Properly networked and financed, nonprofit organizations can provide a more comprehensive set of social services to the American people than the government. The technologies we need to create Network America are readily available and widely used. What we’re lacking is a vision for an integrated nonprofit service network and a standard framework that organizes our use of these tools so each autonomous nonprofit organization can contribute to a more comprehensive whole.
Network America’s backbone is our network communication infrastructure (internet, cell phones, GPS). This infrastructure enables organizations to use open source software that call on shared databases to deliver essential information on demand. Collaboration tools eliminate the barriers between individuals and organization, allowing people to work on projects instead of ‘for’ institutions. Since services compete in the marketplace for donations and government vouchers, they must be efficient and transparent.
These organic organizations can only emerge under certain conditions:
- Locally organized in response to the needs of the community.
- Free from the corrupting influence of resources coercively extracted from one population and distributed to another.
- Included in a collaborative network of similar organizations.
- Entirely transparent.