Online network for good at ConnectRichmond.org


Hundreds of backpacks flooded the Suder house last September. Chesterfield County resident Dian Suder had heard about three young girls in Bethesda, Md., starting a program, Project Backpack, to collect school supplies and backpacks for children displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Suder wanted to help victims of the hurricane, and with three children of her own she felt a special connection to Project Backpack.

Suder contacted her children's schools but says they were reluctant to get involved. Her employer, Dominion Power, already had its own relief effort under way. Fortunately, Suder knew of a local Web site that was just the place to go. She wrote a short e-mail requesting donations for Project Backpack, submitted it to the Web site, and quickly received between 20 to 30 responses from concerned residents, local churches, nonprofits and Richmond businesses. In about five weeks, Suder had collected 457 backpacks, each filled with school supplies and a handwritten note of support, ready to be shipped to hurricane-displaced children both in Richmond and Hattiesburg, Miss.

"The entire first floor of my house was filled with backpacks," Suder says. "I spent five minutes on an e-mail and literally had people coming out of the woodwork to help. I'd come home from work and find backpacks on the front porch." One company even covered the cost of shipping all the backpacks.
Witness the power of ConnectRichmond.org, a Web site harnessing the information super-highway for good. Launched in 2001 and sponsored by the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, ConnectRichmond.org's initial mission aimed to help improve local nonprofits' access to information. Four years later, the Web site has grown into a thriving network that connects people and organizations -- for-profit, nonprofit and government alike -- and offers a vast, eBay-like bazaar of goods and services to just about anyone interested in helping the community.

Career seekers can hunt through a list of local nonprofit job openings; volunteers can search for organizations needing unpaid help. Another section contains a small library's worth of studies on subjects ranging from the environment and child care to homelessness and welfare reform.

Nancy Stutts, the creator behind ConnectRichmond.org and the director of the Campus Community Partnership at University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, says community agencies often operate in a bubble and need a place to share information. "ConnectRichmond leverages the rich resources of the university to promote social change and to link networks and people without regard to geography, race, class or physical barriers," Stutts says.

ConnectRichmond.org is based on an elegantly simple concept: recycle instead of creating from scratch. Much of what nonprofits need to function more effectively -- funding, free software, research or pro bono advice from experienced execs -- is already out there.

"Nonprofits tend to be driven by the day-to-day challenges of critical client needs and the task of finding money," Stutts explains. "ConnectRichmond.org has changed the way the nonprofit sector does business in Richmond, giving many previously isolated organizations a vast network of like-minded people who care about strengthening the region's quality of life."

Acting as an "information broker" is one of ConnectRichmond.org's most vital functions. To make it happen each week, Stutts and Melissa Minetola, ConnectRichmond.org's program coordinator, cull information from a variety of sources. The listings are sent out via daily e-mail and updated on the Web site every Thursday. ConnectRichmond.org also allows users to post questions or announcements and receive replies at near real-time speeds. Harriet Henderson, the director of the Richmond Public Library, wanted to donate a massive, wall-mounted map of Virginia to anyone willing to transport it. After ConnectRichmond.org posted a notice about the map in its daily e-mail, the Virginia Historical Society claimed it the next day.

Other ConnectRichmond.org users have used the site to secure funding, fill internships, locate jobs and, in the case of one local nonprofit, find pro bono legal assistance to obtain a trademark for Legendary Santa.

The information sharing isn't just a one-way street. Early on, Stutts realized that ConnectRichmond.org would only be as useful as the information it contained. Jennifer Whitlock, who works for the software support company Helpdesk.com, for example, checked in after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. She knew someone in Richmond needing assistance and posted an open question to see what resources were available. Soon she was inundated with the replies of people eager to donate everything from cars and homes to clothing and job-search assistance.

"I was struck by the number of folks who wanted to help," says Whitlock. To give back, she compiled a "Katrina Evacuee Resource List" and sent it to ConnectRichmond.org. Stutts and her staff then incorporated the list -- which contained information about housing, employment, donations and education in the Richmond area -- into a special section on the Web site where anyone could access it.

This dynamic flow of information is what makes the site effective, says Darcy Oman, president and CEO of The Community Foundation, which provided much of the site's initial funding and continues to support the project. "ConnectRichmond.org fills communication gaps in charitable organizations," she says. "It's raised the knowledge profile of nonprofits, especially the smaller ones who can't access information easily, and helped them improve their service delivery."

The project's own profile is on the rise, too. In 2002, shortly after its launch, ConnectRichmond.org received about 1,500 page views a month. Now the site averages about 22,000 page views per month, and approximately 2,500 subscribers receive the daily e-mail list. Over the past a number of years, the site has also helped launch several community projects, sponsored seminars and conferences, and started a program to help connect nonprofits with refurbished computers. In February 2005, Stutts received funding to launch ConnectRappahannock.org, a similar site planned for Virginia's Northern Neck.

In the not-so-distant future, Stutts imagines ConnectRichmond.org connecting more than just Richmond. She envisions a revenue model that makes the site less dependent on grants and more financially self-sufficient. Which means that the concept could be sold and replicated just about anywhere.

After launching ConnectRappa-hannock.org, Stutts envisions the idea taking off elsewhere. Communities in nations as far away as England and Australia have expressed interest.

How about ConnectWorld.org?