Frequently Asked Questions

What resources are available to provide on-going support for Community Networks?
by Kelly Garrett

Identifying long-term support for a Community Network (CN) is an easily overlooked challenge in a service’s early planning stages. Even when this challenge is not forgotten, it can take so much time, money and work to get a CN started that it is tempting to postpone thinking about these challenges until the network is well underway.

Yet the best way to assure long-term survival for your CN is to develop a network of support right from the beginning. In his article, "Can We Keep Community Networks Running?", Steve Cisler suggests several strategies to do this. Three of these strategies are described here: being representative, being inclusive and making alliances. Resources that may help your CN to understand and implement each of these ideas will be provided in the remainder of this text.

Being Representative:
It is important that a CN reflects the diversity of its community. The more people connect with the resources offered the more vested they feel in the service as a whole. Fostering a sense of investment can encourage people to participate, and can help the group unite to overcome its obstacles.

Discussion

For a detailed discussion of the importance of diversity and involvement in the revitalization of the community, see The Millennium Report to the Rockefeller Foundation: http://www.cdinet.com/Millennium/Report/revital.html
The potential benefits and challenges that come with the inclusion of economically diverse people are described in detail in the Technology Review article at: http://web.mit.edu/org/t/techreview/www/articles/oct97/chapman.html

Examples

The Boulder Community Network represents a tremendous number of community agencies. Though the information is generally organized topically, they also offer contact information for an extensive list of regional agencies. This list can be seen at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/human-social/agency/agency.htm
For more examples of other CNs that place an emphasis on being representative, see “Community Groups – Best Practices” on the Community Connector's Community Information section at http://databases.si.umich.edu/cfdocs/community/ci_comgroup.cfm

Being Inclusive:
A CN should also strive to include a broad range of services and information. This is closely related to being representative, and has many of the same effects. People are more likely to value a CN that provides a breadth of resources that includes (though is not necessarily limited too) their own interests and concerns.

Discussion and Examples

In his online workshop, entitled “Developing and Sustaining Community Networks,” Doug Schuler outlines a number of content areas that are at the core of a successful CN: http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/workshop.html#services

Making Alliances:
Support from well-established institutions is crucial. Not only can they help provide the money and skills needed to maintain a CN’s complex technology infrastructure, but also they can lend a sense of endurance and reliability to a fairly recent (and sometimes skeptically received) innovation. Though identifying these organizations may seem daunting, remember that CNs all over the country have already been successful. Many groups, both public and private, want to be affiliated with these technology-based resources.

Discussion

Doug Schuler’s online workshop, mentioned above, also briefly addresses the importance of alliances, and highlights a number of questions and issues particularly relevant to this subject. Solutions, however, are not provided: http://www.scn.org/ip/commnet/workshop.html#organization

Examples

The Community Connector pages listed below give examples of the types of organizations that CNs are working with today.

Community Funding & Partners: http://databases.si.umich.edu/cfdocs/community/funding.cfm

Other Information on This Subject
Many, more extensive discussions of these topics are available in the Community Connector’s Reading Room.

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