IF you want a grant from the Verizon Foundation, there is only one way to go about it -- online. From application through processing and financing, the Web is the route to this multimillion-dollar foundation's heart.
''Everything we fund is about new technology,'' said Suzanne DuBose, the president of the foundation, which is in New York. ''For us to be a leader, we have to operate the way we preach, using new technology.''
It also makes corporate sense, she said; the foundation's sponsor, Verizon Communications, was formed this year after the merger of two technology giants, Bell Atlantic and GTE.
Advocates of Web-based grant-making point to the advantages of e-philanthropy for both givers and getters. The Web streamlines the application process, forcing would-be grant recipients to focus and sharpen their proposals.
Continue reading the main storyIt also speeds up decision-making: competing applications can be readily distributed to reviewers who, freed from scores of briefcase-breaking paper presentations, can consult one another online, pass judgment rapidly and send in their results -- all electronically.
''In a cab, I was approving a grant on my cell phone,'' Ms. DuBose said, explaining just how fast the process can be for a philanthropist with wireless access to the Internet and a fully stocked database online.
The Verizon Foundation expects to distribute about 4,000 grants, totaling $70 million, by December, using the all-online process, she said. That is the same number of grants that were given last year, when Ms. DuBose headed what was then the Bell Atlantic Foundation.
She said that she anticipated a substantial jump in applications next year, as the education and marketing process kicked in and people in the former GTE territories learned about the cyberfoundation.
Already, though, Ms. DuBose said, the Web operations have increased staff efficiency. ''When I started after the merger of Nynex and Bell Atlantic, I had 27 people reporting to me from Maine to Virginia,'' she said. ''Now, 9 people report to me and I'm handling 50 states and 27 foreign countries.''
Experts in philanthropy say that they expect electronic grant-making to spread. ''My impression is that Verizon is simply doing better and more thoughtfully what many foundations and eventually all foundations will be doing -- making digital access to foundations easier and more systematic,'' said Woodward Wickham, a vice president for the general program in public affairs at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.
MacArthur, Mr. Wickham said, receives most proposals in the form of hard copy, but welcomes proposals by e-mail.
In New York, the Russell Sage Foundation, which finances and publishes research in the social sciences, allows grant applicants to submit their proposals by e-mail attachments. ''It saves paper and it's far quicker,'' said Jennifer Nespole, a program associate.
Ms. DuBose predicts that within three years most corporate foundations will have Web-based procedures. ''There are dozens of corporations that call me all the time,'' she said.
But while the vision of e-grant-making seems like heaven in paper-bound foundationland, it is also raising concerns regarding the exclusion of those without computer access or Internet skills.
''Verizon's policy is definitely exclusionary,'' said Ryan Turner, who directs nonprofit technology policy projects at O.M.B. Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy group in Washington that works on behalf of community groups nationwide. ''It puts even more of a wall between poor groups that do not use even e-mail and everyone else.''
Donna House, an advocate for the Navajo Nation in Alcalde, N.M., said that ''50 percent of the Navajo Nation doesn't have a phone; the rest have party lines.'' Access to the Internet, she said, is nil.
Greg Malhoit, a lawyer and the executive director of the North Carolina Justice and Community Development Center in Raleigh, which focuses on social and economic justice for low-income residents, said, ''Many community nonprofits I'm familiar with in North Carolina still do not have access to basic technology.''
And those who do may not be comfortable, let alone facile, with the Internet. ''I'm glad Verizon is doing this,'' said Jamal LeBlanc, a policy associate at the Benton Foundation in Washington, which promotes the use of communications media by nonprofits. ''But for some people unfamiliar with computers, it is going to be a disincentive.''
Executives at the Verizon Foundation acknowledge the problem. Ms. DuBose's response, she said, is to point to the computers available at public libraries, community centers and outreach groups. She noted that the foundation's role was to provide basic technology to local community groups.
''Our strategy has been to build the not-for-profit centers, providing facilities so that local community users can get access in that way,'' Ms. DuBose said. The foundation is working with the Native American Indian Council and with the National Indian Telecom Institute, for example, to create access to digital technologies.
The foundation has also tried to make the electronic application process user-friendly, leading applicants through the process and allowing them to save their working documents on Verizon's system. They can return another day to complete the form. When applicants send paper grant applications, the foundation contacts them via e-mail, e-fax, telephone or letter directing them to the Web site.
The feedback is also faster. The names of grant recipients are posted by the system at 3 p.m. every day in a banner at the top of the Web page (www.verizon.com/foundation).
Some applicants who were initially fearful of the cyberprocess have become converts. ''Now it's the way I prefer,'' said Karen Kelley Mears, the development director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, the third largest orchestra in the state. Ms. Mears won an $8,000 Verizon grant. ''They've made it very easy; you can save and go back to work on it whenever you need.''
Other applicants are encouraging their own organizations to embrace the e-process. ''We were uneasy about online submission,'' said Cao O, the executive director of the Asian American Federation of New York, which was awarded a $100,000 Verizon grant. ''We were used to long proposals. Theirs is a lot shorter and you have to squeeze everything into a few lines.''
Now, Mr. O said, he insists that members of his federation switch to the Web. ''We found that members conceptually understand the value of technology, but they don't apply it in the day-to-day process,'' he said. ''This might upset people initially, but in the long run it will help them catch up.''
For grant recipients at Verizon, it is a techno-reality. ''If you are running a nonprofit,'' Ms. DuBose said, ''and say that nowhere on your volunteer core or your staff can you access the Internet, you are probably not a strong candidate to get funding. We would question how well you are serving the community if you don't have access to the Internet.''
Continue reading the main story
