There are some definite parallels between the world of open source software and that of nonprofit organizations.
Like open source software, nonprofit organizations fall outside the traditional business sphere. Although some, like the International Red Cross and the National Cancer Society, are highly visible, others are easy to overlook, like Casey Family Programs in Seattle.
Established in 1966 by Jim Casey, one of the founders of United Parcel Service, Casey Family Programs has its headquarters in a five-story office building, a staff of 150 employees, and offices in 16 states. Its mission is to provide foster care for youth and to promote advances in child-welfare practice and policy at the state government level. Despite the importance of its work and its four decades of operation, chances are that even most Seattle residents have never heard of it, let alone people outside of Seattle.
Nonprofit organizations like Casey Family Programs do not view constant publicity as central to their effectiveness in fulfilling their mission, taking to heart the philosophy that actions speak louder than words.
Does Casey Family Programs use open source software extensively? I don’t know. However, the 13th Regional Alaska Native Corporation, a much smaller non-profit organization also headquartered in Seattle with which I happen to be familiar, certainly does, especially for Web browsing and e-mail.
Open source software projects are often themselves structured as nonprofit organizations, and many solicit donations from end-users and interested parties. Naturally nonprofit organizations feel some sense of kinship with open source undertakings of this nature.
Unless they’re unusually well-endowed, nonprofit organizations typically operate on tight budgets by big-business standards, sometimes even shoestring budgets. As a result there’s much greater awareness of open source software in the no-frills nonprofit culture, where frugality is usually more important than technological capability.
In many cases nonprofit organizations have seen the “free” aspect of open source software as an obvious opportunity to save money and have adopted specific end-user applications for office use. Even well-endowed nonprofit organizations (for example, some of those in the biotechnology sector) often use open source software as their preferred option because it aligns with their own approach and values. Nonprofit organizations with their own programming staffs have also taken the opportunity to modify open source software for their own specific uses and then contribute those modifications back to the code base.
Because they’ve become familiar with open source software at work, employees of nonprofit organizations understand its usefulness better than the public at large and consequently make greater use of popular open source end-user applications like Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird on their home computers.