Tribute To Rob Stuart
This page was adapted from the tribute to Rob Stuart on the Blog TechPresident.com
Leader of the Circuit Riders
The interconnected community of techies, grassroots organizers, political operatives and non-profit groups that work for social change had fewer ways to stay connected then, so it was more difficult to see ourselves as a community, or to benefit from each other's knowledge and encouragement. Rob changed that, partly by seeing it was missing, and partly by knowing the people, and the path, to make it happen.
The power of storytelling through technology, the potential of mobile phones for social change, the use of microtargeting based on zip codes, emails and voting records, these are just a few of the tools Rob was talking about before they became digital gospel for organizers.
Like any good evangelist, Rob had an infectious enthusiasm when he talked about what was possible and what you needed to know. He had enormous faith in what people were capable of, mingled with a simmering impatience with all the ways people didn't get it yet. Frankly, you need both the impatience and the faith to succeed promoting new technology. It's not always comfortable bucking institutions, or trying to drag them into a new century, but it's demanding and exciting and that particular tension suited Rob.
Through several decades as a tech guru, Rob's wisdom about crowds was a touchstone. He also had a child-like affinity for new gadgets and the caffeinated tenacity of an expert political networker.
His formative advocacy experiences involved lobbying and grassroots organizing on environmental issues. Organizers have a head start in turning digital tools into movement tools, because they inherently understand how social networks can turn the hunger for change into action.
He followed up his early work lobbying at NJPIRG by joining the Rockefeller Family Fund, bringing evangelism for tech into the donor community years before it became a mainstream funding interest.
The group that is now NTEN, the non-profit sector's largest community of tech professionals, began in the early 1990s as a small email list of "circuit riders," consultants to under-resourced organizations looking to adapt to the emerging digital age. (With traditional "circuits" and preachers on horseback both receding into history, the pun of the name is itself an artifact.)
Veteran non-profit tech leader Gavin Clabaugh, now at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, was instrumental in the creation of the first "circuit rider" meetings. He says the term itself was not Rob's, "but everything else was. He took what was just a little idea, and turned it into a movement."
The vision for a national organization for non-profit techies was born in 1997 at a remote ranch in Montana, during a retreat to engage more funders in the field—and, as Gavin tells it, after several rounds of homemade beer. It was Rob who took up the idea in earnest, using the platform and resources of the Rockefeller Family Fund to launch a national effort. "He did a series of meetings around the country," said Gavin, "and pulled in advocacy people and evangelists and everybody from the technology community."
Those meetings grew into a National Strategy for Non-Profit Technology, a program that in 2004 merged with existing circuit rider "round-up" events under the umbrella of the Non-Profit Technology Enterprise Network, NTEN. A decade later, the NTEN community could fill a stadium, as the current director Holly Ross points out in her remembrance of Rob.
