Internet technologies
This category covers Internet technologies, including Internet access, routers, email, web services, and domain names.
The Internet is a key tool for enabling many of the transformative technologies that can allow non-profit organization to greatly increase their program effectiveness. The Internet is a communications medium with global reach and can enable a wide variety of communication channels, allowing NPO's to communicate with staff, clients, partners, funders, and other stakeholders.
Internet access
All NPO's should have a dedicated broadband Internet connection of some kind. For most organizations, a basic consumer-level DSL service is both fast and economical. In areas where DSL is not available, a shared dial-up account may be the best economical option.
For organizations that need more bandwidth, there are a great many options, including high-bandwidth DSL connections, cable, wireless, and leased lines, such as T1.
Most organizations can use dynamic IP addressing for their Internet connection. This means that the IP address changes from time to time. Organizations that need to host services such as web, mail, or VPN, will most likely need a static IP address, which is often an additional monthly charge.
There are a number of ways to judge an organization's bandwidth needs. Most DSL and cable Internet connections are asymmetric, with more bandwidth available for downloads than uploads, which is fine for most organizations. Organizations that regularly send and receive large files may find that they need additional bandwidth to transfer data in a reasonable amount of time. Organizations that rely on a wide area network (WAN) to connect geographically separated networks may need more bandwidth. Organizations that need to provide remote access to network resources may find they need additional bandwidth.
Cable modems are often higher bandwidth than DSL, but the basic service is more expensive, and most offices do not have cable TV wiring already installed, while phone wiring, which DSL runs over, is almost always in place.
Routers
In order for multiple computers to share an Internet connection, Internet traffic needs to be routed between them. A router is a dedicated device that routes traffic between computers and an Internet connection. These are low-cost devices that often include additional features such as network switches, wireless networking access points, robust firewalls, virtual private networking servers, and print servers.
We recommend getting separate devices for most network functions, including routers. Though all-in-one devices are often cheaper, being able to mix-and-match devices provides more flexibility, and is easier to support, manage, and maintain.
One exception to this is VPN enabled routers. For security reasons, we recommend using routers with integrated VPN services, as opposed to a separate VPN server.
(Router capacity. How much can a Linksys handle?)
For most organizations using DSL or Cable connections, a basic router such as XXX is appropriate. Organizations using dial-up can use similar devices, such as XXX. For organizations using leased lines, they will need to purchase higher capacity routers, which is outside of the HSC scope.
Routers should provide network address translation (NAT), a technology that allows for multiple computers to share one IP address, which also provides a basic level of security. It is generally a bad idea to provide a computer with a routable IP address and placing it on the public Internet.
Internet Domain
An Internet domain is an address on the network, such as organization.org. Domain names are inexpensive (~$10 / year), and very flexible. CompuMentor strongly recommends that any organization using the Internet as a communication medium purchase their own domain name.
Email
Email is the Internet's killer app, and is the primary communications media for many organizations. We recommend that all NPO staff have their own work-only email account. Rather than relying on free mail services such as hotmail or yahoo, or staff's personal accounts, NPO's should setup an email system with an ISP that uses a unique domain name, owned by the NPO, and use the POP protocol to receive mail.
We do not recommend that organizations bring email service in-house, hosting their own mail servers. The cost for a hosting service is significantly less than the support costs of hosting your own email service, in almost all circumstances.
Why not use free email services? An organization needs to own and be responsible for its email. A free email account is basically the property of the hosting service, limiting an organizations access to an employee's email.
(Link to a discussion of legal responsibilities of email.)
Some organizations may want to use Microsoft Exchange Server, which is a messaging and groupware platform that integrates email with calendaring and other collaboration tools. Exchange requires significantly more resources than basic email service, and as a result, generally costs more to implement. Exchange messaging services are available from ISP's at a reasonable cost. To make the most of Exchange, an organization should be using Windows and Outlook. Organizations with their own IT staff can support internally hosted Exchange. Organizations without internal IT support resources should carefully consider the support costs of hosting their own server. Keep in mind for any sort of internally hosted email system there needs to be reliable Internet connectivity so that the organization can be confident that mail is being delivered promptly.
Web
An organization's website is its front door on the Internet, and can serve as a very effective way to distribute information to a community or constituency, solicit feedback from a community, organize volunteers and community members, and solicit donations, among other things. Most organizations should not host their own website, but should rely on a dedicated hosting service, that will operate and maintain the underlying technology.
Website content can be designed and maintained by NPO staff using tools listed in the software section. Special functions, such a registration forms and online donations, should be developed and implemented by experienced web developers.
Link out to TechSoup discussions on web design.
Mailing lists
Email mass mailing lists are one of the most common uses of email. There are a variety of different approaches to this function. From basic distribution lists, where an email is sent to a static list of email addresses maintained in a users address book to specialized applications that send, track, and analyze email using sophisticated databases. The approach that is most appropriate for an organization depends on how much email and how integrated with the organizations databases.
Distribution lists are the simplest method for emailing large groups. However, this is a one-way method, where the sender maintains the list of addresses, and the recipients have no direct way of joining or quitting the list. Basically, this method does not scale to a large size very well, and we recommend that organizations use a dedicated mailing list application for lists of more than one hundred addresses.
There are dedicated mailing list applications that are designed to handle large email lists. Some of these are stand alone desktop applications that manage mailing lists that are similar to distribution lists, but with features that allow improved management and some automation. These applications are appropriate for handling larger mailing lists, especially for one-to-many communication, though they are not appropriate for larger discussion lists where there is a lot of traffic from many different sources.
Listservs are a class of server-side software applications that specialize in maintaining email lists and handling incoming and outgoing email from multiple senders. Most of these applications can allow recipients to add or remove themselves from the list, determine what format they receive the mail, etc. Many of these applications are very configurable, allowing for different levels of privacy, security, outgoing and incoming mail handling, etc. These applications are appropriate for large discussion lists, as the host of the does not need to actively manage the list for it run smoothly.