Barely 10 years into the Internet revolution, it is hard to imagine living without the World Wide Web. The medium today is used by an estimated half billion people around the world for commerce, entertainment, information gathering, and a multitude of other activities.

So it would be logical to assume that nonprofits have mastered the technology, especially in the United States, where an estimated 149 million people use the Internet, right?

Not according to a study published last spring in the Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing. An analysis of 1,000 nonprofit organizations by researchers at the Rutgers Business School found that only 27 percent of nonprofit organizations sampled had established a Web site – and that less than 10 percent of those used their sites for sales or other commercial activities. Instead, most used the Web to disseminate information, draw interest in organizational programming, and raise funds.

In their article, “Nonprofit Web Sites: Prevalence, Usage, and Commercial Activity,” authors Howard Tuckman, Patrali Chatterjee, and David Muha noted that nonprofit development of Web sites depends on type of mission, as well as wealth. The researchers examined 500 nonprofit organizations selected at random and an additional 500 culled from five mission-driven categories: conservation, cultural, religious, civil rights, and science and technology.

Their analysis showed that 60 percent of science and technology organizations had a Web presence, but only 24 percent of religious groups did. Among conservation groups, 34 percent had Web sites, as did 48 percent of cultural organizations and 51 percent of civil rights organizations. Only 36 percent of the nonprofits with Web sites used them for commercial activities, which the researchers defined as having either mission-related or unrelated goods for sale. Of these, civil rights groups rated the highest with 35 percent, and conservation groups were the lowest with just 12 percent.

The size of a nonprofit’s budget was shown to significantly influence whether the organization had a Web site. Nonprofits with smaller staffs and budgets had neither the expertise nor the resources to undertake construction of a Web site.

“Typically the ones that don’t have a Web presence are smaller groups that don’t have the people to do it,” said Tom Nickell, president of FaithandValues.com, which provides Web services to more than 700 religious groups across North America.

Read more stories by Gerald Burstyn.