Web Conferencing Makes Sense for the Nonprofit

  

  

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In a nonprofit world, not everything is viewed in black and white when choosing your next technology solution. Even if you are making a simple upgrade to technology you already use, the innovations that have emerged since your install can overwhelm you with options that you may not understand or simply don’t believe you need.

Web Conferencing and Nonprofits

The same can be said for Web conferencing. It is possible that some in the nonprofit sector may still be in the dark as to what Web conferencing can actually offer their organization. Similar to a conference call, Web conferencing adds an Internet component to the process.

Attendees to the conference can then view slides, applications on a presenter’s desktop or maybe even a whiteboard used for taking notes and capturing ideas. A presentation can be recorded and posted on a website for absent attendees to use at a later time. While it may sound overwhelming, you don’t need to understand how it works to benefit from what the technology offers.

For many nonprofits, this is still a new area of navigation as until recently; it wasn’t economically feasible to implement the technology. Now that Web conferencing has evolved into somewhat of an “offering for every man”, it is no longer financially out of the reach of the nonprofit.

Obstacles Still Exist

Now that the financial obstacle has been removed, there are still some nonprofits that have yet to even investigate the potential of Web conferencing in their environment. This hesitation could be driven by a simple lack of understanding or it is the result of too much to do and too few people to get the job done.

The problem with the latter argument is Web conferencing can streamline productivity and make things more efficient in the nonprofit environment. While implementation and learning the system may seem like time-consuming tasks, innovations in this technology have made the process quick and simple. Now, the most time consuming elements may be simply playing with the new tools.

Social Responsibility

Aside from the technological advances that can benefit your organization, there is also the element of promoting social responsibility in protecting the environment. If a meeting is normally done with 12 people who must travel up to 30 miles to attend – or fly in once a month to cast a vote – Web conferencing can dramatically cut the amount of CO2 being caused by your meetings.

Not only does this greener approach to doing business cut costs and enable a more positive approach to doing business, it also provides your organization with a new marketing platform. In using more socially responsible technology to protect the environment, you can implement this concept into your campaigns to drive membership and donations – priorities for any nonprofit.