Building An Open Source Office: GRO Case Study Part II

This article is meant for people who are interested in deploying open source software in Grassroots Organizations.  It should be of particular interest to non-profit technology assistance providers working with small resource-strapped organizations. Grassroots organizers, as well, may be interested in our overview of what it takes to bring open source into their own organization.

Introduction

The Low Income Networking and Communications (LINC) Project of the Welfare Law Center has helped over 40 low-income led organizing groups use technology more effectively. When we learned of Microsoft's decision to discontinue support of their older operating systems, including Windows 95, we began to explore the idea of using GNU/Linux, a free operating system that works well with older computers. With or without manufacturer support, we were also troubled by frequent crashes, prevalence of viruses and other problems associated with Microsoft Windows.  LINC set out to test the viability of building an open source office in the hope of improving our ability to provide stable desktop systems on donated computers.

GRO, or Grass Roots Organizing, is a Missouri community based, non-profit organization with 300 dues paying members (about 75% low-income), 4 Staff people (2 half time) and an annual budget of nearly $200k. GRO works to provide low-income families with tools and leadership opportunities to improve their conditions in both the real-life realm and the policy realm at local, state, and national levels. GRO's current work includes campaigns to: retain core social service programs, push positive welfare reform at the state and federal level, and improve mobile home environments and tenants' rights, demand implementation of recent Food Stamp improvement adopted by Congress, obtain oral and optical coverage in Medicaid, and preserve Medicaid itself. For more information about GRO, see: http://www.gromo.org.

Open source software can be a tool in empowering low-income leadership

We decided to work with GRO on this pilot project because they are an effective, membership based group of welfare recipients interested in bringing computers into their work. They were interested in exploring open source software and had a tie to a local Linux Users Group, MLUG. Our first case study on GRO was about the use of GNU/Linux as an operating system used on computers distributed to the homes of their low-income board members (see www.lincproject.org/toolkit/linux).

When we first started working with GRO, they were a brand new organization, with one organizer in Mexico, MO and another in Columbia, MO. Both organizers were working out of their homes, using their own computers, printers, and fax machines.  They used email and email lists to communicate with one another and with allied organizations, but had to rely heavily on their fax machines to share documents, in part because they were each running different software that didn't match up easily. (See Appendix 1 for an overview of open source software)

Next: Evaluating the Options