About PTP: Why PTP exists (the opportunity and the need)

The Opportunity

Community-based social change efforts have struggled against many significant constraints. Lack of resources, scant political leverage, lack of respect for local voices and racism (and other "isms") are just a few of the challenges. Recent efforts focused on building new multi-cultural alliances, advancing innovative popular education techniques and training and greater attention to base-building organizations are increasing the effectiveness of community-based work. Cutting across this work is the hope and burgeoning belief that technology offers incredible potential to move community-organizing efforts through these constraints. Technology provides grassroots social change organizations the real possibility to transform the scope and scale of their work.

Technology can provide powerful tools to assist grassroots organizations in achieving their goals and leveraging their ability to create social change. These new technologies have the potential to transform what is possible by overcoming geographic barriers, enabling participation, equalizing access to information, assisting in the collection and analysis of research, increasing the ability to get a message to masses of people and strengthening communications within diverse alliances. Some current examples of organizers using technology to enhance their work include:

But for technology to deliver on its promise, grassroots groups will need assistance and skills to face the challenges it presents. PTP contends that many grassroots social change efforts face challenges that impede their strategic use of technology. These barriers include:

In addition, many organizing groups are comprised of low-income and people of color. The barriers to technology and information because of income and race are now just becoming clear.

The Need

The technology gap between affluent and low-income populations, as well as between people of color and white communities is stark and growing. Eighty percent of families making more than $100,000 have computers versus only 25% of those families making less than $30,000 a year. Households with incomes of $75,000 and higher are twenty times more likely to have access to the Internet than households at the lowest income levels -- and nine times more likely to have a computer in their home.

Racial inequities in computer ownership and Internet access jump significantly when household incomes drop below $40,000. In such cases, African Americans are less than half as likely as whites to own a home computer and about 60 percent as likely to have Internet access. Hispanic households are roughly two-fifths as likely to have home Internet access as White households and one-third as likely as Asian/Pacific Islander homes (NTIA 1999).

Nonprofit organizations as a whole are behind the curve in adopting sophisticated computer technology, and organizing groups that work with people of color and low-income communities are often much further behind. In late 1997 the Albert A. List Foundation commissioned a survey of 50 progressive social change organizations about their technology capacities and needs. This survey revealed that most groups have one good computer (150-200mhz), one decent computer, and many inefficient old computers often not capable of running compatible or recent versions of software. While most groups have a modem, it is used primarily for limited email functions, not for more strategic uses. Only 19 use email to communicate with their board, ten to communicate with members, and 17 to communicate with media. These statistics reveal a need for equipment, but when asked to prioritize needs, the overwhelming majority of respondents listed access to good training and technical assistance as a primary need, with hardware and equipment a distant second.

Surveys and interviews conducted by the Progressive Technology Project have revealed that, although there are a growing number of technical assistance providers focusing on technology, these organizations are not adequately serving PTP's target audience of grassroots community organizers. Furthermore, the technology appropriate to a community-based organization whose membership is multiracial and low-income may differ from that appropriate to a more advocacy-oriented group whose subscribership or donors are largely middle class and more likely to have computers. The technical assistance field needs a more diverse set of voices that understand the culture and nature of organizing.

Some grassroots organizing groups have been using, on a limited scale, technology for mobilization, research, and basic infrastructure. Today however, these examples are the exception. They need to be shared, more opportunities for innovation need to be created, and basic capacities of community organizers need to be strengthened. Strategic use of technology can greatly enhance the ability for community organizers and campaigns to accomplish their goals. With the declining cost of technology there is a new window of opportunity to increase equity in access and expertise so that grassroots organizing groups have the tools they need to accomplish their missions.