Non-Profit Tech Blog

Hi all,

Stay tuned for some updates later this week on the state of non-profit technology here in Cairo, Egypt. I’m lucky enough to know people in the Ford Foundation so when I asked to volunteer they immediately connected me to their grantees.

I had some preconceptions that I thought would be and should be blown away. IT equipment is not any harder to purchase here than in the States. Even items that you’d think would not be able to pass ITAR restrictions are sent over here (such as a Cisco PIX firewall). One thing that everyone struggles with is the unsteady power supply. Apparently, this happens quite a bit on the African continent. Nigerian IT administrators have to deal not just with brownouts but blackout as well. Servers are routinely down during non-office hours to preserve the motherboard against multiple nightly voltage spikes.

I talked to a non-profit called Studio Emad Eddin. They have all the classic IT problems of non-profits in the US: spotty IT support, needing to train staff, improper use of security credentials, unusual configurations of Exchange server and inadequate use of the file server. In many respects, it was like being in New York, working with a similarly sized non-profit. From what I can tell, there is no equivalent of a non-profit circuit rider here in Cairo. From a strategic point of view, I’m hoping foundations working with these non-profits will consider that in the future (nudge nudge). I’m hoping to follow up with Studio Emad Eddin and give them some recommendations regarding the use of their Win2k3 server. Question: do you think open source is more amenable to staff sizes under 10 or do you think Windows Small Business Server is a better bet?