CTC Accelerator Executive Summary IT Resource Center - February 2002

Community Technology Centers (CTCs) are among our best strategies to bridge the Digital Divide. Through CTCs, residents in disadvantaged communities—from senior citizens to first graders—have access to the technologies, networks, and training that allow them to participate in our digital culture and economy.

The Divide is a problem with some urgency; CTCs are one important solution: but creating CTCs at the typical pace with which new nonprofit organizations and/or programs within existing nonprofits get started means that years will pass before CTCs are available everywhere they need to be.

The IT Resource Center, a Chicago nonprofit organization with a seventeen-year history of assisting other nonprofits with technology, has thus developed the Accelerator to help initiate new CTCs or help existing CTCs expand their services. The Accelerator offers both services and tangible resources for CTCs. The Accelerator, which will assist twenty-five CTCs in Cook County over a three-year period, has lead funding of over $1 million committed by the Elizabeth Morse Genius Trust; additional matching funding will be sought to meet the project’s budget of $2.75 million.

In Year One of the project, ten CTCs will be selected via a competitive application process to participate. They will receive services including:

• Assistance with programming and curriculum choices
• Assistance with technology, business, and marketing planning
• Training for CTC staff and volunteers

They will also receive concrete resources that are the difference between the dream of a CTC and the actuality:

• Cash or in-kind hardware equivalent to six to ten computers; software, furniture
• On-site staffing every week (ten hours) by members of the Accelerator staff for troubleshooting, program development, or direct work with end users.
• Resources for marketing, security, cabling, etc.

The resource package is worth approximately $36,000. Participating CTCs will match this funding by providing space, staffing, and management for the CTC; the in-kind match will be approximately $40,000. In Years Two and Three, these ten CTCs will receive resources for upgrades and continued staffing worth approximately $18,000 per year; they will continue their in-kind match.

Also in Year Two, an additional fifteen CTCs will begin the process, receiving upgrades and continued staffing in Year Three. Thus over three years, twenty-five CTCs will be initiated or expanded; ten will have three years of participation and fifteen will have two years.

The Accelerator Project will be led by Program Director Mercedes Soto who has hands-on experience creating CTCs and is a national leader in the movement. She will be assisted by a Program Associate, Intern(s), and volunteers. Senior management and administrative support will come from the IT Resource Center. An Advisory Committee will be formed to assist in the guidance of the project. A six-month planning and preparation period will begin after the grant is finalized in October 2001; assistance to CTCs will begin in thye Spring of 2002.

With substantial funding from the Elizabeth Morse Genius Trust, the resources needed from other sources to fully implement the project include cash funding and in-kind gifts including current hardware, appropriate software, lab furniture for both children and adults, networking services, and Internet broadband accounts. Microsoft Corporation and Compaq have each made in-kind commitments to the project. The project will also be soliciting PR and marketing assistance, volunteers at various levels, and a variety of products and services.