Development Strategy Support
Internaut Consulting was retained to advise the Commons Global HealthFund on the most effective strategy to approach donors with their new investment concept for health support.
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Capaciteria
Online Nonprofit Administrative Resource Directory
Capaciteria.org was a comprehensive, searchable database directory of administrative resources for nonprofits designed to assist them in leveraging their own capacity using a trusted source networks of information and resources they could rely upon. It was available from 2005-2015 until merging into the 4good.org resource directory in a bid to aggregate programmatic and administrative resources. It promoted peer review by allowing members to comment on and rate individual resource links. The system became more useful to users every time someone rated or commented on a resource. Capaciteria had over 120 major categories and over 2500 nonprofit resources (links, articles, books, research, forms, etc.). They ranged from finance to facilities management and included significant resources on the most popular nonprofit queries such as volunteer management, philanthropic services, fund raising services, nonprofit jobs and technology resources. Resources came from the nonprofit, commercial government and educational sector, and all could be rated and commented on.
Deliverable:
The Principal of Internaut Consulting developed Capaciteria.org on a sabbatical from the Open Society Institute to demonstrate the ability to create a useful directory focused on administrative resources for nonprofits at a reasonably low cost. Internaut Consulting’s effective fundraising for continued support and outreach activities received a number of grants from Mario Morino, the Blue Ridge Foundation in New York and a two year grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to broaden its audience. An initial project involved developing an open Fiscal Agency list by category, further adding content resources and developing strategic partnerships with other organizations.
In an effort to consolidate and aggregate capacity resources for the benefit of the nonprofit sector, Internaut Associates agreed to merge its resources with IdeaEncore’s in an equity agreement. One Year later Nonprofit Direct, IdeaEncore and and Capaciteria all agreed to a merger with the Good Done Great Network to further aggregate both administrative and program resources on a new online platform: 4good.org. Internaut advised IdeaEncore on strategy during this period.
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Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Jazz.Next Program and Grantee Evaluation
Jazz.Next was a project of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in association with the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation. The Jazz.Next initiative was designed to foster creative thinking that can result in the development of new models to help shape future operating practice for jazz artists, organizations, and presenters across the United States.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was retained to evaluate program proposals submitted to the program and then do a comprehensive evaluation of the efficacy of the project’s pilot technology grants as well as the Jazz.Next project itself. The project was designed to test models of art support and shape future operating practices and strategies meeting the long-term challenges and changing environment in the field of jazz. The results of this evaluation and lessons learned were used in a more broadly based art’s philanthropy initiative later executed by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
American Forum
Web site/Web 2.0/Database Overhaul & Integration
American Forum provides local editorial and commentary to news outlets across the United States through its individual state forum coverage of state assemblies. It required assistance developing an RFP to revamp its online web site presence.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was retained to assist American Forum develop a comprehensive RFP. While initially focused on upgrading its web presence, further analysis soon made clear that the project also required integrating its disparate online social networking, multi-media requirements with its online web presence, and consolidating and integrating its online and offline databases. Internaut Consulting also assisted in developing the solicitation and proposal process, finding appropriate vendor candidates and evaluating them for this larger undertaking.
Council on Foundations
ICT for Philanthropy Strategy Development
To promote 21st century philanthropy and better support its membership in the strategic use or current and emerging technologies the Council of Foundations (CoF) initiated a new technology task force. CoF initiated this task force as an opportunity to upgrade its own profile in this important area to the sector.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was retained to assist in the first phase of task force development to define its focus, primary deliverables and membership through a series of interviews with technology leaders in the sector. Internaut suggested branding the Initiative ICT for P (Information and Communications for Philanthropy) in keeping with the well known ICT for D(evelopment) acronym. In the second phase, Internaut worked with the task force membership to create a proposal of recommendations to the Council on Foundation’s board in the areas of standards, policy, knowledge management, effective philanthropy, NGO partnerships and demonstration projects.
The East-West Management Institute
Open Development Mekong Project
The East-West Management Institute (EWMI) works to strengthen democratic societies by bringing together government, civil society, and the private sector to build accountable, capable and transparent institutions. EWMI first developed and pilot a country platform called Open Development Cambodia (ODC) to better organize, share and analyze economic and environmental development and land conversion data among a network of related grassroots organizations in Cambodia using a unique open data platform to facilitate this collaboration. The platform addresses urgent areas of concern including: deforestation, land grabbing, water/food security, access to information, and freedom of expression. It also challenged critical, debilitating threats to data transparency using an approach that separated factual data from advocacy to protect it from government censorship, which is a significant issue in the region. Once the ODC pilot was proven, with tens of thousands of users accessing it per month EWMI initiated Open Development Mekong to do the same regionally in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was initially retained to research and develop grant proposals for potential donors related to the ODC web platform and to advise on its technical developments and program strategy. Funding from proposals written by Internaut Consultimh came from MacArthur Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Global Vision, American Jewish World Service, Open Society and Spider (a Swedish SIDA affiliate). Internaut Consulting also assisted in the development of a USAID technology incubator and entrepreneurship proposal in Cambodia for USAID.
As the Cambodian pilot evolved into a regional platform, Internaut Consulting’s mandate was extended to help identify a management team, find programming resources and project manage the complete overhaul of the platform deployment which included redoing the entire front and back end interface; deploying data harvesting and data sharing extensibility; allowing for native multi-lingual capability; making it accessible/responsive via mobile; cleaning up and adding thousands of records; converting the original Open Development Cambodia (ODC) platform to this new open data platform developed in WordPress and CKAN; and finally, converting the 33,000 ODC users to the new platform.
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William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
Program Facilitation for the Open Education Platform:
Internaut Consulting was also retained to facilitate the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Open Education Platform discussion convened with a number of developers and educators in an effort to consolidate a cooperative strategy going forward.
Proposal Evaluation for Performing Arts Program and Open Education Platform
The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation makes grants to organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to ensure that art is created, performed, and preserved, and more opportunities are provided to participate in arts experiences. The program required support evaluating a competitive RFP to develop an on online interactive GIS mapping of the performing arts community in San Francisco.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was retained to review the initial RFP before it was released to strengthen deliverables and clarify what was being asked as well as responding to vendor questions and developing criteria for evaluating the proposals. Internaut Consulting reviewed the proposals to select the strongest provider of technical services, content identification and data collection.
Central & Eastern European Academic Network
Electronic Journal Proposal Evaluation
Internaut Consulting was retained to evaluate a donor proposal developed by the Central & Eastern European Academic Network (CEENET) for publishing electronic journals.
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IREX
Proposal Evaluation/Grant Writing
Internaut Consulting was retained to evaluate and write part of a social entrepreneurship proposal for the Middle East for IREX. IREX is a US-based nonprofit organization committed to international education in academic research, professional training and technical assistance.
Deliverables:
Internaut’s contribution distinguished the difference between social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility, both elements of the proposed program. It also articulated the common elements of success that promote scaling in a social enterprise, and the associated training needed to be included in the program.
Telecentre.org
Latin American Revenue Channel Development
Telecentre.org, sponsored by IDRC, Microsoft and the Swiss Development Agency is a community of people and organizations working together to improve the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres. It required a comprehensive business plan to implement its vision. Following the development of its comprehensive business plan, Telecentre.org wished to pilot revenue channel development of product and services to sell into the network. It needed a strategy and implementation plan to do it.
Deliverables:
Internaut Consulting was engaged to develop a business plan to promote a sustainable telecentre movement globally offering innovative value-added products and services to its telecentre clients. The ecosystem and administrative support structures laid out in the business plan were designed to allow telecentres to trade products and services of value with each other. Development of the plan led to our further engagement developing tangible revenue channels.
A year later Internaut Consulting was engaged in the next stage of the Telecentre.org project by IDRC and Microsoft Community Affairs to develop scenarios and an implementation plan leading to successful revenue channel development. The objective was to pilot practical initiatives delivering products and services to emerging markets through the Telecentre.org ecosystem of networks and individual telecentres. As a result of the plan three pilot network initiatives were selected in Latin America. The implementation plan was used to develop the channels with two recommended implementing partners, NESsT and TechSoup. Internaut consulting advised that these two implementing organizations had expertise in supporting vertical and horizontal channel capacity development necessary for the project to succeed.
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