The American charity TechSoup Global's nonprofit community website and
their software and hardware distribution service to other charities can
be found at http://www.TechSoup.org
This is our review of the American service TechSoup Stock run by the
charity TechSoup Global of San Francisco, USA which provides a wide range of
donated software and hardware products to registered charities and
educational institutions in return for service fees.
August 7, 2008
TechSoup.org is now outsourcing some internet jobs outside of the USA to
India
Are global U.S. charities starting to outsource non profit jobs overseas
using the same model as multinational companies and should we care?
Recently, I received an email from npo-techies@lists.compasspoint.org
and from someone whom I believed to be from the American charity
TechSoup.org in San Francisco counseling me to check out some tech
thing or some seminar they would be hosting.
“Welcome to the home of the NPO-Techies list sponsored by CompassPoint
Nonprofit Services. I'm posting this on behalf of NetSquared/TechSoup.
I thought this event might be of interest to many of you.” It was
promoting: “ Mobilizing Generation 2.0: How Nonprofits Can Use
Technology to Engage Youth --July 8, 2008 TechSoup/CompuMentor - San
Francisco, CA”
I became curious because I hadn’t heard of “Bryan Forst" at TechSoup
before so I checked out the email address of the sender and learned
that it came from India and not the good ol’ US of A.
In delving further I found that it came from a profit orientated arm of
a non profit organization in India called “Uddami Software Services”
that seemed to also be training people – was I part of the training –
or was this strictly a monetary transaction paid to them to reduce
costs at TechSoup as they go global in their marketing efforts?
Uddami states that their rates are much lower than any North American
organization could offer - “ TERMS -Prices for basic web development,
digitization, data entry are typically quoted at 6 USD per hour.”
The following thoughts jolted me into commenting now:
It also seems to be a bit negative to me that this email contract
seemed to be going to transplanted Americans and their US registered
charity not a charity in India developed by local Indian citizens.
Don’t forget to take a kid fishing this summer!
Cheers,
Bill
July 21, 2007
The American charity CompuMentor's nonprofit community website
(their name has been changed to TechSoup Global in 2008) and
their software and hardware distribution service to other charities can
be found at http://www.TechSoup.org
How will TechSoup.org support IT volunteers to help charities
with it's millions from Microsoft now?
TechSoup Stock, is the service which was originally based on
CompuMentor's agreement with Microsoft in the mid 1990's to provide
Microsoft Windows and Office software to charities in return for a fee
which was used to support their computer volunteer program in San
Francisco to assist other charities with computing and the internet.
This volunteer matching service was the basis for the charity's initial
growth and led to their leadership role in the non profit Technical
Assistance Provider area in the U.S.
Currently, CompuMentor uses their huge e-commerce site TechSoup Stock
to distribute donated software to charities in the United States and
now to other countries. This provides over $5,000,000 in revenue per
year. These funds can be used as they see fit in San Francisco or in
the United States.
Unfortunately, even with this dramatic success and sustainability they
have decided to cancel or discontinue providing volunteer services to
small charities who are without the in-house technical capacity to
harness the internet for their particular community missions.
This website TechSoup.ca is a news and information reporting service on
TechSoup by CompuCorps Mentoring, a Canadian charity that works with
computer volunteers to help other charities with technology. We will
update it periodically.
Cheers, Bill
William Marvel, Executive Director
CompuCorps Mentoring/ Les Mentors de CompuCorps