Do you think Alexander Graham Bell envisioned people using wireless phones to view video clips? Do you think Guglielmo Marconi envisioned people listening to "radio" on their computers, thousands of miles away from where the sounds originated?

These questions highlight the power of convergence, the intersection of broadcasting, computers, telephones, video and more. All our different media, all our various information technologies, have as their common purpose the transmission and manipulation of information. With the discovery that all information - sound, pictures, raw data - can be converted into digital format (ones and zeroes) and recomposed intact somewhere else, our different media are shedding their separate identities and coming closer together. And with that convergence, "information" has been given a life of its own, separate and distinct from the medium which carries it.

Why should nonprofits care? Because so many are in the business of information. America's nonprofits are our leading experts in human services, health care, education, arts, and humanities, and they deliver other public benefits, such as civil rights work, community improvement efforts, public affairs, and scientific information. And these are the very areas where futurists and industry promotions have for years suggested that advances in information technologies can provide direct benefits to the public.¹ In fact, with the potential benefit to our society, policymakers at all levels should be concerned that nonprofits have the needed resources to take advantage of convergence.

In the last ten years, public interest advocates have fought to reserve capacity for nonprofits in the emerging communications landscape. We have witnessed some victories: schools and libraries around the country receive substantial discounts for getting and staying connected to the Internet, noncommercial programmers are now available on satellite television systems and low power radio stations run by nonprofits will be coming on the air in rural areas soon. But these hard-fought victories are few and far between. Policymakers remain focused on creating competitive environments for commercial players citing lower prices and increased choices as the public benefits.

People do have more options today - hundreds of video channels delivered by various wire and wireless systems, cell phones, pagers, computers, handheld devices like PalmPilots^TM. People spend more time looking at screens, but less on any one screen like the television. It may be easier to distribute information many people want - like sports scores and stock quotes - but no easier to find out who in my neighborhood provides skills training so I can find a new job. For commercial organizations, convergence has raised concerns about the size, growth and behavior of audiences as technological difference becomes less relevant to viewers and listeners and delivery at maximum convenience across any platform becomes all the more essential. For nonprofits trying to reach and coordinate clients, employees, volunteers, partners, supports and funders, similar concerns arise about the best way to reach and stay connected with their constituencies.

Profit-driven convergence brings together the immediacy of the Internet, the urgency and emotion of television and the depth of the print medium under one corporate roof. Critics fear convergence will limit the amount and type of news covered within a community. With large corporations controlling many media outlets, fewer points of view will be expressed, fewer voices will be heard as the smaller sources of information - like nonprofits - are drowned out.

Bell and Marconi did not envision today's communications environment - and today's innovators cannot fully understand the impact they are having on tomorrow. But in the quickly-converging communications world, nonprofits must stake out their future. How nonprofits survive in this environment, how they find niches that deliver their services to better their communities, may well determine how well convergence serves our society.

This article is the first in a series that will explore nonprofit communications in the increasingly converging media environment.

Let us know what you think of this article. Email communicate@benton.org.