What are the benefits of getting online?

• You can send a message to many people at once very cheaply - useful for building campaigns and alerting users or potential users and partner organisations to new initiatives etc. It costs the same to send a message to 1 or to 100 or more people.
  
  
• Research indicates that there is only a 20% chance of reaching someone by phone during the business day. Using e-mail eliminates this problem as both parties can read/write at their convenience.
  
  
• You can ask a question of a lot of people at once to find if anyone knows the answer or has relevant experience. Using electronic mailing lists and newsgroups give access to a theoretically unlimited pool of international expertise.
  
  
• You can send documents almost instantly. This includes spreadsheets, databases, graphics and even sound as well as text and also, using a scanner, you can copy documents to send.
  
  
• Bulletin Boards can facilitate the discussion of issues. You can post your ideas publicly and other people can publicly or privately comment on them.
  
  
• You can link up with users and other local, national and international groups with similar interests, whether they are voluntary, statutory or private.
  
  
• The ethnic background, gender, age or physical ability of people online is much less obvious and so people's contributions are valued much more on their own merit.
  
  
• You can acquire a skill that is becoming increasingly important.
  
  
• You can carry out research by using 'search engines' to hunt through billions of words on the World Wide Web and in discussions groups.