ICT Learning and Practitioners Network

Business Plan

Version 1.0
October 2002

a project of

Executive Director – Anriette Esterhuysen

Programmes and Projects Manager – Maureen James

L+P Project Manager – Michael de Beer

Business Plan Development – The Commons Group

Business Plan Review – Brody, Weiser, Burns

ICT Learning and Practitioners NetworkBusiness Plan –Version 1.0

Acknowledgments

APC wishes to acknowledge the following people for the ideas, inspiration, information and support they provided during the L+P pilot phase and the development of this business plan:

Open Society Institute (OSI) for financial support

Stephanie Hankey, Darius Cuplinskas and Vera Franz (OSI)

APC’s members, and the APC staff team

The Commons Group

Brody, Weiser, Burns

We also wish to thank the dozens of INGOs, donors, ICT practitioners and activists, and consulting businesses who participated in our research.

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm!

APC L+P Team

Michael de Beer

Ann Tothill

Maureen James

Anriette Esterhuysen

Table of Contents

CONFIDENTIAL Page 1

ICT Learning and Practitioners NetworkBusiness Plan –Version 1.0

1 Vision...... 4

2 Context...... 6

3 Market Definition...... 8

4 Market Needs ...... 11

5 Service Vision...... 15

6 Marketing and Sales...... 22

7 Management and Organization...... 24

8 Sustainability Strategy...... 27

9 Finance and Budgets...... 33

10 Competition and Risks...... 37

Appendix A - Market Research Findings...... 39

Appendix B – Cooperative Service Case Studies...... 55

Appendix C - L+P Pilot Project Achievements...... 65

Appendix D - Bibliography...... 67

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ICT Learning and Practitioners NetworkBusiness Plan –Version 1.0

1Vision

Over the past decade, civil society organizations have dramatically increased their presence on the global scene. From Rio to Seattle to Johannesburg, civil society has been in the public eye. But despite this increase in activity, these organizations still struggle to coordinate their work, sustain their operations and, most importantly, produce concrete social impacts. To address these limitations, civil society organizations need to embrace innovative tactics including the strategic use of information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Unfortunately, most organizations simply don't have access to the skills or services they need to use technology strategically. There is currently an ICT skills and services gap in civil society, particularly in developing countries. APC's Learning and Practitioners (L+P) Network will help to fill this gap. With a dual focus on improving the capacity of civil society and developing skills amongst local service providers, L+P will have a broad impact on the ICT capacity of the sector. Imagine a world where ...

  • A global coalition of peace organizations wants to raise public awareness about the nuclear weapons trade. L+P provides a virtual team to implement a web content management system and an e-mail campaigning database. Using this team, L+P is also able to provide affordable on site training and support to peace coalition members in eight different countries.
  • A civil society news web site for Latin America wants to offer more comprehensive coverage, as well as explore providing innovative support through the site to NGOs in the region. L+P invites this organization to join its info workers peer learning network. Staff of the organization are quickly hooked into a supportive community of practice and opportunities for expertise-sharing, capacity building and skills training.
  • An international development donor wants to improve the online security skills of the human rights organizations it funds. L+P creates an international team of leading security experts to develop an innovative training manual and provide local training sessions. Acting out its commitment to ‘open source economics’ and ICT sector capacity-building, L+P shares the materials created through this project freely and broadly with others in civil society.

L+P will foster an international network of local service providers who can take on projects exactly like these. The Network will offer services including ICT strategy, training, technical implementation and project management. It will also provide referrals to local service providers and produce online reference resources that can be used by civil society whenever they are needed.

In many ways, L+P will be like a broader, international version of the e-riders non-profit technical support networks that have caught on in North America. It will work with and build a strong network of organizations and individuals providing ICT services, primarily in the south. This network will strengthen the overall institutional capacity of the ICT service sector in developing countries – a crucial building block in achieving sustainable use of ICTs for development.

Even in its early years, the L+P Network will have significant impact on the capacity of civil society organizations and service providers. It is expected that L+P will undertake approximately 150 projects in its first three years of operation. This work is projected to produce $2.4 million in revenue, with $1.9 million flowing directly to local service providers. The impacts and ripple effects of these projects will be felt in hundreds of civil society organizations around the world.

Of course, this is just the beginning. L+P is poised to become a lasting, self-sustaining innovator in the area of strategic use of ICTs. In this role, L+P has the potential to create deep, long-term improvements in the overall ICT capacity of civil society.

Mission

Increase the overall impact and effectiveness of civil society by building the strategic information and communications technology capacity
of civil society organizations and improving the skills and sustainability
of the service providers they rely on

Goals

Connect civil society organizations with
reliable, socially committed ICT service providers.

Produce lasting, sharable tools and resources based on
the learning of civil society organizations and service providers.

Provide learning opportunities that increase the ICT skill base
within civil society and the service provider community.

Improve the capacity and sustainability of
service providers that work with civil society.

Impact

As outlined in detail below, L+P will pursue these goals using a

self-reinforcing service ecosystem model:

This model will help L+P produce its intended impacts – stronger CSOs,
improved service provider capacity and lasting learning resources.

2Context

This section of the document provides background information about the APC and the L+P Network. Additional information about L+P pilot phase activities can be found in Appendix C.

2.1About APC

Founded in 1990, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international membership network of civil society organisations dedicated to promoting the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within civil society. The majority of APC’s membership, and APC’s project activity, is based in the south. In the 12 years since it was founded, APC has moved from a focus on primarily technical services to a broad, holistic approach including the delivery of training, strategy, support, evaluation and web applications. APC’s current membership is focused on everything from providing training to developing open source software to conducting gender evaluations of ICT projects.

APC has always focused its efforts on better serving the information and communication needs of CSOs, particularly in developing countries. In the early years, this work included facilitating informal skills exchange between members and bringing members together to share expertise and problem-solve. As APC has developed into a serious professional actor in the ICTs for development arena, members have becoming increasingly interested in more formal shared capacity building and service delivery. It was this interest amongst APC members – as well as a growing demand for ICT advice and expertise amongst international NGOs and donors – that lead APC to develop the Learning and Practitioners (L+P) Network.

2.2The L+P initiative

In early 2001, APC members made a joint commitment to create the Learning and Practitioners (L+P) Network initiative. The purpose of this Network was to increase APC’s impact both within civil society and within a broader community of service providers. Members saw L+P as a way to:

  • Promote the strategic use of ICTs within civil society by identifying and filling key technology service provision gaps;
  • Respond to an increasing demand from partner organisations, INGOs and donors who need assistance to undertake small to medium sized ICT projects;
  • Create independent revenue streams that would make APC and its member organizations more sustainable.

L+P emerged from APC’s own experience as a peer network of largely Southern, development-oriented service providers. It offered an opportunity to improve the capacity of both civil society organizations and the community of service providers on which they rely for support.

2.3Current status

In mid-2001, APC received support from the Open Society Institute for an initial feasibility, planning and piloting phase of the L+P initiative. This phase focused on the creation of mini-networks within three areas of existing expertise – web content management, online security and information work. The learning from these pilot networks helped to define the L+P services described in this business plan. APC also conducted market research in the INGO, donor and service provider communities to feed into L+P service strategy development.

With the completion of this business plan, APC is now ready to seek financing and begin implementation of the full L+P Network.

3Market Definition

This section of the document describes the types of organizations and individuals that will use the L+P Network – international NGOs, donor agencies and ICT service providers.

In order to improve the ICT capacity of civil society, the L+P Network will work with two different constituencies – civil society organizations and the technology service providers who support them. Clearly, providing affordable, strategic ICT solutions directly to civil society organizations is a big part of the capacity picture. But working directly with these organizations will only have lasting impact and ripple effects if the capacity of local service providers is also increased. It is for this reason that L+P will work directly with civil society organizations and invest in the capacity of ICT service providers who work in the civil society arena.

3.1Civil society

Civil society is a vast and diverse world. According to a study by the Ford Foundation, there are over 28,000 international NGO and a further 20,000 transnational NGO networks. These organizations represent only the tip of the civil society iceberg, with the number of local NGOs reaching into the many hundreds of thousands. As an example, Brazil alone has over 250,000 NGOs. These organizations range from well-funded social research institutes to tiny grassroots environmental groups that run completely on volunteer labour.

It would be both unrealistic and unnecessary for the L+P network to focus on this full spectrum of NGOs. Large, mainstream charities in the North such as hospital foundations and research institutes are well advanced in their use of ICTs and need little help from an initiative like L+P. Small, grassroots NGOs are certainly in need of ICT capacity, but will be better served by L+P’s local service provider members than by the overall Network. L+P’s civil society constituency falls somewhere between these two extremes. It is primarily made up of international NGOs and regional networks working on social and development issues. L+P’s constituency also includes donor agencies and public sector institutions that are interested in building the capacity of these organizations.

International NGOs

The L+P Network’s primary civil society constituency will be international NGOs (INGOs) working in development, social justice and the environment. As these organizations tend to work globally or regionally, the benefits of ICTs are clear and compelling. ICTs can link remote offices, provide a platform for campaigns, and support group learning and knowledge management. INGOs also tend to work in partnership with others. As a result, improving the ICT capacity of these international NGOs has the potential to create ripple effects through informal learning within partnership networks. Examples: Amnesty, CIAT, Greenpeace

NGO coalitions and networks

L+P will also provide services to NGO coalitions and networks. Like INGOs, these groups need to coordinate work globally or regionally. They also tend to have decentralized governance and management structures. With the right ICT skills and systems in place, these organizations can often create ‘virtual offices’ that allow them to work just as quickly and effectively as more centralized, place-based organizations. They can also set up systems that automate the flow of information and documents between members. Example: WomenAction, Friends of the Earth

Donors

Donors have a vested interest in developing stronger civil society organizations. Increased capacity in civil society means that grant investments are more likely to have a lasting impact. For this reason, donors often undertake projects aimed at improving the capacity of their grantees or at least creating enabling environments within which civil society can grow and act. Recently, many of these capacity building projects have started to focus on ICTs. The L+P Network will provide services that help donors design and deliver projects like these. It is important to note that L+P does not plan to address the internal ICT needs of donors. Work with donors will be limited to capacity building and enabling projects aimed at civil society. Examples: OSI, IDRC, UK DFID

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L+P does not expect to meet all of the ICT needs of the organizations described above. Rather, L+P hopes to play the crucial role of supporting NGOs and donors as they take on complex and innovative projects. The Network will provide organizations with the skilled strategists, trainers and technicians that are needed to both design and deliver projects. In many cases, L+P will also provide mentoring services to ensure that clients have the capacity to manage similar projects well after L+P’s team has moved on.

3.2Service providers

Since the mid 1990s, there has been a significant rise in the number of non-profit organizations and small businesses committed to delivering ICT services to civil society. Driven by both a social mission and a belief in the benefits of technology, there are anywhere between 500 and 1000 organizations like this around the world. Unfortunately, these numbers do not translate into an instant ICT capacity solution for civil society. In all but a few cases, these organizations are small and are located primarily in the North. They have only a few staff and service a fairly limited region. They also tend to lack marketing capacity, management skills and sufficient ability to take on complex regional and international projects. In the developing world, there are far fewer ICT service providers, and the ones that do exist do not necessarily have a specific CSO service orientation. One of L+P’s chief aims is to build the capacity of these organizations where they do exist and nurture new CSO-oriented service providers where they do not. Once the service quality and coverage of these organizations has been improved, they will be able to play a major role in meeting the ICT needs of local civil society organizations in all parts of the world.

APC members

APC’s existing members provide a foundation for the service provider side of L+P. This membership includes 30 organizations located in 27 countries, as of September 2002. These organizations have been pioneers in the promotion of ICTs within civil society, with some of them offering e-mail and conferencing to NGOs as early as 1985.

Despite these pioneering efforts, many APC members still struggle to respond to demand adequately while at the same time sustaining their organizations. They also have a hard time finding other service providers to cooperate with when there is overflow work or work that they don’t have the skills to take on. The L+P Network will help APC members address these issues. Examples: See for a complete list of APC members.

Independent service providers

L+P will also provide support and business opportunities for small and emerging service providers who are outside the existing APC membership. These organizations range from small or medium-sized companies serving a handful of local NGOs to not-for-profits whose mission is to provide technology services to civil society. Many of these organizations are already working with APC in areas such as gender evaluation and online security.

Small service providers like these tend to work in isolation and as a result, lack camaraderie and the opportunity to learn informally from peers. They also face many of the same challenges as APC members when it comes to managing their capacity to respond to demand and dealing with overflow work. L+P will provide these service providers with a peer network and place to turn for support. Examples: NinthBridge, Privaterra