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Interview with Cliff Landesman

By Michael C. Gilbert, March 1999

Cliff Landesman is a nonprofit Internet pioneer, with whom I've had the privilege of working for the last couple of years. He is the Founder of the Internet Nonprofit Center [ http://www.nonprofits.org ], where I now serve as Director. We conducted this interview using an online chat system. Cliff used voice recognition throughout the interview to spare his hands and his infant kept grabbing at the microphone.

Michael: What did you do before you started making a splash on the Internet?

Cliff: I was working on my doctorate in philosophy at Princeton. Well, some of the time at Princeton, at other times in Vermont or New York. My dissertation [ http://www.nonprofits.org/parlor/acknow/landesman/vpopg.html ] is related to the nonprofit sector, actually. It was about the voluntary provision of public goods. I used to be a fund-raiser for the public radio station in Vermont. Public broadcasting is a prime example of a public good.

Michael: What was your first Internet related project?

Cliff: When I started to use the Internet, gopher was the most advanced protocol. So I created a gopher site that later became the Internet Nonprofit Center Web site [ http://www.nonprofits.org ]. Those were the days when everything was a menu. Gopher was a great advance over serving up files using FTP. I was greatly disappointed with the lack of information available for donors to learn about nonprofit organizations. I wondered whether it would help to start a magazine for donors, but quickly realized that the capital cost for such such a start-up were very steep and the likelihood of running a balanced budget was slim. I had been using the Internet to correspond with my thesis adviser and immediately realized that using the Internet made the prospect of providing specialized resources affordable.

Michael: Most of my reader know about my involvement with INC, but I was hoping you can tell us about why you think INC has been important?

Cliff: I like to think that the Internet Nonprofit Center was a pioneer, proving the value of providing information to donors over the Internet. We were the first to do many things that today are done by others and I like to think that our efforts encouraged other people in certain directions.

For example, the Internet Nonprofit Center was the first, along with Ellen Spertus, to provide a directory exclusively of links to information about nonprofit organizations, that is, nonprofit Web sites.

Michael: In the meantime, you've launched several other online projects. What are they?

Cliff: The two primary ones are the site for the Unified Registration Statement [ http://www.nonprofits.org/library/gov/urs/ ], which provides a common form for nonprofits to use to get registered in multiple states across the country, and the Form 990 Web Site [ http://www.form990.org ], which eventually will allow organizations to file their annual financial reports to state charity offices over the Internet.

Michael: Can you give us a short progress report on each of those projects? And how can people help out?

Cliff: The Unified Registration Statement project is going very well. We just published the second version of the form, with the second version of the kit and find that we have hundreds of downloads. Next on the agenda is a Unified Reporting Statement for annual financial reporting, a much more ambitious project, but also a more rewarding one.

The Form 990 Web Site is also coming along. We just completed a research project [ http://www.form990.org/report.html ] led by the nonprofit Net Wizard himself, Michael Gilbert. As you know, the purpose of the research was to learn more about the accounting tax programs that are used to file the 990 to the IRS. We want to allow users of these programs, which seemed to be the majority of filers, to easily up load the information What we found, what you found, was that these programs were not written to share data easily, so we're going to have to perform a few tricks to build our bridge to the accounting software packages. I think we will be able to do that using the PostScript files that these programs generate for printing out the Form 990.

All this sounds rather technical, but what it is really about it is accountability, access, and money. Accountability at the most fundamental level because by making it easier for nonprofits to report their finances we are strengthening transparency. It's about access because with electronic filing, donors, government officials, watchdog groups, journalists, foundations, funders, and researchers will be able to view these reports more easily. Finally, it's about money because not only are the reports about money, but electronic filing saves money, bundles and bundles of money. The waste involved in using paper for financial reporting is enormous.

By the way, there was a story in the most recent Wired magazine about "Microsoft's Other Court Case", its project to provide electronic filing to the court system of L.A. Even Microsoft hasn't found it easy to do what looks like a no brainer.

Michael: Tell us about your LATEST project (the one grabbing the mike).

Cliff: My employer, the Fund for the City of New York [ http://www.fcny.org ], has given me six months of parental leave so I can take care of our newborn son, Chance.

Michael: Want to take a short stab at the look at the next year? And then leave my readers with advice or closing comments?

Cliff: At the top of my list of priorities, among my volunteer projects, is working further on the Form 990 Web Site. But in addition to the top priority of all priorities (Chance), I am building a portable eight inch reflecting telescope and upgrading my marine fish tank so it will support beautiful sea anemones.

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