Interactions - November/December 2011

are similar, but also across sectors where the underlying goals, values, and/or inclinations about technology may differ drastically. Nonprofit organizations have relationships with a breadth of organizations and institutions. Understanding the nature of the various collaborations—be they with governmental agencies, corporations, families, or other institutions within the voluntary sector [ 7]—provides an opportunity to study the ways in which technology may mediate, foster, disrupt, or impede those diverse collaborations. In what ways do the different fundamental roles and values of organizations and institutions in various sectors influence technology adoption and use? How can we, as designers, help to bridge or build upon these differences? Studying the use of social media to identify, locate, and aid friends and neighbors who may have been affected in crisis situations, for example, Palen and her colleagues observed that nonprofit organizations have fundamentally failed to adapt to the innovative technology use of the public and must do so, moving forward [ 8]. What are the different orientations toward technology use in this context and what are the underlying roles or values that have seeded different practices? Interviews with staff members and volunteers from a crisis-response nonprofit suggest that concerns about the availability and robustness of various communication infrastructures during times of crisis constitute the primary factor in choosing to invest in and rely on some technologies over others. How does one, for example, bridge between community-sector innovation with new technologies and the pragmatic investment in and focus on legacy systems by organizations in the voluntary sector?

Originally trained as a biologist,
“Debbie,” the director of the environ-
mental nonprofit based in the wildlife
sanctuary, has a great deal of expertise
in local ecosystems. Working with a
variety of environmental nonprofits over
the course of her career, she has also
gained expertise working across sec-
tors with the diverse organizations and
institutions that make up the ecosystem
in which nonprofits function—working
with schools and youth groups to educate
children about the importance of local
ecosystems, working with businesses
that want to develop on environmentally
sensitive land, and working with govern-
mental agencies to aid in decision mak-
ing about how best to use and protect
those lands.
Often, critical ecosystems, such as the
wetlands in which Debbie has worked,
are undervalued by local communities
because the full extent of their environ-
mental value is not well understood. As
she describes it, key elements of interde-
pendencies are rendered invisible beneath
the surface of the water:
Back in the early ‘80s … a wetlands
was just a stinky place … [so] you
should have a marina there where lots
of people can have boats and have fun
… Every month we had public tours to
help sway people to understand there’s a
lot going on underneath the water that’s
very important…
The past two years that I have
spent conducting research with non-
profit organizations have helped to
reveal some of the dynamic interde-
pendencies so prevalent in the vol-
untary sector, particularly the many
ways in which nonprofit organiza-
tions must be shapeshifters in their
work and technology use, constantly
responding to cross-sector changes
in their surrounding ecosystem.
There are a number of ways in
which we as a field might respond.
We can operate at a surface level
and yet still be extraordinarily help-
ful, for example, by volunteering to
help nonprofit organizations main-
tain or upgrade their information
technology infrastructures or assist
them with the design of their web-
sites. But beneath the surface-level
needs of these dynamic, shapeshift-
ing organizations lie a set of under-
lying challenges that require more
thoughtful, long-term research—
research that builds on the exper-
tise of human-centered computing
along with the complementary
expertise of multiple domains of
computing and social sciences.

endnotes:

1. Van Til, J. Nonprofit organizations and social institutions. In The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. R.D. Herman, ed. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1994. 2. Brainard, L. A. and Siplon, P.D. Toward nonprofit organization reform in the voluntary spirit: Lessons from the Internet. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 33, 3 (2004), 435–457. 3. Goecks, J., Voida, A., Voida, S. and Mynatt, E.D. Charitable technologies: Opportunities for collaborative computing in nonprofit fundraising. Proc. CSCW 2008. ACM Press, New York, 2008, 689–698. 4. Ames, M.G., Go, J., Kaye, J., and Spasojevic, M. Understanding technology choices and values through social class. Proc. CSCW 2011. ACM Press, 2011, 55–64. 5. Voida, A., Harmon, M.E. and Al-Ani, B. Homebrew databases: Complexities of everyday information management in nonprofit organizations. Proc. CHI 2011. ACM Press, 2011, 915–924. 6. Merkel, C., Farooq, U., Xiao, L., Ganoe, C., Rosson, M.B., and Carroll, J.M. Managing tech-nology use and learning in nonprofit community organizations: Methodological challenges and opportunities. Proc. CHIMIT 2007. ACM Press, New York, 2007, Article No. 8. 7. Stoll, J., Edwards, W.K., and Mynatt, E.D. Interorganizational coordination and awareness in a nonprofit ecosystem. Proc. CSCW 2010. ACM Press, New York, 2010, 51–60. 8. Palen, L. and Liu, S.B. Citizen communications in crisis: anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation. Proc. CHI 2007. ACM Press, 2007, 727–736.

About the Author

Amy Voida is a researcher in the
Department of Informatics at the
University of California, Irvine. She
conducts research in human-
computer interaction, computer-
supported cooperative work, and
ubiquitous computing and is particularly interested
in understanding the lived experience of computa-
tional technologies.