=victor.grey weblog

Most leaders of non-profit organizations would intuitively understand why using say, recycled paper is a natural fit with their organization’s spirit, even if it has nothing to do with their mission directly. Here’s two representative comments on why non-profit organizations should support green technology and awareness:

“Nonprofit organizations are natural laboratories for learning, testing new ways to serve constituents, and modeling new approaches to existing problems. This is especially true of museums. As places of preservation and active learning, they are particularly well-suited to modeling “green” behavior and design for the public.” – Sarah S. Brophy

“Regardless of your non-profit’s purpose, your organization can probably afford to be a little greener. Being environmentally friendly is beneficial in several ways:

• It helps your organization be a good steward in your community and in the world
• It can make your organization more appealing to potential donors
• It enables your organization to help ensure that future generations can enjoy a respectable quality of life.
• While some green measures are costly, many are not – and some can even save or make money.” – Estela Kennen

The key points here are that a non-profit should be a natural laboratory for learning and it should be a good steward in its community and in the world. A non-profit lives via support from the community within which it exists, and it has a moral imperative not only to fulfill its specific mission but also to give back to the greater community in any way it can, but especially in ways that support mutual growth.

Open source software is a perfect fit for non-profits in exactly the same way that green technology is. Some people associate open source with no-cost and therefore low quality, but nothing could be further from the truth. Open source software is community created software. It is a gift to the world from a (sometimes small, sometimes quite large) community of programmers, who believe that by sharing and cooperating they can produce a better working environment for everyone, themselves included. What could be more in alignment with the spirit of most non-profits?

To quote opensource.org, open source “is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”

Some non-profits resist moving to open source software because they are naturally conservative and want to stick with the tried and true. But open source has been around for a generation now, and even some of the big software companies such as IBM, Apple, Novell and Sun have begun to find ways to support it.

What’s more, if the mission of your organization is in some way to change the world for the better, then what could make more sense than to align with and support the efforts of other communities who are also working to change the world for the better. After all, creating change may involve embracing change!