to how individuals search for information, the position of a VCO is eroded as the public more easily find advice elsewhere.

Transparency
Opportunity: Trust in a VCO is enhanced by its use of technology to facilitate a continuous and open dialogue with stakeholders
Risk: A VCO adopts social tools but the culture of the organisation doesn’t change, resulting in a mismatch between the tools and the way they are used and an erosion of trust

Collaboration
Opportunity: A VCO becomes more innovative through the involvement of its network of users, volunteers and other supporters, and attracts increased funding
Risk: A VCOs staff and volunteers are frustrated by not being able to work in a collaborative way and leave the organisation

Fundraising
Opportunity: By telling engaging stories and connecting donors and recipients, a VCO inspires new potential donors and increases its income
Risk: A failure to provide human stories or adequate information about the impact of their work results in a VCO being passed over by donors in favour of other organisations

Marketing
Opportunity: By exploiting its networks (and its networks’ networks), a VCO reaches a new and diverse audience and increases its impact
Risk: Conflict arises as devolving marketing to its network grates with a VCO’s continued desire to control all its messages

The overarching message of the report is that – if properly managed by VCOs – the opportunities that the new social networks present should outweigh the risks. VCOs should not be apprehensive about utilising the tools of social networking, as these will be increasingly familiar to their staff – and relatively inexpensive to set up.

Sector organisations cannot, however, expect to be passive participants in this process, merely using a network as something that is ‘bolted on’ to their existing website. They need to understand the new participative culture that social networks generate. VCOs’ fundamental messages may not alter but their methods of dissemination will have to, as their audience’s expectations of how they receive the message evolves. To reach out effectively to the consumers of these cultural changes, VCOs need to make a serious effort to integrate the new tools into their work.

The report doesn’t go so far as providing practical advice to help organisations to ‘integrate the new tools into their work’, which is why I’m delighted that David Wilcox has developed a social media glossary for us, and is co-hosting a wiki carnival to gather together the wealth of practical and inspiring stuff that is out there on social media and the voluntary sector.

Commons in Cyberspace

In 2001 Jay Blumler and Stephen Coleman set out a vision of a ‘Civic Commons in cyberspace’ (Blumler, J. G. & Coleman S. Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commons in Cyberspace. IPPR/Citizens Online, 2001). The authors outlined an open space for citizens to gather and deliberate on proposals issued by public bodies; it would be created to be independent but with statutory status. This ‘electric commons’ would be no mere talking shop; it would be ‘an integral component of the representative system’.

Five years later, the UK’s political institutions have not got behind this vision but perhaps, in a round about way, citizens have taken it forward. For example, social network websites generated a lot of speculation in 2006.

MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and a raft of smaller niche sites host online communities where people gather to interact in seemingly ever greater numbers. People create and maintain their personal profiles, they view and download content uploaded by others, they rate it, comment on it, and they upload their own.

The sites are maintained for commercial purposes but their services are, in the main, provided free of charge. The companies behind them stay out of the way, offering only legal and technical services in return for a steady stream of advertising revenue. Arguably, these sites are the ‘commons’ in cyber world.

Don’t believe the hype - politics is big on social network sites (alongside the mountains of pop-culture, gossip and humour). Ideologies and policies are discussed with varying degrees of refinement but never for want of vigour. Campaigns and protests - large and small - have been set in motion targeted at local, national and international decision makers. The problem is that despite the wealth of talk online, there is frustratingly little action resulting from it. So, can these online communities make a civic and political impact in the offline world? Can sites like these ever constitute a ‘civic commons’ in cyberspace’?

Blumler and Coleman envisaged a new public body tasked with the management of their ‘Commons’, which would combine the virtues of visionary amateurism with thorough, practical professionalism. Whilst one agency might struggle to exert sufficient influence, perhaps a collective could. Government and Parliament are unwelcome participants in these online networks; commercial outfits will not (and should not) get involved. Therefore, the opportunity is with the not-for-profit and third sector organisations to convert the raw civic and political discourse happening online into something tangible that can influence real-world policy making.

As the virtual world gains ever more relevance in people’s everyday lives, civic organisations have the capacity to bring greater cohesion between the offline and online. Civic and charitable organisations can add practical and visionary value to social networks. They have the trust offline, and we have seen that they can transfer it online (For example, the Make Poverty History campaign, and the use of sites like Flickr by in-the-field activists such as Greenpeace). They have the practical skills to focus the noise of millions of voices in a way that can spur our institutions and politicians into action. They have the wherewithal to uncover useful data and evidence from the online clamour and get it in front of key decision-makers, whilst retaining a constant transparency. They have the commitment and feedback loops in place that can help people track the influence of their actions, thus promoting the democratic renewal that was the spur for Blumler and Coleman’s original vision.

Don’t like your organisation’s campaigning policy? Switching is easy online!

Or, you could even start your own campaign!

The new generation social networking technologies (or Web 2.0) could open up new opportunities for campaigning organisations looking to engage their members and supporters actively behind campaigns. However, the technologies could also pose quite significant challenges for these organisations by making it easier for dissatisfied members and supporters either to migrate to other campaigning organisations or to establish their own campaigns.

The purpose of the two mini-scenarios set out below is to provide strategic decision-makers with a way into discussing the opportunities, challenges, and choices generated by the technologies. As they are presented here the scenarios are generic and hypothetical.

Used within the strategic decision setting discussion should also take account of that organisation’s core values, vision, mission, aims, nature, and performance. Consideration should also be given to other relevant trends and forces within the organisation’s external operating environment.

Scenario 1. Organisation Not Doing the Business? Starting Your Own Campaign is Easy On-line!
Mike was feeling even more frustrated than usual after the local branch meeting. It was clear to him that the national headquarters was calling the shots on campaign priorities. Worse than that, though, these days they seemed to have lost their bite; preferring endless meetings with government officials to real activism. It wasn’t surprising that the local membership had haemorrhaged numbers over the last year, or that another couple of members had just said that they wouldn’t be coming back and wouldn’t be renewing their subscriptions either. Cathy’s suggestion could be the way to get things going again, though. They’d set up their own campaign on-line and get some real energy and spontaneity back into things and really talk to each other! And he’d liked her comment as she’d driven off, that they’d be able to reach people well beyond the local community…

Under this scenario voluntary organisations could suffer serious loss of members and supporters as existing members migrate to the new virtual network. Potential new members and supporters could also be lost to the new virtual network.

Scenario 2. Engaging your Organisation’s Members and Supporters
As his executive team left his office, the new CEO of YourVoice was in positive mood. His Director of Communications had made a strong case for the organisation getting much more engaged with its membership and supporters; finding out what they want from the organisation, what campaigns are important to them, and how they want to be involved were good starting points. She was right, too, that there could be expertise and skills out there in the local branches that could be available to the whole organisation, including throughout the local branch network. Really engaging with the grassroots could generate real vitality and enthusiasm. And the Director of IT had been really excited about the possibilities too. Clearly, there needed to be new investment behind it, and they’d have to look at that carefully, but this – what had he called it? - Web 2.0?, seemed to be a good way of getting people talking and interacting in ways they couldn’t currently do…

Under this scenario voluntary organisations could be highly attractive communal spaces in which grassroots engagement is both inspiring and strengthening. The rewards for organisations that are able to engage their members and supporters effectively are likely to include increased commitment, and expanding membership and support.

Evolutionary Psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar of Liverpool University and others predicted that human’s would be able to maintain about 150 acquaintances – and this figure matched research on the size of neolithic villages (‘primitive’ comunities tend to split once they reach a figure of 150 members) and more modern personal networks.

We can recognise far more people that that – but the reality is that our brains only have the capacity to maintain a certain number of relationships – each of various qualities.

This has literally mind-bending implications for people working in an ever more connected world and for how non-profits might use to web 2.0 technologies…..

He goes on to suggest that VCOs could be more picky about who they engage, in order to develop more in-depth/meaningful relationships. An interesting thought at a time when more charities are using technology to attract ’supporters’ - as Nick puts it, “people can now effortlessly associate themselves with your cause (press here if you want to join our ‘club’).”

Back to the brain, and I was recently reading a piece on how technology is changing the manager’s brain in which Susan Greenfield argues that “the massive growth of electronic media is fundamentally altering our brains and central nervous systems ” and that “as people’s brains evolve, their motivations and aspirations will shift accordingly. Our standards of satisfaction and fulfilment may be very different in the future”.

Of particular interest to our social networking strand is this excerpt:

“We assume that people want to work for other people - but that may not be the case in the future. At the moment a lot of our pleasure is derived from status, but I think soon that will be challenged - people just won’t be motivated in that way. It’s just another arms race and I think we’ll evolve to a point where people aren’t so status-obsessed.”

This could spell the end for traditional, monolithic corporations, she says. As the various rationale for forming large companies - for example, to reduce the cost of gathering in materials - become less important, smaller, more virtual units will emerge that are independent but work through a variety of networks of other organisations, she insists.

Though we had a debate recently about whether networks are as good as organisations at getting things done, for example, achieving social change.

The clearest thing I’ve found so far is the much-cited piece by Tim O’Reilly. I also quite like this piece from the Pew Internet project. It distinguishes between Web 2.0 activities/behaviours (like displaying photos), and the use of different sites with different characteristics. One example they give is that use of (web 2.0?) photobucket has increased whilst use of (web 1.0) kodakgallery is static. The behaviours are the same, but the sites have developed (improved?) In other words:

Whatever language we use to describe it, the beating heart of the internet has always been its ability to leverage our social connections.

This was in response to Eleanor Burt, who wrote:

Many of the assumptions about ICT as the main ‘driving’ force in how these are shaped and managed can be shown to be invalid (Lewis and Madon, 2004). I have concerns that technology is seen as driving/determing/forcing us down a particular trajectory. Technology is an enabler, but there is nothing inherent in the technology, no ‘essential’ characteristic (Grint and Woolgar, 1997) that leads inevitably to a particular outcome. Technology is a tool. And it is a tool that is embedded within powerful economic, political, regulatory, and social macro-structures. It’s this macro-context that I’d suggest we need to keep foremost, as these structural regimes will powerfully influence the ways in which technologies are taken up and used.

Seattle is a good example. One view of this is that ICT generated spontaneous mass mobilisation on an international scale. But other research (eg Smith’s ‘Globalising Resistance’ paper) shows Seattle and social movements more generally to be underpinned by NGOs operating at transnational, national, and local levels and with much of the ‘mobilisation’ coming through their organisational memberships at local level.

This question is central to the ICT Foresight work, which begun by asking how ICT was changing the world, and what would be the impact on VCOs. So, to what extent is ICT a driving force?

Update: John Taylor joins the debate:

1. Social shaping. This term can be used in 2 ways and only one of them can be sustained in respect of ICT. The one that is sustainable is that which acts in counterpoise to the implicit assumption about the autonomy of technological development. Thus the discourse on technological development tends to assume the ‘scientific autonomy model’. Science develops artefacts [technologies] in ways that are separable from society. Many studies have shown the futility of this assumption. Technologies emerge from highly interactive human settings and are developed in response to the perceived issues and problems of a specific point in time ie they are a scientific response to a particular paradigm or climate, each of which can only be explained in terms of social shaping. The second, unsustainable, way in which the term social shaping is used is as a synonym for ‘technological determinism’ ie that technologies shape human conditions at macro, meso and micro levels. However, most social scientists who have studied social shaping from this perspective conclude that the use of new technologies is mediated and shaped by social, political and economic phenomena ie there is an iterative process between newly developed technologies and social, economic and political action. Thus society shapes the use of technology, leading to the use of technologies in ways that are often not anticipated.
2. Affordance. As a consequence of the above it is better to use this term, affordance, in coming at the technology/society debate. Thus here technology is seen as affording a set of possible social applications rather than as determining any one of them. And the important point about affordance is that it is a socio-psychological concept. Thus affordances are what we perceive the technologies might offer. As we know affordances can change over time. Thus the affordances of the mobile phone that were perceived 5 years ago are hugely different from what we now perceive them to be. And what has changed those affordances? Answer: the unanticipated ways in which users of the mobile phone have come to use them. Affordances are socially derived and determine the use of technology, therefore.
3. ICT is different. All the above leads me to conclude that ICT is a technological paradigm that can be separated from non ICT technologies. Why? Because ICT is primarily about creating, managing and shipping around networks that most human artefact of all – information. The affordances of ICT are infinite therefore. We can perceive the use of information in so many new and useful ways. Just imagine a VolOrg with highly developed info systems. Of course the systems may be programmed to constrict the ways in which info is used at any point in time. But opportunities to innovate around info remain enormous. Look at ways in which the retail sector uses its info to gain competitive advantages. Look at the ways in which organisations in all sectors shape info to their advantages. Look at the ways in which criminals are desperate to capture personal info and use it nefariously. Look at what Gov [whether 1.0 or 2.0!] will want from its Vol sector partners as they deliver its services. I f only I could get you to talk about information – innovation, management, use – then my life’s work would be complete!! But I know that it is much simpler to talk about technology – that piece of kit in the corner, that software system. So my pleadings will fall on stoney ground, I fear

And another example from Eleanor Burt:

Every year in my university a number of academic staff from across the various Schools spend several days sitting together in front of PCs, in a communal space within the library area. Our task is to advise (register) students into their degree courses and module choices. The students have already gone through this process themselves on-line (from all parts of the world) and for most students it is a straightforward process and does not require a face-to-face meeting with their ‘advisor of studies’. The university, though, prides itself on ‘knowing’ its students as individuals and on cultivating a friendly and supportive atmosphere, and so it is has decided that irrespective of registering on-line all students will still be required to come along to the advising area at the library at a pre-arranged time to meet their advisor of studies, who then ‘checks’ their on-line registration. The students queue outside the library as they wait their turn to meet their advisor and there are, of course, substantial costs to the university in staff time. Clearly, here, the university is making strategic and operational choices based upon its mission, values, aims, objectives, and resource availability. And then it’s deciding to what extent and how it wants to utilise ICT in support of these. (And, interestingly, the Web 2.0 generation of students seems happy with the
approach.)

I’d add to this that when students feel the need to discuss an issue with a member of academic staff my experience is that they will request a personal meeting in preference to an on-line discussion. So, students also seem to be making choices about how (and indeed whether) they wish to take up technological ‘affordances’.

Finally, in addressing technology issues it seems to me that we need to start from what it is that nonprofits are seeking to achieve…in terms of mission, values, aims, objectives. And then we can start looking at what role ICTs have in their achievement. This is, of course, considerably more difficult and complex than moving forward from the position of technology as ‘driving’ change, because it forces us away from ‘a one size fits all’
position to dealing with the diversity of the voluntary sector, the complex and shifting environment in which these organisations operate, and the positing of strategic options. I would argue, though, that for those leading and managing these organisations it is a more valuable aproach to take.

It is free to download from the NCVO website (not ideal I know but we just have no time to put up a HTML version). Here is the introduction:

This is the first in a series of Third Sector Foresight reports on the emerging relationship between voluntary and community organisations, and information and communication technology (ICT). ICTs have been with us for some time – though evidence suggests that voluntary and community organisations have not readily taken advantage – but the pace, breadth and disruptive nature of their increasingly widespread introduction and use make this a good point at which to review progress and look at future opportunities. This report, which is based on desk research and a survey of almost 300 senior managers in the voluntary and community sector, maps out emerging trends in relation to the critical ‘voice’ and representation roles of the sector, covering campaigning and consultation.

It is probably a cliché to state that ICT is changing many aspects of our society including how we communicate, how we transact business and how we consume goods and services. There are numerous examples, from the relatively mundane (providing information and advice via a website) to the fully interactive (signing up to a social networking site such as MySpace). Increasing ease of use, combined with ever-lower costs, is likely to make these new ICTs both ubiquitous and pervasive.

Such changes have also influenced the structures and processes of the State, including the ways in which government and its agencies communicate, consult with, and deliver services to, its citizens. Although ICTs are not driving the shift to more participatory forms of government, the opportunities they afford have been timely. Large-scale IT projects run by government departments often make the news, but just as important are the small-scale, sometimes experimental, advances made by local statutory bodies in areas such as consultation.

Voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) are not immune from such changes, and indeed many are embracing them. In the areas of consultation and campaigning (the focus of this report), VCOs are key intermediaries in the relationship between the State and its citizens– as well as independent, distinct voices in their own right. In addition, it is becoming more apparent that many new social change organisations are growing from purely online origins. The main body of the report examines these roles and relationships, looking at how ICT has or could change the nature of such relationships, and in some cases what is achievable. There are an increasing number of innovative organisations using ICTs to engage with their stakeholders, a few of which are illustrated in this report. However, for others the new ICTs are “indistinguishable from magic”, requiring skills or knowledge that rapidly become obsolete (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke, 1973).A challenge, therefore, for this report has been navigating between utopian visions of the possible and realistic guidance on the probable.

The structure of each chapter therefore reviews current drivers and trends, and illustrates these with case studies on the innovative use of ICTs. It also considers implications for those organisations wishing to follow up the issues. The final section of the report contains a glossary that aims to cover some of the most frequently used jargon in this area.

Finally, other reports in the series will cover accountability, social networks, and delivering services. If you have any comments, either on this report or issues you would like to see covered in future reports, contact us.

This post from the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog makes very similar points and has some interesting case studies.

March of Dimes’ phenomenally successful www.shareyourstory.org now is home to over 13,000 short stories and 1,000 blogs by parents of premature children. March of Dimes is able then to approach these community members during fundraising or petition drives and ask them to give back to March of Dimes.

Engaging users by providing tools to help the users tell their stories doesn’t need to cost much or require much technology–check out these videos about living conditions in the favellas made by illiterate Brazilian kids at www.amplifiedvoices.org. The kids were given a couple of hours of training with a camcorder, and an Imac to edit the films themselves.

Does anyone know of some good examples in the UK?