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USING THE INTERNET AND A WEB-BASED RESOURCE

CENTRE FOR TRAINING, LEARNING AND
ACCESSING RESOURCES

Alan Bentley
Volunteer Centre of Hamilton and District (United Kingdom)

Prepared for the 2001 INDEPENDENT SECTOR Spring Research Forum

The Impact of Information Technology on Civil Society:

How will online innovation, philanthropy, and volunteerism serve the common good?

Washington, DC
March 15 – 16, 2001
 Using the Internet and a Web-Based Resource Centre
for Training, Learning and Accessing Resources

Alan Bentley

Background

The Canadian Government’s 1999 Report of the Panel on Accountability and

Governance in the Voluntary Sector identified capacity as a key challenge to the growth

and development of non-profit organizations. Many non-profit organizations struggle

with the problem of providing adequate training and resources to their staff and

volunteers. As the complexity of the issues facing the voluntary sector continue to

increase, having access to appropriate and easily accessed resources will assist the staff

and volunteers of non-profit organizations in enhancing the management of their

organizations.

Recent advances in Internet technology and reductions in the cost of using the

Internet have made it possible for non-profit organizations to access a growing number of

web-based resources. To assist these organizations in accessing the resources they

require to effectively manage their organizations, the Volunteer Centre of Hamilton &

District is developing a web-based resource centre (TOTAL: Tools for Organizational

Training, Assistance and Learning) to support both staff and volunteers working for small

to medium-sized voluntary sector organizations. The TOTAL web-based resource centre

will be comprised of four key elements:

1. Online access to resources through Hyper Links to web-based sites and resources.

2. Email Discussion List, Usenet Newsgroup, Web-based Forum, electronic newsletter,

events calendar, online training, etc.

3. An online interactive user profile which will enable users to develop a profile and

access resources appropriate to their skill levels, interests and needs.

4. The development of an online volunteer consultant service, through which users will

be able to connect with experts and be provided with information specific to their

requests.

Objectives

Many non-profit organizations launch new programs that fail by not properly

researching the market, screening the concept and testing the market. To ensure that the

TOTAL Project is a viable program, a feasibility study was undertaken. The objectives

of this study were:

1. To identify and evaluate the methods that non-profit organizations currently use for

staff training, accessing resources and educational opportunities, and the criteria used

to decide upon the types and frequency of organizational training.

2. To evaluate why people affiliated with small-medium non-profit organizations access

or do not access training/educational opportunities.

3. To identify barriers that small-medium non-profit organizations encounter in

accessing the Web and determine potential ways of overcoming these barriers.

4. To ascertain the types and priorities of resources that people want to access in the

proposed web site.

5. To assess the level of interest and willingness of non-profit organizations’ staff to use

a web-based resource centre and determine whether it will be worthwhile to develop

the site.
Methods

The study was comprised of three phases. The first phase was the exploratory

research phase, which was used to learn more about the market prior to the formal

research survey. The exploratory research was comprised of secondary data research on

education, training techniques, the Internet and the Web.

The second phase involved two focus groups of 25 staff and volunteers from local

non-profit organizations. The purpose of the focus groups was to explore the concept,

discuss the attendees’ views and perceptions of the Internet and training and to delve

more deeply into reasons why they would or would not use a web-based tool such as

TOTAL.

The third phase was the formal research phase using a telephone survey of 150

staff with local non-profit organizations to test the hypotheses and to measure interest

levels.

Overview on the Internet

The explosion of data on the Internet is making it easier and cheaper than ever for

charities to access detailed information. However, many charities aren’t effectively using

this tool; many people get “bogged down” in the sheer volume of information that can be

found on the web and are unable to efficiently search for data. As well, many individuals

are unable to distinguish what information is accurate or relevant.

In 1999 there were over 2,000,000 commercial web sites and more than

1,000,000,000 web pages, which are increasing by 7,000,000 pages per week. The

growing mountain of information on the Internet is threatening people’s ability to stay

abreast of it. With the amount of staff time it can use up, the Internet can be the most
expensive free service in the world. People can spend hours in fruitless web searches

when the information could have been easily obtained through other sources. (Dickey &

Hall, 1999). The key is to be selective.

A cataloging system for the Internet does not exist. Michael Gorman, dean of

library services at the California State University-Fresno, said it best:

“The net has been compared to a huge used bookstore (or dare one say library?) in which

all the books have been piled higgledy-piggledy after being wrenched from their bindings

and having their indexes and front matter removed. There would be souls – dedicated

serendipitists with time on their hands – who would enjoy spending hours searching in

this vandalized library for meaningful clumps of text and pictures without bothering from

whence they came or which human mind created that text and those pictures.”

(Ruderman, 1999)

No one in a non-profit organization has the time to search through the mounds of

information on the Internet; some of it potentially golden, while much of it is irrelevant.

Given enough time, anyone can uncover interesting tidbits of information on the Internet.

However the staffs of non-profit organizations operate on a tighter time frame than that

enjoyed by the casual web surfer. The goal is to not only find the information, but to find

it efficiently, that is to say the best information in the shortest amount of time.

Learning & Training Issues

Futurist Lewis Perelman once observed, “Learning is what most adults will do for

a living in the 21st century”. That statement captures the essence of where we are today.

People are best positioned for success when they can learn quickly and easily pick up

new skills and capabilities. Otherwise, they won’t have the skills that their jobs will
demand of them. (Piskurich, 1993) In his book “The Adult Learner: A Neglected

Species”, Malcolm Knowles observed that adults require certain conditions to learn;

which are particularly relevant to professional development and the continuing education

of the staff of non-profit organizations:

1. Learners must know why something is important to learn;

2. Learners must be shown how to direct themselves through information;

3. The topic must be related to the learners’ own experience;

4. People will not learn until they are ready and motivated to learn;

5. Learners must be helped in overcoming inhibitions, behaviours and beliefs about

learning. (Knowles, 1984)

The Internet has been found to enhance professional development and the

productivity of training and education in several ways. Most obviously, by providing a

powerful and flexible medium, the Internet enables developers to construct higher-quality

courseware for a wider range of topics than was previously the case. The Internet is a

flexible and highly functional medium for delivering instruction as a result of two-way

interactive communication, on-demand communication protocol and wide

communication bandwidth.

Furthermore, web-based learning tools, appropriately used, can replace labour and

consequently lower staffing costs. Finally, the Internet has become a less expensive way

of delivering instruction than traditional methods since hardware costs have rapidly

dropped in price and are continuing to decrease, network costs are quickly declining, and

de facto standards are making it easier to develop sharable courseware. (McArthur &

Lewis; 1998)
 Email and the internet-based training can be a perfect medium for the old

computers and slow modems that are so commonly found in so many non-profit

organizations. In particular, the email and Internet format of training with its

asynchronous nature mean that training can be flexible and students can participate in

lessons and assignments whenever they want. As a result,

• Time zones become irrelevant.

• Study can be pursued at times of day or night when Internet access and telephone

service may be cheaper.

• Those sharing computer equipment can stagger their use of it.

• People can study outside of the office, after they have returned from travel

assignments, when their children are sleeping, while recovering from illness, etc.

(Gross, 1998)

Although the technology-gap has narrowed since 1996, there are still many people

who are uncomfortable with technology and are resistant to taking any course or training

online. As well, a tension exists on the “real time” versus “flexibility” continuum.

While many participants enjoy being able to access courses at any time and to have

classmates from different locations, they do miss the “interaction” and the chance for live

communications that they would experience in classes or at conferences.

As distance learning crosses cultural, linguistic and national boundaries, we need

to incorporate, reflect, respect, but not become so absorbed in these differences that the

fundamental subject matter becomes distorted or overwhelmed. In a virtual classroom

where you cannot read faces, or enjoy the luxury of immediate comments and criticisms
by students, a sensitive teacher is confronted by a complexity of dilemmas. (Gross,

1998)

Research Findings

Training and professional development is very important for all the staff of non-

profit organizations, however, they do not receive enough of it. In particular, the staff

and volunteers of small and medium-sized non-profit organizations do not undertake

needed professional development and training, or access appropriate resources due to the

high cost, time away from the office and availability and accessibility of appropriate

educational opportunities, resources and training. Small to medium sized non-profit

organizations and many larger ones as well, do not have sufficient financial resources to

ensure that their staff and volunteers receive the necessary training and education or even

purchase the resources they need to assist them in effectively planning, implementing,

managing and evaluating their programs and services.

A secondary reason why many staff in small to medium sized organizations do

not take part in necessary professional development is that courses/conferences

frequently necessitate the staff to be away from the office for several days. In most of

these organizations, there is simply not enough staff available to absorb the workload of

others attending conferences and still provide an appropriate level of service to their

clients.

A high percentage of the staff of non-profit organizations’ staff (98%) consider

the Internet to be a good source for information, resources and training materials.

However, the time and effort required finding web sites with useful, accurate and reliable

information was a source of considerable frustration with many people (57%).

Consequently, most people are looking for a few web sites that can provide most of their

training, and/or resources needs. These individuals feel that the staff and volunteers of

their organizations would find such as site to be of great benefit and thus regularly use

this type of resource. It did not matter whether or not the people were affiliated with a

small or large organization.

Many non-profit organizations are already using the Internet to some extent for

the purpose of researching new ideas on programs and activities, fund raising, best

practices, funding sources, or for promoting their organizations. When researching

information, people found some web sites more useful than others for several reasons:

• Some web sites were easy to use and navigate;

• Some sites linked them to other useful sites and information; and

• Some sites enabled the users to obtain reports on topical subjects so that they did not

have to purchase them.

On the other hand, there were many concerns about the Internet and specific web

sites:

• Many web sites are very slow;

• It is hard to find information on some sites;

• Once you “register” on a site, you start to receive spam and junk email;

• While some sites are easy to navigate, many others are difficult and convoluted;

• There is universal concern about the reliability of the information that you obtain –

the users do not know if the sources are credible;

• To find relevant information you have to wade through many pages often resulting in

unsuccessful searches, which people find extremely frustrating.

 Access to the Internet is an issue for many non-profit organizations because it is

too costly. Many of the small to medium-sized organizations have insufficient funding to

pay the hardware costs and the monthly Internet fees for all or in some cases, any of their

staff. As a result, access to the Internet is often limited to just a few people at the office

and many people must access the Internet from home.

The key ways of encouraging people with the non-profit organizations to use

specific web sites on a consistent basis are to ensure that these web sites are regularly

updated; have credible, reliable and accurate information; are easy to use and navigate;

and must have the type of information for which they are looking.

While many non-profit organizations either currently use, or are planning to use

the Internet for accessing resources or training, it is useful to note that there are few

Canadian on-line resources. This was emphasized in Heather Halpenny’s Master of

Distance Education Thesis, “Survey of Available On-Line Training for Canadian

Voluntary Boards – 2000” for Athabasca University which indicated that little on-line

training for non-profit organizations is currently available in Canada.

A high percentage of staff and volunteers with the small to medium-sized non-profit

organizations would like to use the Internet to access resources, training and educational

materials, if it was affordable, easy to access relevant materials from credible sources and

they could easily download appropriate materials. The subjects that these individuals

most wanted to find on the Internet include the following (ranked by percentage):

• Program Evaluation (86%)

• Public & Media Relations (82%)

• Best Practices (79%)

• Fund Raising (78%)

• Board Development (72%)

• Computers & the Internet (69%)

The specific features that these same people wanted on a web-based resource centre are

the following:

• An annotated library of reviewed resources (articles, books, templates, best practices,

etc.), which would be available on the web site or through links to other web sites

(99%).

• Links with local volunteer centre web sites (96%).

• An annotated listing of useful web sites, with Hyper Links (96%).

• A “What’s New” feature, which would list all upcoming events and new resources,

programs and services of organizations in an area (84%).

• An easy to use, interactive and searchable database (84%).

• A Volunteer Consultant or “Ask the Expert” feature, which would link a person with

a volunteer expert in the field (78%).

• A field on which visitors can ask questions, submit comments, suggest new resources

or make complaints (68%).

• A Listservs or facilitated on-line discussion on which people can read and post

questions and answers (67%).

Conclusions

Capacity is a key challenge to the growth and development of non-profit

organizations. Due to financial and staffing constraints, many organizations struggle

with providing adequate training and resources to their staff and volunteers. Recent

advances in Internet technology, the reduction of the cost of using the Internet and the

growth in the breadth of information available, have made it realistic for non-profit

organizations to use the Internet as a way of ensuring that their staff and volunteers have

access to adequate training and resources.

While the staff and volunteers of non-profit organizations ant and need access to

resources and training on a regular basis, they are limited by finances and time. A web

site, which would provide reliable and accurate information from credible sources, would

be highly valued by the non-profit community. The staff in these organizations feel that

it would greatly enhance their ability to efficiently manage their programs and services.

However, such web sites are currently not in operation in Canada.

For these reasons, the Volunteer Centre of Hamilton & District is proceeding with

the development of the TOTAL web site, which will provide easy access to resources,

training and educational opportunities for the staff and volunteers of non-profit

organizations.
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