Proposal writers' knowledge management practices within nonprofit organizations

摘要

Proposal writers may be the most central individuals in the knowledge management process in nonprofit organizations. Their work requires the reconfiguration of information on past organizational outcomes to fund future projects. This study presents the results of six interviews with proposal writers about their information seeking, storage, and sharing processes when developing grant proposals in nonprofit organizations. The study describes the context of proposal writers' knowledge management procedures, such as consulting files, co-workers, the internet, databases, reports, previous grants-any information that might be used to facilitate the grant writing process.Experienced proposal writers reported a variety of innovative knowledge management techniques such as blog tagging, visual diagrams, and online document sharing for collaborative writing. "Searchable" knowledge was the most frequently reported request, and several writers adapted existing technologies to meet their needs. However, the adaptations may bring up new questions about password protected content and privacy of information storage.