Facilitation

The UIA has always operated at the interface between information, its organization and enabling the global community of associations to which this information is relevant. Within its constrained resource framework, the UIA has tended to focus on ways of "facilitating" through its self-funded core documentary activities -- rather than through separate activities for which specific funding had to be found. It is through its information activity that the UIA facilitates all international nonprofit bodies, and their concerns, in a more comprehensive, detailed and unbiased manner than is possible in any other mode of activity.

International associations

Statutory commitment: “to encourage and undertake all activity aimed at promoting the development and efficiency of non-governmental networks, as well as intercommunication between people working in the international framework and in interassociative co-operation”
The UIA Team sees its distinctive contribution as being one of enabling initiatives rather than undermining existing service initiatives and in some way locking them out of their possibility to offer web services. Associated with this is the desire to avoid undermining coalitions that have struggled into being at one level in order to privilege coalitions emerging at another.

Enabling vs Marketing

Although terms such as “marketing”, “client” and “targetting” are consistent with the business model for the .COM and .NET domains, they carry a for-profit connotation which can be quite alien to the operating strategies of many non-profit bodies. It is indeed the case that “nonprofit marketing” is an emerging discipline, especially appropriate to trade and professional associations and their professionalization in North America. However it is important to recognize that some segments of “civil society”, in its broadest, sense are viscerally opposed to such for-profit framing of their initiatives and the ideology that it represents. In any endeavour to sustain a fruitful relationship with the full spectrum of civil society, this bid will therefore focus on “enabling” and “outreach” rather than “marketing”.

Information access

The UIA pursues several strategies in relation to issues of access relating to the community of organizations: Enabling direct contact with registered organizations; Enabling pass-through links from UIA profiles, as a referral service; Organization password access to own profile and network; Bridging the digital divide. As noted earlier, the UIA maintains contacts with international bodies, wherever they maybe based, using whatever technologies are possible for the recipient, from post through fax, e-mail and web.

Information access

The UIA pursues several strategies in relation to issues of access relating to the community of organizations: Enabling direct contact with registered organizations; Enabling pass-through links from UIA profiles, as a referral service; Organization password access to own profile and network; Bridging the digital divide. As noted earlier, the UIA maintains contacts with international bodies, wherever they maybe based, using whatever technologies are possible for the recipient, from post through fax, e-mail and web.

Meeting / Dialogue innovation

The UIA organized the first gathering in Europe of Internet cognoscenti from North America within the framework of a demonstration symposium at the World Future Studies Federation Conference on Science, Technology and the Future (Berlin, 1979). UIA provided a keynote speech to the Electronic Networking Association: Transformative conferencing: re-enchantment of networking through conceptware (San Francisco, 1990).