FAQ’s

As a general rule, a nonprofit in the social services or educational sectors operating in Oklahoma and funded through some combination of private and public funding is eligible to receive services. But eligibility varies across our five programs. Whereas most every nonprofit qualifies for hardware and software discounts through our partnership with Integrated Business Technologies, fewer organizations qualify for Venture Funding or Managed Services. Where there is ambiguity, we work to reflect the collective objectives of our financial and in-kind donors.

Yes, we charge for most of our services. But central to our mission is the concept of materially discounted products and services. In some cases, we will leverage our Venture Funding program to offer products and services at no charge. And we frequently provide free direct consulting services (as opposed to through our consulting partner, Avirodha) in the areas of software selection, vendor negotiations, and contract review. As a general rule our services are priced at 40 – 60% off the low end of market. Our turnkey, managed services offering is priced at $12 to $15 per PC for dedicated PCs and $5 to $7 per lab / library / media room PC. Our service rates vary from $25 to $40 per hour depending on the skill set required.

No. 501technet is a program of Tulsa Community Foundation.

501technet employs a staff of eight who provide a full range of consulting and infrastructure related services. We do maintain partnerships with for-profit organizations that round out our program with products and services we do not offer directly.

Discounts for products and services vary from product to product and service to service. Our for-profit partnerships are exclusive (we have only one partnership for each product or service we offer) and result from extensive negotiations on rate. Discounts across all products and services range from 10% to 75%. For example, our hardware partner (Netlink Solutions) offers all hardware and software at cost plus 3%. Our consulting partner (Asemio) offers services at $85 per hour. Other partners (Scott Rice, Telegen Solutions, JD Young, RK Black) offer similar discounts.

The 501 in our name refers to the fact that we only serve 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. The tech in our name refers to the fact that we use technology as the vehicle to accomplish our mission of increasing the organizational capacity of the nonprofits we serve. The net in our name refers to the fact that we cultivate and maintain a partnership network with community-minded financial and in-kind donors as well as for-profit service providers to deliver a cost and quality differentiated service to the community.

“Managed Services” is a term commonly used in IT circles to refer to turnkey outsourcing of all aspects of the IT function. For 501tech, this service includes on site and off site support of all aspects of the IT environment, consulting and strategy development, procurement, and vendor coordination.

Yes. We wipe the data on all hard drives received using a commercial grade, three pass software application (KillDisk). For drives that are inoperable and cannot be wipes successfully, we use a drill press to make the drive unreadable. We can provide destruction certificates if required.

First, 501tech is a nonprofit program like those organizations we serve. Our mission is centered around their missions rather than longevity and profit. Second, most nonprofits tend to underinvest in their IT environments because of budget constraints and this impacts what they are able to pay for-profit support firms. Because of this, these firms tend to take a reactive approach to support. Because the cost of our services is significantly subsidized by our donors, we take a proactive appoach to support which is only possible because our cost structure. When we take on a new nonprofit, we assess every aspect of their IT environment and implement changes that will ensure low cost, reliable, long term performance.

Community impact, reported on a quarterly basis, is the difference between the conservative market value of a product or service provided to a nonprofit and the fee charged to that nonprofit if one was charged. As an example, we charge and admin fee of $100 for a refurbished laptop when the best price in the market for that same configuration is $325. So that one transaction has a community impact of $225. Further, if we provide five hours of service at the subsidized rate of $35 per hour and the conservative market rate for that same skillset it $75 per hour, we generated community impact of $200. We measure the impact of our partner contributions in the same manner. To put the impact in perspective, we publish the ratio of cumulative community impact to grants and gifts received over the same period.