Determine your organization's environmental footprint for travel and commuting as well as the amount of money your organization is spending on getting around. Make a list of meetings, trainings, and events attended by your staff or volunteers that might be suitable for teleconferencing, web or video conferencing. Here are a couple of calculators that can help you estimate your carbon footprint in a couple of minutes:

Terrapass
World Resources Institute transportation calculator

Online Collaboration

Use instant messaging technologies (chat/IM) like Skype, Pidgin, gmail voice and video chat. or AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) to allow more spontaneous communication and keep everyone in touch while telecommuting or working remotely.

Need a more robust communications package? Consider a tool like Communicator 2007 that includes instant messaging as part of its toolset.

Consider using online document sharing tools when you need to collaborate or share documents . We have a new article that compares Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree to MS Office and OpenOffice.org. The first three are all free tools.

Collaborate and share applications online. A great way to work collaboratively with people in different locales is to start sharing files and applications online. There are several good, free services that provide document sharing like 4shared.com, Google Apps Education Edition, Microsoft Office Live, and Yahoo Groups. By using the Internet as your hard drive you'll be entering the realm of Cloud Computing.

Collaboration services with robust features include Microsoft Groove and Groove Server, both of which are available to nonprofits and libraries from TechSoup Stock.

Online Training

Attend online trainings using a webinar service or screencast to observe its effectiveness, and see how you might use it to substitute for a meeting or training at your organization. Check out upcoming webinars for nonprofits and TechSoup’s upcoming and recorded webinars.

Conduct a webinar to substitute for a meeting or training at your organization. They are live web conferences in which each participant sits at their own computer and is connected to other participants via the Internet. We've put together a how-to series for planning and hosting them called Tips for Conducting a Successful Webinar and 10 Steps for Planning a Successful Webinar.

List of tips about running online trainings from TechSoupforLibraries.org.

Attend a professionally produced online or computer-based training. Nonprofits and libraries can find discounted management and IT trainings through TechSoup Stock.

Virtual Meetings

Use online surveys to schedule meetings and poll your constituents

Substitute in-person meetings and trainings with phone conferencing Try out one or more telephone conferencing services. Some good options are: ReadyTalk, Care2Call, and FreeConferenceCall.com

Web conferencing adds a helpful visual component to your calls. Some good options are: ReadyTalk, Microsoft Communicator, and WebEx.

Online video conferencing brings your conference to a different level. To try free, one-to-one video calls. Some basic free options are: Skype, and gmail voice and video chat.

Explore an online virtual world environment like Second Life to see how that tool might provide a fun and more personal meeting environment.

Look for conferences that have a virtual component or will be recorded and can be accessed online, such as the Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp. Or ask a local volunteer or board member to attend in-person and report back to your group instead of having staff travel.

Telecommuting

Telecommuting is good for the environment, employee effectiveness, and morale. Last year, telecommuters saved 840 million gallons of gasoline and reduced carbon emissions by almost 14 million tons according to the Technology CEO Council’s A Smarter Shade of Green Report.

The Telework Coalition whitepaper, Unleashing The Hidden Productivity of Your Small Business, has lots of information on the positive influence that telecommuting has on employee effectiveness and morale.

Encourage staff to telecommute. Remote desktop software like pcAnywhere, virtual private networking (VPN), voice over IP (VoIP), and virtual PBX can help make working at home as effective as coming into the office. Many corporations and very large nonprofits have used custom-built VoIP infrastructures to facilitate unified communications for years, but VoIP products and systems have recently become more accessible for small-to-medium organizations too, making it easier to effectively work from home and stay in touch.

Check out LogMeIn as recommended by one of our forum participants. It is an online tool that allows tech support to log into your computer remotely to see what you are seeing and be able to work on your computer. We also use this here at TechSoup. You can try a version of it for free.

Read Top 10 Teleworking Tips ( 440 KB PDF)