In March 1999, the Electronic Networking Group (ENG) was launched—a nationwide listserv (e-mail correspondence group) for community action agencies initiated by the Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) Monitoring and Assessment Task Force (MATF) of the Office of Community Services, and hosted by the State of Minnesota.
The listserv began with100 subscribers, and with the goal to recruit at least two people from each state to start electronic conversations focused on many IT issues shared by CAAs across the country.
The ENG was founded to experiment with electronic organizing and is based on the premise that Internet connectivity can effectively eliminate many of the geographical barriers that isolate many CAAs. The idea was for colleagues across the U.S. to share their expertise and to address IT challenges together.
In the months since it has been operating, the ENG has drawn subscribers from all over the country and has held discussions on information technology, ROMA, return on investment, funding sources, community needs assessments, community level outcomes, rural transportation, Y2K preparedness, and much more.
A few of these topics have spawned specialized subgroups that communicate directly with each other to explore these issues in greater depth. Typically, a subgroup is created when a leader steps forward to facilitate it.
The ENG is accessible to participants with different levels of e-mail prowess—from neophytes to sophisticated users.
Messages to the ENG are now organized by category and available at the ROMA webpage at
http://38.152.102.181/commitees/html
The next step will be to deliver ENG traffic as a weekly digest to all subscribers. To become an ENG subscriber, e-mail: Majordomo@mail.state.mn.us and type subscribe eng in the body of the message.
For more information about the ENG, please refer to