It is interactive media made by regular people for regular people. Think of it as a conversation that you're having with your supporters, and with people who stumble upon your blog because they are interested in the issues that you represent. Two nonprofits that I think do a nice job of creating a variety of engaging content are People's Grocery , and Urban Sprouts . I am often asked for advice from nonprofits that want to start a blog. Here are five of the tips I most frequently give: 1.

They are a tool that allows for a conversation between the reader and the writer, and for information to reach people quickly all over the world. There are a lot of people out there reading and writing blogs. According to the blog search engine, Technorati 's, "State of the Blogosphere" in October 2006 : Technorati is tracking more than 57 Million blogs. The blog also kept people informed during the second trial, when media Last March I was on a blogging panel for an event put on by the Alliance of Technology and Women. To prepare for the panel, I wrote up 10 Ways

On Tuesday (…it already seems much longer than that), I facilitated an “online fundraising” workshop for a number of wonderful development NGO-people in Brussels. We were all attending the Euforic AGM . Scarily, a few photos have appeared on Flickr. Not sure how much sense my presentation will make without the narrative, but here

Another new kid on the widget block is Carebadges , who aspire to be the yellow bracelet campaign of the web, and while I think the implementation can be improved a lot, I agree with co-founder Saar Gur who told me: We think that as people express their identities on the web, there is a big gap where social causes ought to be. We want people to express the things that they care about beyond cultural items (music, movies, etc.). I’ve been having a lot of widgety thoughts recently, so I thought I’d bundle up a few loose ends in the one (long) post. First

Some other do-good social networks you might want to try out are: Care2 , Change.org , Flickr (photos), Future5000 (youth), Meetup (events), Just Cause , myBLOC.net (young people of color), Razoo , TakingITGlobal (youth), Upcoming (events) and WiserEarth . "If you just need bodies at a rally, names on a petition or donations in your coffers, mobilizing through traditional means will work great. But if you need an active, educated and effective movement, organizing through social webs has the potential to create much more lasting change." --Ivan Boothe, Organizing

As people begin to tire with the vast, general nature of MySpace et al , they may migrate to niche social networks that are more relevant to them, their passions and their lives. PR Blogger Stephen Davies thinks we’ll start to see a fragmentation of social networks. He asks: So what does

The real show in the museum was a series of canvasses showing tags--graffiti--and the curator and education department installed a wall in the middle of the gallery so that visitors could tag (we provided colored pencils, and people brought their own markers and stickers). We were finding that so many people were coming to the exhibition just to tag the wall. Let’s say you wanted to find a model museum using Web 2.0 to support programs and exhibits.

There are plenty of people on the "these ADD boneheads have finally gone too far" bandwagon (see this representative sample from USA Today), as well as some legitimate concerns about how twitter is the ultimate example of the way that 2.0's s focus on networks and immediate connectivity erodes any hope for flow and deep relationships. But, hopefully, most people will get to the next questions: What is this thing, really? There’s a new 2.0 drug that’s caught on hot and heavy in the last six months: twitter. If you’ve never seen twitter, take a moment and check it

Don’t most scandals happen because something is being hidden, rather than because it was revealed? If your organization has so many skeletons in its closet, or is doing such a terrible job that you don’t want people to criticize it, maybe you need to look at how your organization works, or your staff, or whatever it is you are worried about, and make some changes. If someone has something bad to say about your nonprofit, they are probably not the only one, and they are probably already saying it to other people. I thought I'd share this post that I wrote for the Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion Blog : "What is the worst thing that can happen?”

based charity that serves people with spinal chord injuries. A few years ago, when web tools were just beginning to allow the interactive environments we're seeing everywhere today, I wrote a piece called Bread and Butter 2.0. In it I juxtaposed the excitement technologists were trying to communicate about web 2.0 features with the more prosaic "bread and