"We work beyond the last mile -- way beyond the last mile," Écochard noted. That can make collaboration difficult. "We need to create a virtual world whereby scientists who are working in the grasslands in the U.S. Midwest can collaborate with scientists in Argentina working on grasslands there collaborating with those in the Mongolian grasslands who are collaborating with the Tanzanians," he said.

Today, those scientists often use e-mail, which isn't ideal for collaboration, he said. With budget cuts, they are less likely to meet in person and video conferences don't work great on a daily basis, he said.

The Nature Conservancy also hopes to eventually let volunteers, trustees and other staff use SharePoint so that they can find out real time about the work scientists are doing in order to build programs and develop projects, he said.

The deployment is indicative of the unique needs many NGOs have. "For example, World Vision has tens of thousands of employees, many of them are in the field in reasonably remote locations," said Akhtar Badshah, senior director of global community affairs at Microsoft. "You don't necessarily get that with most companies... When you think of the Nature Conservancy in remote locations, they need to be connected."

Off-the-shelf software like SharePoint doesn't always work for these nonprofits though, and so some groups are developing their own systems, sometimes based on open-source software, that can meet their needs affordably.