We launch a new series on Information Technology (IT) as a capacity-building tool for microenterprise programs.

Our membership survey last year revealed that Information Technology has become a critical factor in programs' ability to accomplish their goals. In response to the survey, and to address our own need for improved technology, over the past few months CAMEO has attended several technology workshops and conferences. Our goal in this has been to sift through the many resources available to nonprofit organizations and offer the fruit of our research to you.

Topics in this series will include: technology planning, raising funds for office technology, building an effective Internet presence, online fundraising, and - very important - where to turn for help when it breaks. Our research will continue, and the topics we cover will be a reflection of CAMEO's own work to build its capacity through technology. As we continue to learn, we'll add new articles to the series.

Reality check—is your office technology driving you crazy?
Sometimes it seems like our technology runs us, not the other way around. That's because it's true: too much of the time, technology just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. We heard this repeatedly during the Succeeding as a Dot Org conference in San Jose in May. Speakers, workshop leaders, and participants alike voiced similar opinions that boil down to this: all of us who (like it or not) "consume" technology are in fact guinea pigs in a great New Technology experiment. Marketing departments of hardware and software companies are fond of using the word, "solution" to describe their products. It has been a relief to have our rather bumpy technology experience confirmed by credentialed experts in the field. Technology "solutions" are invariably part solution and part problem.

If you use computers at your office, you know it's true. Any piece of hardware or software can have inherent "bugs" that make it behave in unpredictable ways that are completely beyond your control. An inevitable and time-consuming part of office life now involves coping with malfunctions. Your computer freezes at the exact moment you're trying to generate a report for an imminent meeting; your color inkjet printer suddenly starts producing ugly, splotchy pages; or no matter how many ways you try, you can't print a full page of mailing labels from your database. These are just a few of many, many real-life examples from the CAMEO office. We suspect yours would also fill a book. We all need help! Through this Building Capacity through Technology Series, let's help each other solve problems and put our information technology to its fullest use.

We welcome your participation in this series. Please let us know if there are specific topics of concern to your organization. And if you have found helpful resources in your own research, drop us a note at cameo@microbiz.org and we'll pass your tips on to all of our members.

Tip Number 1:
If you do nothing else, log on to www.techsoup.org and register. Billing itself as "the technology place for nonprofits," Techsoup is a fabulous resource for information on technology, and it understands the challenges of nonprofit life. Once registered, you can visit the Techsoup Message Boards and get answers to many of your questions—for free. CAMEO has used this part of the site twice: once when we couldn't figure out how to do something (we were tactfully informed that the thing we were trying to do was impossible—so we quit trying to do it!), and once when we were simply wondering about how two programs might interact. In the latter case, one of the techies who lurk at the site sent us the address of a website that had lots of info on the topic. Both responses came within half a day. A helpful, friendly, and very rich website!