Long before Facebook and Twitter, online communities were based around Bulletin Board Services and Internet Relay Chats. It was in one such virtual community, The Well, that in 1987 Daniel Ben-Horin was inspired to create The CompuMentor Project. His idea was that technology gurus, or ‘mentors’, would volunteer on technologically intensive projects and initiatives to assist nonprofit organizations adapt to emerging information technologies.
In 2008, The CompuMentor Project changed its name to TechSoup Global, and today the organization is the largest not-for-profit provider of technology support in the world. TechSoup Global operates in Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East with help from independent capacity-building NGOs.
Users can read articles and other educational material, reference and contribute to TechSoup’s knowledge base, participate in training sessions and webinars, discussions, share policies and best practices, and collaborate online and in-person.
TechSoup is the exclusive North American distributor of Microsoft product donations, and offers hundreds of software and hardware donations from over sixty partners, including Adobe, Sun, Symantic, Cicso, Citrix, and SAP.
Both individuals and organizations can sign-up for TechSoup via their websites, and registering your nonprofit organization is relatively painless, requiring the user submit their organization’s mission, annual budget, and patented letters of incorporation. The website states the approval process takes 5-7 business days, however, our organization was approved the very next day, and eligible for nearly all software product donations. Their customer service team is very quick to respond to comments and questions via e-mail.
If you are in the nonprofit world and your organization is paying retail prices for Microsoft and other products out of your operating budget you are losing money by not accepting donations through TechSoup. Although many of us are subject to larger umbrella organizations for technology support or purchasing, TechSoup can still provide valuable knowledge and insight into many emerging and long standing technological topics.
https://www.techsoupcanada.ca
http://www.techsoupglobal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSoup_Global
http://www.ryot.org/partners/techsoup-global
http://www.well.com
Filed under: information technology, IT crowd, not-for-profit, social change | Tagged: adobe, best practices, bis, cisco, citrix, compumentor, daniel ben-horin, development, discussion, donation, information systems, information technology, it, mentoring, microsoft, nonprofit, sap, sun symantic, technical articles, technology, techsoup, techsoup canada, techsoup global, training, volunteer, webinar | Comments Off on What’s a TechSoup Kitchen?
