Old NAP Proposal

This proposal is a piece of Post-CollabTech cleanup.

Name: Nonprofit Access Point/ Nonprofit Assistance Program / Needs Analysis Program

Proposal: Revamp the hardware grants process to provide a single point of access for nonprofits.

To begin with, the hardware grants group current method of interacting with nonprofits is a good model for this. There is an email list, an RT queue, and each grant gets an advocate. The downsides are: it takes as much as a month to get an advocate, or even any response; nonprofits need to understand what they need; it doesn't take care of anything but hardware.

Let us create a new group, the NAP group, who shall be advocates. We will eliminate the hardware grant request form, and replace it with a nonprofit help form, which asks nonprofits to tell us about what they do, and what they want to do, and what their technological limitations are. These requests go to the NAP group, probably with an RT queue and an email list. Anyone on that group can choose to 'Take' the ticket in the Queue, and they then become the advocate/shepherd/nonprofitherd for the nonprofit. Their job is to talk to the nonprofit and understand what they need, or if it's clear from the email, to take the appropriate actions to make it happen (make an internal grant request for hardware, ask Tech Support questions, ask education about the possibility of a class, or find a list of contractors who could answer the problem, most likely).

The Hardware Grants group stops receiving outside requests, which will cut down on the people requesting diskless terminals and no server, or whatever other nonsensical requests. People get immediate responses and immedate advocates. And we create a group who can take care of nonprofits needs, and also be a central point of discovery for what nonprofits need and what we should charge for.

Let us also direct the NAP as its first priority to determine the following things:


 * 1) Are there classes that we should be offering?
 * 2) Does the NAP need a staff coordinator?
 * 3) What pieces of software need to exist/be understood to help convert nonprofits?