UPDATE (3/14/2009 1:07 AM EDT): Check out the blog post from Community Voice Mail addressing my concerns. Oddly, the blogger there claims to have left comments here but I don’t see anything. Just so you all know, I don’t moderate comments except if you put more than one external HTML link in your comment as that’s a sign you may be a spammer. On to the original article…
Launched today, Google Voice is the newest update to Grandcentral,
a service I’ve used since near its inception. It generates a universal phone number that ties together various services such as all your other phone numbers, voicemail, VOIP, SMS and even your Gmail contacts. It’s seamless, it’s convenient, and I love it. The tech press points out that Google Voice is a direct challenge to other established for-profit services such as eBay’s Skype, Vonage and Comcast. They missed out its effect on one nonprofit, Community Voicemail, that offers free voicemail for nonprofit clients.
In the past, I was responsible for handling the technical side of Community Voicemail for New York City. It’s admirable goal was to provide free voicemail accounts for homeless clients throughout the city. At its peak, we had thousands of voicemail accounts being routed out of the office of the Coalition for the Homeless. Over time, it slowly became a burden as the hardware slowly died and then it was down for weeks when replacement hardware was shipped and installed. And then Grandcentral arrived. You could GIVE your clients free voicemail. When it was bought out by Google, Grandcentral unfortunately stopped giving out new accounts. Community Voicemail got a reprieve.
During my time working with them from 2002-2007, there was never an attempt by Community Voicemail to change their client-server delivery method. There was no attempt to build an open API, widgetize it, integrate it with social networks, indeed there wasn’t even a Web client through which you could provision services. Delivery of software for a nationally unified CVM that wouldn’t require direct provisioning of local telephone numbers by a nonprofit was promised but never delivered. You had to have Cisco equipment on-premises just to even start.
There is no doubt that a lot of good was done by CVM before Grandcentral showed up on the scene. Many clients attested to its usefulness. However, Community Voicemail is made redundant in the face of publicly available free voicemail. Indeed, Grandcentral actually offered homeless people in San Francisco free voicemail just like CVM. In 2006, the writing was on the wall and I counseled the Coalition to shut down the New York CVM service and we did. I’m upset that Grandcentral shut down giving out accounts soon afterwards but the launch of Google Voice today ultimately confirms my intuition about voice telephony. Voice is low-bandwidth and the processing of it is hardly more complicated than say email or even IM. It’s so cheap from a data processing point of view that it will be offered for free. Google Voice is just another milestone to a free voice plan for all.
As I said in 2006:
In a deep way, this really gets to the heart of what any non-profit’s true mission is which I believe is to render itself obsolete. If the private sector in the guise of Grandcentral is providing free voicemail, then shouldn’t every non-profit that is currently providing free voicemail in a very serious way ask: “Should we shut down our free voicemail services?” While this may be a sad outcome for many people, we should consider it a victory ultimately for the ability of our sector to step in when no one else did and conversely, to back off when others pick up the slack.
I think Community Voicemail desperately needs a new raison d’etre and indeed there is room in their mission statement to evolve away from voicemail as their only mode of service:
Community Voice Mail (CVM) helps people living in poverty, transition and homelessness rebuild their lives by connecting them to jobs, housing, information and hope. We do this by customizing and distributing communications technology via a national network of community-based services.
They can’t just be a free voicemail provisioner. They need to attack other issues that social services clients face but would be in the same realm of voicemail. Voicemail was ultimately about keeping data in safekeeping for nonprofit clients. Many social services clients don’t just have voicemail as a problem, they also have data safekeeping issues. In other words, it’s really tough for clients to keep all their documentation straight when they’re homeless. I’ve often thought it would be a good idea for homeless clients to also have a one-stop shop where they can could scan in documents such as wedding, birth and naturalization certificates as well as any other government documents so that any nonprofit they’re working with could print them out. Think of it as a electronic folder that makes it easier for clients to keep track of the work they’re doing with nonprofits. With the advent of EC2 and S3, this could easily be a national service that Community Voicemail could start without a large outlay of money.
It’s clear that nonprofits that work with technology will always face the problem of being made obsolete in the face of larger and better-funded ventures. There’s nothing wrong with simply stepping back and reassessing your mission from time to time in the face of that. I really hope that Community Voicemail takes this post to heart and really look into modifying their programs.
(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
Loading ...
Are you saying that you were the person behind the shut down of services to homeless clients in New York while the private sector st*ffed around on their private jets and corporate parties. Why do you think that there commitment to the homeless community Iif any) has changed now. I prefer to rely on an honest, if simple, non-profit service rather than to trust the so-called private sector. God knows when google will start asking for its share of the bailout money that we are paying for.
Shame on you
Timely post, Allan. We've participated in Community Voice Mail since 2007, though we don't actually use CVM's technology. Instead we use lines donated by a local telco and a server donated by a local communications company. The local telco was bought out by a regional telco and recently the new owners started questioning whether or not they were getting enough bang for their buck in the form of good PR. We're working with them to satisfy them because we certainly don't want our clients losing out on such a valuable service.
But it sure seems to me that in the worst-case scenario where we're unable to please our donors, we could facilitate the use of Google Voice by the homeless in our community, whenever it opens back up to the general public, that is.
In more ways than one, you're right on CVM being a valuable service . The Coalition was paying roughly $1,400 a month in line fees alone and had a dedicated staff person. That came out to roughly $60,000 a year in overhead expenses to manage the system. That became a tough pill to swallow for the rest of management especially when you considered CVM's lack of responsiveness to warnings on my part that the hardware was dying. For years, we had an old PC running OS/2 keeping CVM up and running at the Coalition. CVM waited until the PC died before they gave us new hardware. That was a pretty serious mistake on their part as the extended outage also gave us a chance to understand life without CVM.
I assume Google Voice will be made available fairly soon — all the reports say a few weeks. When it is open, I'll post about it.
Indeed, I suppose another option for us should we lose our donors would be to use the existing CVM infrastructure, but the costs do remain high and they are still dealing with frequent outages and other problems.
Uh, no. This shutdown of CVM occurred in early 2007. As for your statement:
I see you left a gmail address for your contact information. How's that working out for ya?
[...] He wrote: [CVM’s] admirable goal was to provide free voicemail accounts for homeless clients throughout the city…There is no doubt that a lot of good was done by CVM before Grandcentral showed up on the scene. Many clients attested to its usefulness. However, Community Voicemail is made redundant in the face of publicly available free voicemail. Indeed, Grandcentral actually offered homeless people in San Francisco free voicemail just like CVM. [...]
Not exactly an apt analogy. A better one might be PrivatePhone, a free voice mail service from NetZero that shut down after about six months. Or the free voice mail service that WorldCom once provided to homeless people in San Francisco (we know how well that worked). Or even GrandCentral, which stopped offering free voice mail for nearly two years after being acquired by Google. To me, the point is that technology companies offer technology, and they do so for a profit. In the interest of profit, they have to tweak their business models from time to time, and for a "free" service, that has always meant a.) charging for the service, or b.) shutting it down. Gmail's monetization model is pretty clear; it's not so clear for Google Voice. Regardless, Community Voice Mail is a *program* that integrates with a network of 2000 social service agencies in 47 U.S. cities, and is comprised of much more than just the voice mail technology. Our only mission is to help meet the communication and information needs of our clients, and the agencies that serve them. Google will never be that.
Steve! Finally, you made it! Readers, that's Steve Albertson from CVM but I don't think he's responding in an "official" capacity. I think he's been trying to post comments for some time but for whatever reason, IntenseDebate was erasing the comment. If you've had this problem yourself, please e-mail me at abenamer@nonprofittechblog.org.
On to the substance of his comment… It's pretty clear that most nonprofits don't give their clients "free" e-mail when it's so readily available from the likes of Yahoo, MSN, and Gmail. Of course, there's a profit motive behind free e-mail. I suggest that Google Voice will also be similarly monetized. The fact that Google paid off the patent on visual voicemail seems indicative of their more serious intent regarding voice. My guess is that Google Voice will be even more closely integrated on their Android devices. Google has found a way to give away "free" voicemail while at the same time using it as a way to dislodge cellular carriers from their walled gardens. I don't think Google will drop this service in the same manner they dropped Lively or Google Notebook. Looking at the launch timing (in a terrible economy), the patent payment, and its use with Android, I don't think they're leaving Voice.
Of course, this is going to be a matter that will play itself out in the months and years ahead. If Google Voice doesn't exist a year from now, I've got a few hats to eat. However, if it does, will CVM change its focus to provide more unique services that?
Today's the world is returning towards natural way of curing due to the harmful effects of today's chemical & synthetic medicines. People are deeply worried on this issue and also insisting to use natural way of curing to get health & security.
Our Acne cure process is 100% Natural / herbal.
We have made vitiligo cure tablets with the following herbal ingredients:
Melia Azedarach
Cuminum Cyminum
Fumeria Parviflora
Melia Azadirachta
Lawsomia Alba
Piper Nigrum
Rosa Damascena
Satalum Album
Tephrosa Parpura
Terminalia Chebula
Baluhinia Veriegata
Cassia Abus
Berberis Aristata
Echinop (spp)
Cordiandrum Satinum
Indications:
These tablets are effective in skin eruption, Rashes, Pimples, Prickles, Boils, Ringworm, Absces, Scabies, Psoriasis and specially in vitiligo.
Dosage:
2 tablets thrice a day.
http://www.superherbalcare.com
Voice mail will be obsolete in a few years. Sorry to bust the bubble. This is a great wake-up call to all non-profits who have only provided this service or had this as its main mission. The world is getting more and more complicated and instant. I never leave voice mails if I can help it, and I rarely check them as most of them are sales calls. But that is just me.
One would think that upgrading the access and knowledge of different technical communication outlets for their clients would be more of an asset in the job market. If you are a non-profit providing fax machines and voicemail only, just plan to shut down. In a few years you will be left behind and no one will want to support a group providing substandard services to the homeless. You can't fight technology.
Remember that your ultimate goal is to impact society so that it starts to naturally become aware and care for the constituency that you serve. I believe that is what you have gotten Google to do. You should pat yourselves on the back. Good job!
Not to say voicemail is not important now, it is. Just a good time to be thinking about the future. It comes so fast.
I would totally agree with Meredith. It comes so fast, in just a snap.
Yeah I agree, it is kinda soon for this. Skype is a very good product as well.