A general survey on the Internet usage of NGOS in China was recently conducted by MIT New Media Action Lab (MIT-NMAL) in collaboration with the Institute of Knowledge Management of University of Science and Technology of China, three other NGOs (NGOCN.org, Friends of Nature, Center of Institute of Citizen and Social Development at Sun Yat-sen University), and Ogilvy Beijing. From December 08 to February 09, the survey collected the data culled from 327 NGOs in different regions of China.

The survey was aimed at identifying the bottlenecks encountered by grassroots NGOS in their effort of adopting new information and communication technology. The survey has also aimed at raising the awareness of Chinese society and socially responsible corporations in China of the importance of IT support and the use of new media for Chinese NGOs. The survey also paved the way for the launch of an NGO 2.0 Project funded by Ford Foundation in Beijing. Conceptualized by MIT-NMAL, the project was implemented together with the other five partner institutions mentioned above aiming to provide an open-sourced Web 2.0 platform for Chinese NGOs.

Though the survey is mainly focused on Internet usage, to some degree it also reflects the general situation of grassroots NGOs in China. Most of the 327 NGOs participating in the survey are either from the most developed part (East) or the least developed part (West) of China. Only 43 of them are from the central area. Over 80% of them are located in urban areas. About 60% of them focus on environmental issues, local community or educational services. Fund raising varies from zero to over 500,000 Chinese Yuan (roughly $70,000). NGOs in less developed West China in fact managed to raise slightly more money than their peers in the other two parts of the country. Over 30% of the NGOs do not have their own offices. Similarly, almost 30% have fewer than 5 staff members. However, the education background of the NGO CEOs is quite impressive — over 70% of them hold degrees of bachelor or higher.

In terms of Internet usage, over 85% of the NGOs have their own computers and only 4% do not have Internet access, mainly due to lack of fund. Over 90% have ADSL or Internet access of equivalent quality. 67% have their own websites but only 31% have specialized IT staff. Almost all of them surf the Internet on a daily bases (95%) and have their own email addresses (90%). On the other hand, much fewer have their own blogs (45%) or have used wiki tools (15%). It is worth mentioning that compared with web 2.0 tools such as blog and wiki, Bulletin Board System (BBS) has a much longer history in China and is more widely spread. Almost 60% of the NGOs participating in the survey have their own BBSs supporting internal and external discussions. Besides, nearly 90% use Instant Messaging (IM) software tools to communicate. However, only half of them have ever used IM tools to set up online conferences.

Surprisingly, over 70% of the NGOs have had the experience of editing image, video and audio files and uploading them online to help facilitate their work. On the other hand, as mentioned above, the application of web 2.0 is still limited among most of the NGOs. Most of their online portals are still based on static contents and only few of them support reader voting and commenting (20%). It is beneficial to provide these organizations with a free online platform where they can manage contents and communicate with each other and volunteers in an open and more efficient manner, and upload multimedia files easier than before.

The report concludes that the general situation of Internet usage is satisfying. 41% of the NGOs surveyed are classified as “excellent” and 51% are “good”. Only 8% percent need to improve. It is interesting to note that almost all the NGOs surveyed think it is important to get information from the Internet (98%), to have email communication (95%) and to manage their own websites (90%). Nonetheless, they do not think it is as important to have blogs or upload media files for publicity. It is necessary to provide trainings to those NGOs so that they can better comprehend the power of web 2.0 tools as a useful support for their work.

Finally, almost 40% of the NGOs rank knowledge about how to use Internet applications and Web 2.0 tools as their top need; 34% of them considered building their own website a priority. Only fewer than 5% are in need of basic computer operational trainings. The result shows that information technology support such as the utilization of Web 2.0 tools, website construction, and IT equipment donation, are important areas of NGO support. More focused IT supporting efforts and resources in that domain need to be provided to non-profit organizations in China.

The report (Chinese) can be downloaded from NGOCN’s official blog: http://www.ngocn.org/?uid-22006-action-viewspace-itemid-50179

(Translated by Linfeng Yang of Harvard University and proofread by Dr. Jing Wang of MIT New Media Action Lab.)