The Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) was established at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Maryland, USA in 1998 by Dr. Joan Korenman. Dr. Korenman was one of the first women in the U.S. to recognize the alarming decline in the participation of women in information technology fields (IT) nationally. In fact, the participation of undergraduate women in computer science has declined from 37% in 1985 to 22% today.[1] Her first attempt at addressing the challenge was to hire a fellow academician to create a road map for change. But that effort was not successful because the challenge in front of them was not simply to understand the issues and develop programs to create change, but also to fund those programs in a long-term sustainable way. Like many nonprofit organizations, the Center’s early focus was on the mission and not on the process for implementation. Funding was awarded to the Center, but once the funding was gone, so too were the programs they supported. So how do you build a Center and sustain it? What are the challenges and opportunities in the IT world and specifically for women’s organizations?
Five years later the Center has managed to accrue $8.5 million in funding from multiple sources and continues to generate income to sustain its growing staff of 40 part-time and full-time employees providing programs for girls, women college students, women in the workforce and women entrepreneurs, both in the U.S. and internationally. The research-based Center has generated national and international press and is growing exponentially, not because its mission or vision is better than those of other women in IT and engineering programs, but rather because it has a process in place to ensure a continued source of funding and support.
The Airport
Organizations working for women and ICT clearly recognize the need for partnerships and typically collaborate with government, academic, and/or business partners to achieve their goals. Funding is usually sought from one or two familiar sources from among these partners. When these options become unavailable, the nonprofit fails for lack of support. This story repeats itself over and over again around the world.
In the US there is a whole field of study entitled “development,” which has nothing to do with the field we think of when we consider the advancement of developing countries. Development in this paper refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to structure effective organizations that are positioned to negotiate and receive funding from multiple sectors, demonstrate through evaluation a return on the funder’s investment, and after every grant be positioned to go after and receive additional investment from the original donor, and/or with the new track record, develop new sources of funds. Women’s advocacy organizations know we need to have IT and engineering professionals, women’s advocates, government agencies, business leaders, and others to create real change in the world for women, but the secret partner that we do not discuss is the person who knows how to secure funding from a range of partners so that we can sustain and expand what we build. We need resource development to sustain the women and ICT programs themselves that work to support ICT4D.
The Runway Lights
Truly the world would be a wonderful place if everyone saw the beauty of our ideas and simply handed over funding with a handshake. In some informal sectors that may actually happen, but today there is more and more pressure from funding agencies to account for funding and the impact those resources should have. Nonprofits must be structured from their origin with a framework that will allow funding agencies to understand exactly where the organization is going and its expected outcomes. Development efforts for sustaining women and ICT programs include the following steps:
1. Identify or create a community of like-minded individuals
2. Develop clear and internally consistent mission, vision, values, and goals
3. Align activities to the goals and mission.
4. Develop leadership to set the vision and support the goals
5. Inventory and leverage organizational assets
6. Develop up front an integrated evaluation process
7. Prepare a thoughtful, comprehensive but not inflated budget
8. Lay and develop groundwork for healthy partnerships including written agreements of mutual expectations and metrics
9. Develop a strong marketing strategy
10. Organize and provide resources for a knowledgeable fundraising team to develop a diversified portfolio of funding sources.
As in financial investment circles, it can be disastrous to put all one’s eggs in one basket.
The Flightplan
With the help of Ann Holmes of Anne Holmes and Associates and with some seed funding from CISCO, Inc., CWIT has created a customizable training session to help women’s efforts wherever they are in their establishment: newly forming, building capacity or seeking sustainability. This is not glamorous work but it is necessary. In my international work I have found that women in particular are frustrated by their inability to gather the resources needed to create change for women and ICTs in developing countries. But we need to focus not only on how we help the women who benefit from the work of the nonprofits, but also how we help the nonprofits themselves. Our nonprofits are the geese giving away golden eggs, but the efforts will be short-lived unless we find sustainable ways of ensuring all our efforts take flight. This will not happen in workshops, through classes or by reading well prepared books on the subject. What is needed is the establishment of communities of practice, the creation of mentoring organizations that share knowledge, and the dedication of women around the world to share their knowledge skills and abilities so that we can all take flight together.
[1] http://www.ncwit.org/pdf/2006_NCWIT_Statistics.pdf. Accessed 9/4/06.
