Case Study: The Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose mission is to empower and support organizations, social movements and individuals in and through the use of information and communication technologies to build strategic communities and initiatives for the purpose of making meaningful contributions to equitable human development, social justice, participatory political processes and environmental sustainability.

The APC defends and promotes non-commercial, productive online space for NGOs and collaborates with like-minded organizations to ensure that the information and communication needs of civil society are considered in telecommunications, donor and investment policy. They are committed to freedom of expression and exchange of information on the Internet. To this end, APC members develop Internet products, resources and tools to meet the unique advocacy, collaboration and information publishing and management needs of civil society.

One of the APC's most recent initiatives is the Business Planning Toolkit. Developed in response to the growing tension faced by NGOs as they seek to balance sustainable business practice with their missions, this collection brings together the creative ideas, expertise and experiences of APC members and its private sector partners. It includes articles, issue-specific presentations and ready-to-use forms that address the various business planning processes for Mission-Driven organizations. These tools are aimed at helping individuals working in the non-profit ISP business, but may be more broadly applicable to other mission-driven sectors.

Since the APC's audience is diverse and global, utilizing many different levels of technology, the production of the Business Planning Toolkit required that the information be presented in highly useable HTML (i.e. no plug-ins, few graphics). In addition, because many of the documents in the Toolkit (such as contracts and various types of templates) have to be editable and printable, the same information is also available in a number of different document formats for downloading, including PDF, Microsoft Word and RTF. The availability of all information in both HTML and print formats allows publishers to locate what they want quickly, browsing online, and then selecting those elements that are most central to the development of their specific organizations.