Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet: a rich history!
09:56, 1 May 2009
.. Posted in techculture and tech to help.. Link
Back in February, I decided to start compiling a brief review of the early history (before 1996) of Nonprofits and the Internet. I started compiling the history because I was tired of all the talk about how everything happening now regarding the Internet is brand new, never-been-done-before; having been involved with nonprofit organizations for more than 20 years, and having gotten started on the Internet in 1994, I knew this wasn't true, and wanted to prove it.
What nonprofits are doing now with the Internet is, in fact, not much different from what at least some of them were doing in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1980s, there were already several nonprofit organizations and many dedicated volunteers who were helping to promote nonprofit use of the Internet. So many nonprofits were far ahead of their time regarding use of the Internet by nonprofits, and there were more than a few people donating their time and expertise in their spare time, outside of their full-time job responsibilities, trying to help more nonprofits get real value out of Internet technologies. This page attempts to list the efforts of these early supporters in the 1980s, through 1995.
The page is much longer and more content-rich than I ever dreamed it would be when I got started, and I'm really happy at how much information I've been able to gather -- thanks everyone who has contributed. But... it's been disconcerting at how many people I angered because:
- My cut-off date was December 31, 1995; anything after that, I didn't include. 1996 was, IMO, the year that nonprofit use of the Internet truly exploded, and I welcome someone else to profile that year. Good luck with that.
- That I wouldn't accept an entry unless the information was at least marginally-verifiable, referencing a web page or even an old URL that's no longer valid or an old USENET posting, etc. I got lots of "I think that maybe so-and-so was doing something-or-other, but I don't really remember" emails and that's not enough information to go on.
- That I required submitters to provide one-to-three sentences with some specifics about what trainings, materials and other resources the organization or project undertook to help nonprofit organizations use the Internet in 1995 or earlier (rather than buying and reading the last 100 pages of a book in order to write the one or two sentences myself, as one author demanded).
Anyway, enjoy the page, and additional material is welcomed, per the very minimal requirements mentioned above.
