This SmartBrief Insights guest post comes from Rebecca Leaman is the primary writer for Wild Apricot nonprofit technology blog and team member at AssociationJam.org.

Yes, technology has enabled information sharing, collaboration, partnerships between nonprofits, supporters, funders and constituents in ways that could never have been imagined just a few short years ago. And that’s fantastic. A rising tide floats all boats, as more and more organizations (and individuals and businesses) are coming to appreciate. But what of the small doers of social good on the far side of the digital divide, challenged to participate in this new collaborative tech-driven philanthropy?

I’ve been reading Disrupting Philanthropy (Lucy Bernholz with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela): a new monograph on the intersection of philanthropy and technology from Duke University’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society. It addresses specifically the situation in the U.S., of course, but much is applicable to all nonprofits, everywhere. After all, lines on a map have more to do with government policy and regulation than with where and how donations flow to meet needs – especially when technology has taken down so many barriers to collaborative efforts for a shared cause. Clearly, the tech-enhanced philanthropic future we’re watching unfold is full of breath-taking possibilities.

But there’s a down side, as Bernholz et al point out :

Donors and doers who do insist on going it alone may find themselves at a disadvantage when faced with networks of mutually supportive  organizations and individuals.

Consider the implications of this for the many thousands of community-based nonprofits, doing vitally important but not particularly news-worthy or wide-ranging work; low-budget organizations that are driven by the passion of their volunteers: sans office, sans staff, sans opportunities for tech training and professional development:

Among all the many online giving markets, will the logic of monopoly formation – donors want to go where the most doers are, and doers want to go where the most donors are – produce a single dominant site with a single methodology of operation and assessment?

And the truth of our rising expectations:

It’s no longer enough to be in an unfamiliar city and be able to find an Indian restaurant within five blocks; we also expect to be able to find user-generated reviews of it.

A low profile and a small membership can’t easily buy credibility in the public eye, where the judgment of the social web carries more weight all the time in donors’ decision making. Without the connections and the shared data to earn the stamp of approval from the go-to charity review sites or even Facebook crowd, how does a small nonprofit prove its worth? As Bernholz et al imply, there’s a very real risk that those hanging on by a thread at the far end of the long tail will lose out on donor support to organizations that are riding the tech wave with greater skill and more resources.

Someone told me the other day that it’s time to ignore the digital divide and forge ahead regardless. Well, yes, I agree –  in part. We can’t turn back time (nor should we); nor can or should we try to create a nonprofit sector that’s based on the access and capabilities of the lowest common denominator, technologically speaking. It would be like trying to reduce first-world living standards to those of developing nations, in the name of equity: an unworkable proposition that would, in any case, serve no one well.

But in a world where online visibility is the currency of accountability, and the Internet is the first place donors look for advice on where they should give, my concern is that the far end of the long tail may find itself truncated. It’s not entirely unrealistic, the way things are headed, that low-tech community-based organizations could find themselves cut off by the digital divide from a source of sustainable funding, modest fundraising needs though theirs may be. And those small local needs, now filled so capably by small local organizations, could go unanswered.

It is a scary time for many, a time of unprecedented opportunity for others….

We cannot assume that the inequities of access and capacity  that still prevent so many individuals and institutions from using these new tools of change will disappear on their own. We must work to set  policies and programs that will ensure connectivity for all.

Now, there’s the big question:  How can we — individually and collectively — best help those small-but-vital nonprofits to gain access to the skills and tools they need to keep hanging on way out there? Or should “survival of the fittest” be the rule for nonprofits, as it is in theory for business?

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