As more nonprofit organizations take advantage of the ease of creating an online presence, they need to understand the fundamental nature of Web 2.0: its interactivity between writers and readers. The “(un)civil discourse” that often comes from such interactivity results in an inherent lack of control for writers and their organizations. However, the nonprofits that most successfully use Web 2.0 technologies to enhance their missions are those that accept and even embrace this lack of control, finding ways to use it productively to improve their advocacy and empower their supporters and clients.

As service learning becomes a popular pedagogical approach to technical and professional writing courses, instructors need to examine critically the causes of practical problems that arise when classroom work involves nonprofit agencies. Nonprofit management theory provides a possible solution in its discussion of some basic characteristics of organizations in the nonprofit sector. By understanding these characteristics, instructors and students might anticipate and solve problems they encounter.

Postmodern assumptions employed by some organizational theorists recognize that “administrators' greater power lies not in their ability to control resources but in their ability to manipulate symbols—the ceremonies, rituals, images, and language of the organization” (Graham and David 9). Thus, even a genre that is often considered neutral and objective, such as meeting minutes, can become a tool of managerial control. This article presents data from an ethnographic case study that describes how an administrator in a theater organization manipulated language by using the minutes from a board of directors meeting to influence board members to vote to disband the organization.