Strategic Technical Assistance To Grassroots Groups And Coalitions:
Themes in LINC Strategic Technical Assistance from July 2000 - June 2001

Technical assistance was the major focus of LINC's work over the past year with our newly hired Circuit Rider joining our Senior Circuit Rider to provide hands-on strategic technology assistance to 27 groups in 15 states, one regional and two national coalitions. LINC helped these groups develop and implement technology strategies to complement their organizing campaigns. Since the Project began in 1998 we have worked with 41 groups in 18 states and three coalitions.

Three themes are woven throughout our strategic technology assistance to low-income coalitions and individual groups (this work is described in greater detail in next two sections):

1. The Circuit Rider model remains at the heart of our work, and we expanded our capacity to deliver technology assistance by hiring a second Circuit Rider in the fall of 2000. Our Circuit Riders blend technology and organizing skills and evangelize the power of technology to promote organizing. They travel to resource-poor community groups to provide hands-on technology development, computer and internet access, individualized on-site training, and innovative technology applications to under-served communities.

2. We strengthened our technical assistance work with groups and coalitions by expanding our work with a broad range of intermediaries. As discussed later, we have collaborated with capacity-building groups, non-profit technology assistance providers (NTAPs), and funders to leverage the resources available to low-income groups and to assure that our groups benefit from the latest technology applications developed in the Circuit Rider community.

3. The increasing complexity of the technology applications that LINC delivers and the constant need to identify cost-efficient and sustainable applications for grassroots groups with extremely limited resources are two challenges in the past year's work. The following two examples illustrate how we have tackled these challenges:

Customizing a free database for low-income groups. Ebase is a free database program developed by Tech Rocks especially for non-profit organizations. During the past year we invested substantial resources in refining ebase for LINC groups, as we recognized it to be a cost-efficient replacement for the databases we had previously used with our groups. Building on our prior experience, we partnered with the Progressive Technology Project to explore development of a ready-made database solution for low-income organizers. Upon our examination of ebase which had been developed for environmental activist organizations, we realized that with some minor modifications we could add fields to capture additional data that would be very useful for low-income organizers.

We customized ebase to meet the special needs of these organizers, so that groups can track specific information about their constituencies and analyze the effectiveness of various mobilizing techniques, such as mailings, phone calls, events, etc. For example, to meet WROC's needs, we added fields to keep track of how members come into the organization and to record the region of the state in which each member lives. We subsequently agreed to assist TechRocks in developing the second version of ebase. Twelve LINC groups, including Community Voices Heard, WEEL, PUFF and Miami Workers Center, now use modified versions of ebase that LINC installed.

Maximizing use of donated older computers by using a free operating system. GNU/Linux is a free operating system known for its stability and ability to run on older computers. In January 2001 LINC began to explore how to distribute older computers running a Linux operating system to low-income members of organizations. As a pilot we have converted an older machine donated by the Welfare Law Center into an "Internet and Word Processing Appliance." We are about to provide this computer to a CVH member and train the member. Building on this experiences we will convert additional machines and provide them to additional members. Other groups have received donated computers from various sources, and we will engage in similar efforts with them, beginning with GRO in Missouri in late fall 2001. We will document the ongoing technology support issues that this project raises.

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