Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 20, 2008

Google says: “Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online.&# No freaking way.

Google 100

Google Open Source RSS API 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

Dataportability.org – the organization, has gotten a lot of press in the tech industry lately because some very big players recently joined. I think as nonprofit organizations begin to work more and more using Web 2.0 I think as nonprofit organizations begin to work more and more using Web 2.0 So, I’m evangelizing.

Data 100

Data Open Source Industry RSS 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

What can an organization use a LMS for? Well, that depends of course, on the organization. Many organizations provide trainings, courses, and varied sorts of learning activities to their constituents. An LMS, or learning platform, is a system that is designed to facilitate some sort of learning process over the web.

Platform 100

Platform Blackboard Learning Open Source 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 2, 2008

In most ways, however, this is far from a surprise – donor management is a primary way that money gets funneled into nonprofits, and, unsurprisingly, organizations often spend significant dollars on their donor management packages. of use in very large organizations. and MPower at 0.4%. and MPower at 0.4%.

Database 113

Database Donor Open Source Kintera 113

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 11, 2008

So I’m going to try and lay out the details of what cloud computing is, and how it’s useful for nonprofit organizations. As the bandwidth available increases (via FiOS , and other methods) cloud computing will get even more attractive to organizations and people. at 5:17 am TechSoup Blog 09.16.09

AJAX 134

AJAX Application Open Source Plugin 134

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 10, 2008

I actually thought this could be quite useful for organizations to figure out how to allocate sparse resources in the Web 2.0 I realized that one of the most important things that we can do is educate the organizations we work with (as well as individuals) about privacy issues and data. But that’s not the point of this post.

Public 100

Public Widget Open Source Demographics 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 21, 2008

which can be useful for organizations that need that functionality. CiviCRM is a great CRM for small-to-medium sized organizations that need CRM functionality. There is even a new case management feature in 2.0, CiviCRM ranked #1 in satisfaction in the recent NTEN CRM satisfaction survey. {

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 14, 2008

at 4:17 pm We are finding that to stand out there has to be something that provides and opportunity for the organization to be remembered. Recently, in working with a number of our domestic violence organizations we came up with a logo for the message. at 12:13 pm { 1 comment… read it below or add one } 1 robert guinto 04.19.08

Consultant 111

Consultant Open Source Nonprofit Hosting 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 31, 2008

at 2:51 pm There’s a great free Firefox plugin for students & researchers who need to manage citations and bibliographies, not to mention organize all those PDFs…Zotero is wonderful, and works perfectly with Word (for those of us still hooked on some Microsoft programs). I’ll be using it long after I graduate.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 21, 2007

November 21, 2007 Beth’s wonderful post about a decision tree for whether or not an organization should get into the social networking business had a link to a comment about OpenSocial. It seems to me that many organizations are going to have very similar needs in terms of kinds of applications. Anyone interested?

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Social Social Network 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 17, 2008

They have released two studies, one on the “wired wealthy&# and another which is a “nonprofit benchmark index&# study – basically providing some benchmarks for organizations to measure themselves against, traffic, email newsletter click through rates, etc. It’s actually a pretty interesting resource, and worth a read.

Open Source 111

Open Source Convio Benchmark RSS 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 26, 2008

The lesson here, I think, is that CRM, even for large organizations, is changing rapidly, and the days are numbered where systems that are expensive, proprietary, and closed rule. I’m glad to see that. After the webinar, I’ll be putting the slides up in varied places, and NTEN will have a recording of the webinar. {

Open Source 111

Open Source Mashup Open RSS 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 17, 2008

They are starting with a “charter&# program – a few nonprofit organizations, to iron out all of the varied issues, both technical and logistical, I imagine. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding – we’ll find out over time how this app works, and whether organizations like it. And make it reasonably priced.

Open Source 100

Open Source Convio Database Headline 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 27, 2008

I’ve been hearing good things about SugarCRM from organizations that use it. That’s the one I’ve been using. They also have a newer on-demand version (that is, software as a service, like salesforce.) It also gets kudos from NTEN’s satisfaction survey (it came in third, after CiviCRM and Salesforce.)

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

Part III: Blogs, Podcasting and Vlogs September 27, 2006 When I start out these series, I seem to have an idea in hand about how to organize them, which, invariably, gets rearranged in the course of writing. Which, of course, is why many people and many organizations don’t need blogs. Such is life. That’s part of the point.

Vlog 100

Vlog Podcast Web RSS 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 17, 2008

So what does this mean for you, o struggling nonprofit organization? OpenAds , an open source ad server (very cool) just got tons of $ in financing. A company that provides services for Ruby on Rails got a bunch of funding. Freelance Switch Gavin’s Digital Diner Idealware Jon Stahl’s Journal Lifehacker LinuxChix – Be Polite.

Open Source 100

Open Source Drupal RSS Picture 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 24, 2008

It was incredibly well organized and smooth running, the food and snacks were great, and the parties rocked. And I’m already looking forward to NTC in San Francisco in 2009! { I want to give huge props to Holly and all of the NTEN crew for putting on a fabulous conference. at 12:00 pm Thanks Michelle – and thanks to you!

NTC 100

NTC San Francisco Open Source NTEN 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

Earlier this week, ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, rejected Microsoft’s bid to fast-track OOXML ( Office Open XML ) to standard status. What this means is that MS will have to take all of the varied input from the ISO bodies, and go through a second vote early next year. I’ll keep you posted. {

Track 100

Track Open Source Open RSS 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 4, 2008

Worth a look if your organization does surveys. { Worth a look if your organization does surveys. { The surveys could stand some graphic design help, but you can design templates for it. It’s a LAMP stack application.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MAY 19, 2008

To their credit Convio asks this question on their blog : “Should organizations like Convio, and Giving USA continue to offer these sorts of insights to the nonprofit community, or is this simply self-serving marketing fluff?&# What do you think? Time will tell. { Time will tell. {

API 100

API Open Source Kintera Benchmark 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

FEBRUARY 15, 2008

The next version of Azureus, called Vuze , which I haven’t yet used, looks like it incorporates a media player and channels and such. Basically, becoming a serious competitor for Miro , which I’ll talk about in the next post.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 6, 2007

It will be given under the auspices of Linuxchix , an organization I’ve been a part of since 2000. The course is a 12 week course, starting on November 19th (with time off for the holidaze.) Check out our Moodle page for more details (the outline, and information on how to participate is there.)

Course 100

Course Online Open Source RSS 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 17, 2008

These aren’t half-baked, buggy tools that are not ready for everyday use in organizations. [1] These aren’t half-baked, buggy tools that are not ready for everyday use in organizations. [1] These aren’t half-baked, buggy tools that are not ready for everyday use in organizations. [1]

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 8, 2007

But it’s only been in the last few years that mega storage, and mega processing power were available to organizations to power big web applications and the like. If a nonprofit organization has a server, it’s actually not so unlikely that it is running RHEL. They started out with their S3 – simple storage service.

Hosting 100

Hosting Web Ubuntu Open Source 100

Nonprofit Tech for Good

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

If your nonprofit is experimenting with text-to-give, text alerts and/or smartphone Apps (or planning to), then launching a mobile website is something your organization should seriously consider. Over the last month I have subscribed to receive text alerts from 10 organizations. As of July 2009, 56.9 The web is going mobile.

Mobile 210

Mobile Websites United States Nonprofit 210

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 1, 2007

The thing we have actually done the most of is write the primer , and I’ve got more ideas for types of open content that NOSI could get involved in doing, so these suggestions for business models are quite welcome. { Freelance Switch Gavin’s Digital Diner Idealware Jon Stahl’s Journal Lifehacker LinuxChix – Be Polite.

Model 100

Model Content Open Business 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 16, 2007

Most of the 10 are applicable to nonprofit organizations (I’d skip the “Offshore work&# tip.) He has a recent article in “ Director Magazine &# which is a UK-based business magazine (no, I don’t read it, I just got the link from his blog,) entitled 10 tips for reducing burgeoning IT costs.

Tips 100

Tips Open Source RSS Profit 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 13, 2007

So here’s another good option for organizations that want powerful blogging software to use on a generic (read: cheap) hosting environment. Freelance Switch Gavin’s Digital Diner Idealware Jon Stahl’s Journal Lifehacker LinuxChix – Be Polite.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Typepad WordPress 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 20, 2007

Or you’re just curious about projects you’ve heard about. How do you go about finding out whether it’s the right software, and whether the project has a healthy community, since you don’t want to adopt a project that doesn’t?

Open Source 100

Open Source Software Open Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 7, 2007

NTEN is, to my mind, a critically important organization in the ecosystem that is the Nonprofit Technology field, as the convener of the gathering that anchors the community, as well as a unique and necessary multi-dimensional resource at the regional and national levels for all sorts of constituents in the nptech world.

NTEN 100

NTEN Open Source RSS Director 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 24, 2008

But if your organization decides to blog, and you want to make it easy on yourself, install Wordpress on your hosting account, or go to WordPress.com and set up a free blog. Because WordPress is so easy to use, people have twisted and turned it to make regular websites. I doubt you’ll look back. { Keep up the good work!

Open Source 100

Open Source WordPress Open Tools 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JANUARY 3, 2008

Thunderbird is in the process of being spun out of the Mozilla Foundation into it’s own organization, dubbed “MailCo.&# And its secure, makes doing GPG signatures and encryption easy (although I haven’t gotten around to doing them, though. Shame on me.) I don’t know if that name will stick.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open Tools Free 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

DECEMBER 12, 2007

Finally, Organizer’s Database is open source, but written on top of a proprietary platform (Microsoft Access). CiviCRM was first in satisfaction, SugarCRM, Organizer’s Database, and Democracy in Action were 3rd, 4th, and 5th, respectively. 201 out of 665 users used these 6 open source tools. That’s pretty impressive.

Open Source 100

Open Source Open People Survey 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 10, 2008

In the last few months, I was involved in helping three organizations choose vendors for varied technology projects, and in the course of that time, I talked with almost a dozen technology vendors of one type or another. This got me thinking that all people, not just scientists and students could use this method.

Evaluation 111

Evaluation Reflection Open Source Journal 111

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 10, 2008

The client is quite knowledgeable about their organization, mission, and goals for a project, but often not knowledgeable about technology. The role I play most often currently is providing a clear and understandable avenue between the client and a technology vendor (such as web or database development shop).

Practice 100

Practice Open Source Consultant Articulate 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 8, 2007

Sure, some very savvy organizations will do well if they have to develop only two (or one) app for social networks. O’Reilly doesn’t really have an answer for that one. I don’t really have an answer to that one either, but for our sector, that’s really where the power is going to lie.

Open 100

Open Data Social Mashup 100

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 19, 2008

But in the nonprofit realm, my perspective on helping nonprofit organizations with technology issues has a lot to do with client empowerment, learning based on what’s needed at the moment, and active collaboration. Sounds a lot like Edupunk, doesn’t it? Thanks for your inspirational commitment to learning of all types.

Nptech 100

Nptech Unconference Open Source Model 100