Keys to Sustaining Your Community Technology Center

It is difficult today to sustain a community technology center ( CTC) compared to just a few years ago. Policy makers, leaders, and everyday people are more concerned with issues like crime, education, and poverty than the technology gap between rich and poor. Federal funding for the Department of Education's Community Technology Center program is in danger of being eliminated. The technology industry has been hit hard by the poor economy, and is generally less involved in corporate philanthropy. As local, state, and federal governments cut funding for basic services such as health and childcare, many private foundations are shifting their giving priorities to ease this shortfall. If community technology projects are going to continue, they need a sustainability plan that addresses these realities.

In 2001 and 2002 I conducted workshops on sustaining CTCs for the America Connects Consortium ( ACC) with urban and rural organizations around the country, including community-based nonprofits, schools, and institutions of higher education. This article reflects the insights, challenges, and successes from those workshops, as well as CompuMentor's work with CTCs in California since 1995.

Prerequisite for Sustainability: Committed Leadership

In the ACC workshops, we meet many staff members who believe their leaders are not committed to the CTC. They say they get less than their share of resources. They say money raised for the CTC has been spent on something else. Far too often, various programs within an organization compete internally for resources, and it is assumed by management that a CTC can run on a small budget, with donated equipment and lots of volunteers. If this is the case in your organization, the challenge of sustainability is insurmountable. But if the leaders of your organization understand the resources necessary, and are committed to raising them, the keys presented below will be helpful.

Key #1: Have a Good Definition of "Sustainability"

Sustainability means more than having enough funding for your program to survive. Certainly funding is important, but having funding is the consequence of sustainability. When I asked people running CTCs what sustainability means to them, their answers included:

• Independence
• The ability to replicate programs
• The ability to keeping a program going
• A sense of community ownership
• A strong program and organizational identity
• The ability to expand services
• Measurable outcomes
• Having income streams
• Meeting a community's needs
• Integration with other programs in the organization

These are much larger concerns than merely raising money. I believe sustainability means that the program continues to develop based on changing community needs. Planning for sustainability needs to address issues other than raising money.

Key #2: Develop a Meaningful Mission Statement

We all know that there is still a gap in computer use between the rich and poor, and it is a very important issue. Yet it is no longer the trendy issue of the day with the public or policymakers. At the height of digital divide mania (the mid- to late-1990s), many community-based organizations started CTCs with tenuous connections to their core missions. These CTCs focused on computer access and training. Various grant programs funded the purchase of equipment and staffing. Certainly people needed to get online, and they needed to learn how to use a computer, but in the end, technology is only a tool to help users reach other goals. If the computer skills acquired by your participants are not part of an overall program that addresses more basic needs like job training, delinquency abatement, civic participation, or economic development, why bother learning them? The intended outcomes of a CTC program must be changes in areas such as these, not technology access and training. Framing your CTC in these terms is important both internally and externally. Consider the following groups:

• Funders: According to a 1999 Foundation Center survey, less than one percent of foundation funding goes to technology. Human services (including youth) accounted for 25 percent; education, 20 percent; health, 12 percent; arts and culture, 14 percent; and the environment, seven percent. If you are running a "technology program," you are severely limiting your funding options. If you are running an adult literacy program that uses computers as a tool toward GED preparation, there is a lot more funding available to you.
• Participants: While our culture has changed, many disadvantaged people don't see computers as something important in their lives (see The Divide is Social, Not Digital by Charles Jones, Pacific News Service). Successful CTCs link technology training to what participants see as important, and do this in a community-friendly context, creating an environment where members of their community will feel comfortable and welcomed. With adults, job training or education motivate them to participate in a CTC. Youth are motivated to participate by the ability to communicate and to have a voice. But these are generalities — you must know your community, and know the specific interests and concerns of the people you serve.
• Businesses: Often businesses want trained and effective employees. Claiming that your CTC offers "computer access and training" is not going to motivate a corporation to hire your participants, or encourage a small business to write you a check or donate in-kind goods. A key to sustainability is understanding the real concerns of the businesses that can help you. Computers skills are usually only one of many attributes an employer is looking for in a potential employee. Often a CTC program can be a powerful tool in addressing many of these skills.

In addition to getting resources and support, having a non-technology mission encourages you to learn from other fields. For example, the Afterschool Alliance, an organization "dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of after-school programs and advocating for quality, affordable programs for all children" has developed resources, including a "sustainability workbook and other resources" section, of great value to CTCs. Curriculum development ideas such as project-based learning are lessons from the traditional education field that can benefit CTCs greatly. If you see your program as primarily an after-school or youth development program, you are much more likely to seek out expertise and resources from those fields. You can also apply lessons from workforce development, economic development, micro-enterprise, and other fields.

Thinking of your CTC's mission as centered on something other than technology can be a small shift for some CTCs, but this can be a major challenge for others. There are many great free-standing CTCs (organizations that were formed specifically to run a CTC and that previously had no programs) that focus specifically on technology. These CTCs have achieved important gains and have talented people on staff, but many are struggling to keep their doors open. These are the organizations that may need to re-invent themselves.

An organization that maintains an identity is always more sustainable. By keeping your focus on your core mission and addressing basic needs in your community, you will be more trusted than if you recreate your organization every few years to address funders' latest issue of the day.

Key #3: Community Support and Partnerships

Community support and partnerships are critical to the success of a CTC. When the wider community feels a real sense of ownership, a CTC will be much more sustainable. Some considerations:

• Create a systematic community mapping process. Build and maintain a list of institutions, organizations, businesses, and other influential people in your community, and meet with them. Initially, meet with those social service institutions that directly serve the community or population you want to reach. Then branch out to other types of institutions like small businesses, churches, the media, and others. How can a CTC address their concerns? How can they support the CTC? Are there any conflicts that may come up with them because of a CTC? Who else do they know who might participate in a CTC in some way? Keep in mind that there is probably another CTC or computer lab in your neighborhood (at a community center, in a school, in the housing project, etc.). You should be sure you know about it, and are in communication with it. Often a CTC is the neighborhood's best-kept secret.
• Effective partnerships don't have to be major collaborations. People often get intimidated when they think about partnerships. They are work, and they can be very time-intensive. Certainly there are benefits to collaborating with the local school district on a major grant proposal and joint program. But some really effective partnerships can be simple coordinative partnerships through which two organizations make sure activities are not scheduled at the same time. A shoe store that donates a pair of sneakers every month in exchange for promotion can be a very valuable partner, for example.
• Be creative when you consider community allies. If you cannot make any progress with the bureaucracy at the school district, perhaps you can develop a collaboration with the principal of the local middle school. At one sustainability workshop we led, a participant shared how the community mapping process helped him conclude that he had to develop a collaborative relationship with the owner of the corner liquor store. Another CTC director serving mainly homeless men found that a partnership with the local McDonald's to provide coupons for hamburgers significantly boosted participation.
• Never lose sight of your partner's interests. Whether dealing with nonprofit organizations, businesses, schools, or individuals, a partnership of any scope needs to address the interests of all the parties involved. An organization or business is going to support your CTC, and work with your CTC because there is something in it for them. There is nothing wrong with that. Remember you have to give something, or provide something of value in every partnership. You will rarely get something because of good will or philanthropy. This is actually a blessing in disguise. If your partnership with the local school addresses a real need the school has, it will actively support you when you are having difficulty addressing that need. It is also important to remember that you need to listen to potential collaborators, meet them where they are, and you shouldn't assume you know what is in their best interest.

Key #4: Have a Great Program

There is no substitute for a great program. As discussed, your program needs to address the real needs of your participants as they perceive them. It should have measurable outcomes, be evaluated on an ongoing basis, and be dynamic. Consider a few key points that have come up in several of the ACC sustainability workshops:

• Evaluate. For too many CTCs, evaluation is something imposed on the program by a funder using an external evaluator. Evaluation should be built into your program design and curriculum development processes from the beginning. There are many resources available to assist you in developing basic evaluation procedures. Evaluation will tell you if and how you are making a difference with your program, assist you in improving your program, and demonstrate to funders, partners, and others that the CTC is a smart investment.
• Tailor your program to your community. The beauty of the CTC field is that no two CTCs are alike. Your goals and your program needs to fit your community specifically. A "cookie cutter" approach almost never works. What are the cultural, social, economic, and linguistic realities in your neighborhood? Which institutions are particularly effective, and which are leaving people underserved? These and many other issues specific to your community will help shape your program.
• Don't reinvent the wheel. The CTC field is about twenty years old. CTC practitioners have a lot to learn from other fields such as after-school programs, traditional workforce development, and education. Join CTCNet and take advantage of the America Connects Consortium's Web site. In many urban areas, CTCs are forming regional networks. Use them to learn what your local colleagues are doing. We see far too many CTCs working in isolation from the wider field, making the same mistakes that others have been making for years.

Key #5: Conduct an Organized Planning Process

As with any complex project that takes a long time, sustaining your program is going to require planning. In most cases, your sustainability plan and your strategic plan will be very similar. While many strategic plans address the big picture in general, your sustainability plan will identify specific actions needed and people responsible for them. As with any plan of this importance, you will need to include in the process a wide range of the people involved in your CTC. A sustainability plan is not something the executive director should write over the weekend while on a retreat. Program managers, frontline staff, community members, board members, and representatives from partner organizations all should participate in the process. As with most planning, the process is as important as the final document. Sections of the document will be useful tools for grant writing, managing your program, and establishing new partnerships, while the process itself will help clarify your mission and organizational structure, and get people thinking about sustainability.

One Final Thought On Sustainability

When thinking about long-term sustainability, learn some other important lessons from the after-school and education communities. These fields have gotten organized and are now doing policy advocacy on the local, state, and federal levels. Governments are providing resources to these fields as a result. The work of CTCs is important, and should also be supported with government resources. This means government dollars should be available either through grant programs that fund CTCs directly, or by making other funding sources more available to CTCs. Recent changes to the 21st Century After School Learning Centers Program regulations have made it possible for programs running off school grounds, including CTCs, to access these funds. Many workforce development dollars can go to CTCs for job training programs. Some local communities have successfully lobbied for franchise fees paid by cable television operators to support CTCs. But a lot more needs to be done. Many CTC advocacy efforts are happening around the country. Get involved with them. If there are no efforts under way in your area, get organized.