The NinthBridge projects outlined below offers a sampling of recent or current efforts that illustrate the broad range of work that we engage in. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you might have.

Strategic Technology Planning

Over the past year NinthBridge has worked with Helen Keller Worldwide, Ipas, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Supportive Housing Network of New York to develop strategic technology plans

The planning process included extensive staff interviews, surveys of the international field offices, hardware and software inventories, and daylong planning sessions, in which staff reflected on their technology frustrations, needs and dreams, and various potential solutions were demonstrated. Both Helen Keller Worldwide and Ipas were interested in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of communications between their US-based headquarters and their many field offices around the world.

Recurring themes in NinthBridge’s technology planning work for international NGOs include a desire for an integrated, more unified staff, elimination of administrative redundancies, and the movement of administrative control and decision-making from headquarters to the field. While the nuts and bolts of networks and computer systems are certainly a focus, significantly more time is devoted to exploring the operations, communications and needs of agencies, and determining how technology can best serve that agency's strategic goals.

New Media

Distance Learning for Nonprofit Organizations - In conjunction with the Distance Learning Initiative of EngenderHealth, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, NinthBridge has produced Distance Learning for Nonprofit Organizations, covering current issues related to the availability and use of various distance learning technologies, with a focus on these technologies’ applicability to nonprofit agencies, particularly in the case of international nonprofits.

This report reviews and describes key issues regarding distance learning, including:

• Technological standards, equipment, and the current capabilities and limitations of various methods of distance education
• The various distance learning technology options, including the benefits and limitations of each
• Best practices in regards to preparing for and implementing a distance learning program

Read the report in a PDF version (1.7 MB): Download, or request to receive a copy via email.

Museum of Modern Art - NinthBridge recently worked with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), to design site-development processes for the MoMA.org Online Services team. The MoMA.org site actually comprises multiple sites that represent a collaboration between the Web production staff and a variety of operational and curatorial departments. Through a process that included information gathering, review and analysis, process strategy and proposal development phases, NinthBridge developed a clear integrated site-development process that:

• Specifies the roles and responsibilities of key MoMA operational departments in the web development process;
• Allows site-production staff to adequately plan for and meet the needs of operational and curatorial departments
• Minimizes opportunities for miscommunication, overtaxing of internal resources, and "scope creep";
• Provides clear sign-off points in the development process for collaborating departments.

eRider Technology Support

International ERider Technology Support - NinthBridge is providing eRider Tech Support Services to international and local NGOs in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Thailand and Cambodia. Over the next two years NinthBridge will be adding several more eRider projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Updates will be posted here periodically.

eRiders in the United Kingdom - NinthBridge is working with the London Advice Services Alliance (LASA) to develop the eRider movement in the United Kingdom. In June 2002 Lasa hosted "Voluntary Sector IT Support: Building on the US "Circuit Rider" Experience in the UK", in which various London-based networks, funders and technology providers heard a presentation by NinthBridge on the evolution of the Circuit Rider Movement in the United States, discussed the technology support needs of the voluntary sector, and offered strategies for the development of the movement in the UK. In the tradition of freely sharing advice among contemporaries, NinthBridge is volunteering its time and advice to help Lasa import some of the tools and methods of Circuit Rider that have succeeded in the US.

eRider Training - NinthBridge is in the early stages of a project to compile and organize comprehensive training materials for international eRiders, seen as a critical component of the movement’s international growth. ERiding is seen as encompassing a broad skill set, including not only basic tech and networking skills, but consulting and planning skills, as well as knowledge of issues unique to NGO sectors, such as the environment, health, human rights, etc. Various trial training sessions are planned for Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia during 2002 and 2003.

For suggestions or more information on this project please contact William Lester, Chief Technology Officer for NinthBridge.

Intranet and Database Development

Cambodian Ministry of Health - The NinthBridge-Racha tech team recently released OD-DID, a database to manage the inventories and distributions of over 40 pharmacies throughout Cambodia. This program interfaces nicely with the database previously designed by NinthBridge-Racha to manage the Cambodian Ministry of Health's national pharmaceutical database.