Twin Cities Free-Net (R)

Strategic Direction


This revision was approved by the TCFN Board of Directors on November 30, 1999. This document is intended mainly for the TCFN Board of Directors, volunteers, and selected potential partners of TCFN. It lists goals and long-term strategies, leaving short-term tactics to the Operating Plan.

Contents

  1. Who we Are:
  2. What We Do for Others:
    1. Providing Communication Tools and Services
      • Community Calendars and Web Databases
      • Online Conferencing
      • Web Hosting
      • Other
    2. Making Tools and Services Accessible
      • User Interface
      • Public Web Terminals
      • Dialup Access
    3. Training the Public
      • Help Files
      • Classes
      • Support
  3. How we Keep Going:
    1. Building Awareness of TCFN
      • Word of Mouth
      • Partnerships
      • Press Releases
      • Brochures
      • Events
    2. Finding Adequate Funding
      • Member Donations
      • Fees for Service
      • Grants
    3. Roles of the People Involved
      • Staff
      • Interns
      • Volunteers
      • Partnerships

Section 1. Mission and Overall Focus

Mission Statement

The mission of the Twin Cities Free-Net is to use Internet technologies to bring people together in communities of shared interest or need.

Key Points of Mission

  • The core of our mission is to bring people together. They may come together "virtually" as well as physically.
  • We will bring people together using Internet technologies. These technologies include e-mail, online conferences, the World Wide Web, mailing lists, and newsgroups.
  • We will bring people together in communities of shared interest or need - not just in one big group. A shared interest might be a neighborhood, a religion, a social cause, or a hobby. A shared need might be a disability, a lack of fluency in English, a high crime rate, or a state of poverty.

Focus

We will focus our efforts in two areas:
  1. Helping existing communities, such as neighborhoods, clubs, and churches, use Internet technologies to meet their needs.
  2. Bringing people who are not yet part of existing communities into contact with those communities, or helping them to form new ones.

Strategies

We will employ five strategies to fulfill our mission:
  1. We will provide communication tools and services.
  2. We will make these tools and services accessible to the regional public.
  3. We will train the public in the use of these tools and services.
  4. We will build awareness of shared needs and available resources through promotion, outreach, and publicity.
  5. We will obtain adequate funding for our projects.
The extent to which we pursue each strategy will depend on how feasible it is for us to do and whether other organizations are doing the same thing.

The Internet

Our mission is to use Internet tools to bring people together in communities. The tools we employ can be used globally, but they work just as well on a local scale. For the Free-Net, Internet access is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Rationale: Community Building vs. Information Access

In our society, access to information is at an all-time high, even for the economically disadvantaged. Yet at the same time, we are experiencing an increasing sense of isolation from our neighbors and alienation from our communities. Information technology -- including television and newspapers as well as the Internet -- sometimes further isolates us from one another. But this same technology also can bring people together in ways never before thought possible.

E-mail and online group discussions are by no means replacements for face-to-face interaction; but they can be an important supplement to such interaction, in an age when hectic lifestyles and time pressures make getting together difficult.

Hence, we are not concerned with information access per se. Rather, we intend to use information technology to bring people together in communities.

See also: Free-Net: On-ramp or Destination?

Regional Scope

We intend to put technology to work in ways that strengthen local communities. We will work with local organizations to enhance their ability to obtain and distribute information. We will work with neighborhood activists, teaching them to teach their neighbors how to use Internet tools to help themselves.

TCFN continues to have a strong regional focus, but the regions are no longer limited to the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Instead, we will adopt a modular structure for promotion, training, and community building. Two neighborhoods can participate equally the Free-Net even if they are located in different parts of the world, but those that are located close together may benefit more from the association. We will help members in each of the regions we serve to recognize what they have in common with those in other regions and the rest of the world.

Section 2A. Providing Communication Tools and Services

Community Calendars and Web Databases

We will provide tools so that Free-Net members can freely create and publish databases of community-oriented information on their Free-Net Web sites. We will also help to promote community-oriented databases that exist elsewhere on the Internet.

Online Conferencing

We will continue to provide software to support "conferencing" (online discussion forums) on the Free-Net, both public and private, via Web, text-only, and e-mail interfaces. We will also help to promote community-oriented conferences that exist elsewhere on the Internet.

Web Hosting

We will continue to host Web sites for member organizations for as long as we maintain our own server. However, in our training sessions we will emphasize that Web pages are merely a means to an end (namely community building), and we will help to promote member organizations regardless of where their Web sites are located.

E-mail

We will provide basic e-mail service to all registered members, in order to ensure that all members of the community can be full participants in online communication, regardless of their economic resources.

Mailing Lists (Listservs)

E-mail lists serve a valuable purpose by making group discussions available to people who are too busy to visit an online conference or who are more comfortable using e-mail software than a Web browser. We will continue to promote community-oriented e-mail lists hosted on other servers, and we will seek more capable list software so that we can host lists reliably on our own server.

Technical Services

The advent of affordable high-speed Internet access has made it possible for small organizations to put their computers -- whether operating out of an office or from someone's home -- directly onto the Internet. The Free-Net can provide certain important services, such as acting as a secondary domain-name server, at very little cost to small organizations that need such services.

Section 2B: Making Tools and Services Accessible to the Public

User Interface

The simplest and most effective strategy to make the tools and services we provide more accessible to the public is to make our interface easy to use. This includes arranging menus in an intuitive fashion, adding "alt" text to Web pages so they can be read by the blind, abstaining from jargon to help beginners, and translating pages into other languages for the benefit of immigrants.

Public Web Terminals

Several other organizations in the Twin Cities area, including libraries, community technology centers, and charities, provide public Web terminals. We will actively promote such projects, distribute brochures to their locations, teach classes there when invited, and seek feedback from their staff and volunteers.

Dialup Access

Until the day arrives when everyone who wants a graphical computer and Internet access can afford one, we must provide a text interface and dialup access to support older equipment and low-bandwidth connections. We will work with neighborhood organizations to distribute Exeltel II terminals to those that have no computers at all.

It would be very beneficial financially to the Free-Net to not have to support our own dialup lines. We will work to find a partner or sponsor to support and/or maintain our dialup lines.

Section 2C: Training the Public

Help Files

Our 1998 member survey demonstrated that our members' preferred way to learn about the Free-Net is in writing. It is therefore vital that we provide training materials on paper that effectively teach people to get online, and that further written documentation be available online. To this end, we will continuously evaluate our help files for their effectiveness and revise them as necessary.

Since some aspects of the Free-Net's software operate only in English, help files are even more vital for speakers of other languages than they are for English speakers. We will therefore strive to translate our help files into the primary languages of communities we serve.

Classes

The second most important means of training is the organized class. We will offer classes free of charge in our office space, or for a small fee within the Twin Cities metropolitan area. We will continually evaluate these classes to make them more effective.

Classes will teach Internet technology as a means toward an end -- communication and community building -- rather than as an end in itself, though computer competency and employability will result as side effects of the classes. Classes will focus on using the Free-Net but generalize to the Internet.

Support

When help files and classes fail to answer a member's questions, the last resort is telephone or e-mail technical support. Providing this can be very demanding of volunteers' time, and so we will take advantage of our modular focus to have local tech-support volunteer in as many neighborhoods as possible. Members will be given their local support volunteer's name and number when they sign up with the Free-Net. Regular communication between the system administration volunteers and the support volunteers will be an important part of this strategy.

Section 3A: Building Awareness of TCFN

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth has historically been by far our most effective means of building awareness of TCFN. To keep this the case, we must provide extraordinary value and be the primary organization that comes to mind when people think of community building through technology.

Partnerships

By partnering with existing organizations, we can take advantage of the strong roots they have already established within their communities: they know their people, and their people know them. The Free-Net can help these organizations be more effective, and in turn, they can help bring people to the Free-Net, building the critical mass of users necessary to drive active online discussions and maintain up-to-date databases.

Press Releases

When the Free-Net does something newsworthy, or when a member organization does something newsworthy via the Free-Net, we must make sure the local news media hear about it. We will tailor press releases to the interests and styles of the various local media and dispach them promptly.

Brochures

Brochures and flyers can be very effective at raising awareness when they are written and distributed to target a particular community. If our user interface supports Spanish speakers, we should have a Spanish brochure. If we want neighborhood newspapers to become organizational members, we should write a special brochure for them. General-purpose brochures can be distributed in public-access sites such as libraries and in the offices of member organizations.

Events

In order to become newsworthy and to bring additional people together, we will host or participate in special events. For example, we might host an online discussion on a particular pressing topic or staff a booth at the neighborhood festival for a community that has a particular interest in the Free-Net. These events will be preceded whenever possible by press releases to the appropriate media.

Section 3B: Finding Adequate Funding

Member Donations

We will continue to offer accounts to individuals free of charge, but with an annual membership renewal process to encourage voluntary donations. We will also approach local businesses and businesspeople for donations in exchange for public recognition. As a charitable organization, these must be our primary source of income.

Fees for Service

Within the constraints of IRS guidelines, we may charge for services we provide. We will charge annual fees on a sliding scale to organizational members, setup fees for nonmembers requesting our services, and hourly fees for classes. In addition, we may exchange services with partner organizations.

Grants

Grant funding is a satisfying supplement to regular income and a vital facilitator for new projects, but we cannot count on it in the long term. We will submit proposals for new projects, particularly for partnerships with other organizations, but we will strive to make each grant pay for itself in long-term benefits to the Free-Net and the community.

Section 3C: Roles of the People Involved

Staff

TCFN is primarily a volunteer organization, but paid staff members may at times be the most effective way to get the necessary work done. For the safety of the organization, the staff members should not become indispensible; rather, they should make certain that the details of their jobs are available for others to read in the event of a departure.

The General Manager's primary responsibility is to oversee the management of the entire organization, including volunteers and members. The general manager should not attempt to do everything; rather she or he should know who is doing everything, and if possible, how. The general manager may also take an active role in fundraising and soliciting new partnerships.

The System Administrator's primary responsibility is to make sure that the tools and services we provide are available and accessible as much of the time as possible, and to oversee any necessary or desirable modifications. Again, it is not desirable for the system administrator to do all the work, but she or he must ensure that whoever does the work keeps a record of what was done and how.

Board of Directors

The board meets monthly to review new developments, set the strategic direction of the organization, and oversee the staff. Board members are also expected to play a major role in promoting the Free-Net and raising funds.

Interns

Modifications to the status quo and in particular limited-time projects may call for the short-term devotion of interns. Interns will help with system administration, training, and building awareness. When funded by grants, they will most likely work with partner organizations. The staff members will oversee interns and ensure that they document the work that they do before leaving.

Volunteers

Volunteers will help with everything the Free-Net does. They will help the system administrator keep our tools and services available. They will revise and distribute brochures. They will teach classes and provide technical support. They will process member registration and renewal forms and conduct surveys. Staff members will coordinate all volunteer activities and keep track of what was done and how.

Volunteers will be provided with specific job descriptions if they like, but they will be encouraged to change the descriptions to match their own interests. Volunteerism at the Free-Net will be promoted as a way to gain valuable work experience.

Partnerships

Free-Net partner organizations might provide office space, share an Internet connection, maintain our phone lines, pay for classes, translate our help files, and promote the Free-Net to their constituents, or simply pay their membership fees. In return, they will receive the use of our communication tools and the assurance that their constituents will be able to get online, regardless of economic status.

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This page maintained by editors@tcfreenet.org; Last Modified 1999-12-06.