The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works.  It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem.  

All Blackbaud Blogs Contact Us Blackbaud.com About Nonprofit Trends Books Research Reports Speaking 5 Troubling Nonprofit Statistics Posted by Steve MacLaughlin on October 28th, 2010 I spend a lot of time looking at metrics and benchmarks from across the nonprofit sector. solicit The 2010 Cygnus Donor Survey notes this and other trends.

saw (and responded to a few great appeals in 2010) but much nonprofit communication still seems artificial, inauthentic and dare I say boring! What fundraising strategies will be a game changer for nonprofits in 2011? What’s on tap for social media and advocacy? Holly Ross, NTEN. Mobile! And not apps. Be platform agnostic! Hyper local.

There are now over 143 million blogs on the Internet and when I launched Nonprofit Tech 2.0 in September of 2009, I had very low expectations. I wasn’t convinced at all that the world needed another blogger. But But within a few months it was clear that blogging was the missing piece in my online communications strategy. Share breaking news.

Net Neutrality protest at Google HQ - GoogleRally 45 by Steve Rhodes, on Flickr. Note from Beth: Last June at the New York City book party for the Networked Nonprofit ,  Stephanie Strom, New York Times, moderated a discussion on the themes in the book.  I did.   Net Neutrality for Networked Nonprofits: Guest Post by Vince Stehle. Now, the U.S. 

Our regular monthly round-up of free professional development opportunities for nonprofit folks is back for June 2010. It’s that time again! As always, Wild Apricot Blog readers will undoubtedly find events I’ve missed and add them in.( read more ).

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes announced at yesterday’s Social Good Summit that he is building a social networking site designed to build and nurture long-term relationships between people and nonprofit organizations. Think Yelp for good. Support – Users will be able to support those organizations in a variety of ways. Big news?

This morning I had the great opportunity to present to the Next Generation Philanthropy course, a part of Institute for Philanthropy, here in London. It was a diverse set of participants and we probably could have talked all day had they not had a full day’s program to get through! Social Media & Philanthropy. Let me know what you think!

Recently I got my first full-on blast of the Networked Nonprofit at a session the authors presented at the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service.  Swedish-Lesson - (Photo: International Federation of Red Cross/Hakan Flank/VolunteerMatch). Robert J. Rosenthal, Director of Communications for VolunteerMatch was a participant.  

Thanks to the leadership and quick acting of Beth Kanter and Sue Anne Reed, there’s now a petition is up on Care2 focused on the fact that Apple’s iPhone app policy does not allow nonprofits to gather donations via the mobile phone platform. What do you think? Did you sign the petition – why or why not? Would love to hear from you!

On Monday, we had a great discussion about managing comments on your Facebook Page. When to delete, when to reply and when to flag. In the comments, Steve Heye of the YMCA of Metro Chicago shared a “comment escalation flow-chart&# to help staff decide how to respond to various types of comments – on blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

A variety of material from the Nonprofit Blog Exchange now on WordpressRoundup for June 2010  Nonprofit Blog Exchange: "Roundup for June 2010June 30, 2010Website ManagementYour website should should be organized to make it easy for visitors to your site to find what they are looking for.

Date : October 20-22nd, 2010. Tags: 2010 presentation blackabaud conference socialmedia Location : Washington, DC, USA. Topic : What’s the True Value of Social Media? But what is it all for? This information can be invaluable to both marketers and fundraisers as they attempt to communicate to these engaged members of their community.

To help me take full advantage of all of these wonderful support systems, I decided to hone my goals down to 3 Big Vision Goals for 2010, 3 Big Vision Goals for each season, and 3 Big Vision Goals for each lunar cycle (New Moon to New Moon). have several groups and individuals who I share my big vision goals with on a regular basis.

The new 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study from NTEN and M+R was just released today! The 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study covers just about everything we think you should be tracking to fully understand your online program's effectiveness. Steve Peretz, M+R Strategic Services. > Download the Full Report (It's Free!).

Networked Nonprofits know how to close the loop between social media and offline actions.  They understand that it is a scaffolded process.   Whatever channel they use, they’re building a bridge from online to onland.   Take Twitter for example.  What’s A Tweet Up?  It is an in-person meeting of Twitter users.  Before. During. Have fun.  

If your nonprofit is not developing yearly benchmarks for its fundraising program, website visits, email and e-newsletter open and click-through rates, start now. Establishing benchmarks helps organizations better leverage supporters, engage activists and keep websites dynamic with compelling content that drives people to take action.

Your organization created a Facebook Page a few months ago. You’ve employed a few creative strategies to build up connections on your Page, increase engagement, and have even used it to promote a fundraising event. But you know that for the most part, you’ve been winging it. Or at least you’d get more like. What tactics worked?

Do you think your organization has clout or Klout ? Is your organization considered a content curator? Are you a leader or a follower? Or are social media ranking tools an example of more kool-aid mix being added to the overflowing punch bowl? Nope, it’s not possible. Advocacy - People taking action both online and offline.

Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Let’s take a closer look at these visual representations of data and ideas, along with great resources to help you get started on making your own infographic.( read more ).

FourSquare is definitely starting to catch on with enterprising techie folks that love to be early adopters. That’s a good a sign. Adding a Nonprofit Venue on FourSquare just takes a few minutes, but it’s crucial that you do it right the first time. Make sure you spell out the name of the nonprofit. Don’t use acronyms.

moment in January, 2010, when an outpouring of donations followed the devastating Haiti quake. Ben Rigby, The Extraordinaires. If you’re like most people working at a nonprofit, you probably had a “Holy Mobile!” This, you expected. The Red Cross received 4.1 You breathed in. Did you miss mobile? Where did all of these donors come from? Voila!

As always, you'll want to start with your 3 big vision goals for 2010. Then, write down 3 goals (related to your 2010 goals) that you'd like to complete before fall ends (December 21). Finally, write down 3 goals (related to your 2010 and fall goals) that you'd like to accomplish before the end of the lunar month (December 5th).

We've also got the autumn equinox coming up on September 23rd so it's time to dust off your goals for the year and figure out what actions you want to commit to this fall to help you reach your 2010 Big Vision. You can view and download past 2010 Big Vision worksheets here. Hello Have Fun Do Gooders! 8-Oct.7)

Andrew Heller, andrewheller.com. Here's the situation: midnight is fast approaching and the server is still down. After working on the problem for hours with your manager, you're still scratching your head over how to solve the problem. As the night wears on, business conversation slowly turns into personal conversation. " are bound to come up.

Jumo.com , the new social network for causes and nonprofits created by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes went live this morning. They have launched with a small number of nonprofits, but you can easily add your organization in just a couple of clicks (if you are a 501(c)(3) as defined by the IRS). You do need a personal Facebook account to sign up.

One of the big themes in our book, The Networked Nonprofit , is the importance of experiments and not to frame them as success or failure but as learning.   Thomas Alva Edison held 1,093 patents for different inventions.  However, not everything he created was a success; he also had many failures.  The design for Social Media Peer Group Learning.

Countless nonprofits flocked to Ning to create social networks. Since I’m not a social media guru, I’ve generally kept my opinions about this to myself. But now that Ning isn’t free anymore , I’m going to carp some. Nonprofits find services for free. They start depending on them. The nonprofit community gets up in arms.

Author: Jordan Viator. Measuring the return on investment for any organizational effort is a standard of doing business. Was the recent direct mail you sent worth the investment? How much is your online fundraising augmenting offline efforts? Was the social media plan you implemented worth the time you spent running it? Specific and easy to assess.

While that’s still true, blogging as a tool for nonprofits needs to be re-evaluated in 2010. There are currently 133 million blogs worldwide. The world doesn’t need another blogger, right? Wrong. Social media is content driven. That’s especially true on Twitter. The subject of nonprofits and blogging was very popular in 2006 and 2007.

Source:  Extreme Foods. For the third and final Conversational Case Study on America’s Giving Challenge from Allison Fine and I, we  pose a question rather than answer one: Is there a “special sauce” for successful participation in online fundraising contests ?   The post summarizes the strategies used by contest winners. There are twenty questions.

This post originally appeared on TechSoup's global partner, Connecting Up Australia's website and was written by Shai Coggins. Everyday, we find great resources on the different uses of technology and social media in the nonprofit sector. We bookmark them, note them, share them, tweet or retweet them, and sometimes, we even blog about them.

"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done," observed Oscar Wilde. At a time when civic engagement is more important than ever, it's a tragedy that this ill-conceived post has disempowered so many people. They spread like wildfire but then disappeared into cyberspace with little to no resulting benefit.

You may have heard that back in April, Convio released our 2010 report on nonprofit fundraising. Author: Lacey Kruger. We publish these reports annually and they are powerful tools to help you evaluate how your nonprofit stacks up against other, similar organizations. Watch an interview with Vinay about the report here. Lather, rinse, repea

Maddie Grant & Lindy Dreyer, SocialFish, LLC and Leslie T. White, Croydon Consulting LLC. Ready to adopt a social media policy for your organization staff? Awesome. You probably have some ideas about the risks you want to avoid and how you'd like your staff to interact on the interwebs. Easy peasy, right? Pick one audience. Mayo Clinic.

Posted by Steve MacLaughlin on November 30th, 2010 Jumo means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a West African language. About $500,000 came from unnamed individuals in the early days and in September 2010, Omidyar Network announced a grant of up to $750,000. When The Jumo website had its soft launch back on March 18, 2010.

As nonprofits and advocacy groups delve deeper into social media, the need to assess their return on investment (ROI) is critical. Given the organizational goals of advocacy groups, it should be abundantly clear that ROI encompasses far more than fundraising, and in many cases will not include fundraising at all. Engagement. Reach.

To help you get the most out of your Facebook Page, there are several applications you should check out. Most of them you’ve heard of, but there may be a few new ones you didn’t know about. hope this list is helpful. Twitter App - This app automatically re-posts your tweets in your Facebook Page status. Set it and forget it!

Brett Meyer, NTEN. You may already know you can use Google Analytics to track your Google AdWords campaigns. Makes sense: Google would integrate puppies into their products if they thought it would help. note: Actually, they have.]. Turns out, it's really easy. Generate the Tracking URL . Bookmark the page. The key is to remain consistent.

How does your nonprofit typically engage with your supporters? Is your ongoing online communications mainly comprised of action alerts to sign petitions or donation appeals pleading for money? If you answered yes, then your nonprofit is missing out on major opportunities on engaging and developing deeper relationships with your supporters.

Yesterday was a very exciting day: we threw a surprise party for Beth Kanter online!  It was a bit of fun mixed with experiment, and I think it was really successful.  Here are some reflections about how we used crowdsourcing techniques for a very fast-moving campaign and lessons learned that may apply to your work. Hi friends-. Amy (& Stacey).

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I’ve been watching the time zones wake up in the US and start Twittering about the various service projects and community building activities everyone is participating in.  It’s been heart warming and also frustrating – I wish I could be so many places at once!  Then or now. 

Reaching the Bottom of the Pyramid View more presentations from Beth Kanter. On Thursday, I was honored to be part of a panel at NASSCOM CSR Track called "Reaching out to the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Through Technology Services and Media."  The moderator was the  Seemantinee Khot , CEO, Suzlon Foundation. Prahalad and Stuart L.

Sigmund Freud I've been buried putting the final touches on some new curriculum for social media and nonprofit peer learning approaches.  It's the dance floor and the balcony - both strategy and tactics but deployed in a lab with focused experiments, measurement, reflection and learning from peers.  Pscyho Socialgraphics!!

Monitor Institute: KaBOOM! Case Study. View more documents from Noah Flower. Note from Beth: Please j oin me on June 21st from 1-2 PM PST for the virtual launch of The Networked Nonprofit.  One of the key messages in the book is that nonprofits need to work less as isolated institutions and more as networks.  which you should read in full. KaBOOM!

Guess what one of the biggest challenges nonprofits face today when adding a blog to their website or diving into social media? Giving up control. Does this sound familiar? Should blog comments be moderated? Should we even allow public comments on our blog? How do we handle negative comments? Just delete them? How do we deal with trolls?

Today’s Community Builder chat had a small group with a lot to say! It was a rich discussion and it doesn’t stop here – use the link below to review the full transcript and share your discussions points or ideas in the comments. Review the full chat transcript! Or is it OK if everyone is in it for different reasons? And as for me?

All the nonprofits I work with have one thing in common: they're working overtime just to keep up with the sheer volume of work on their plates. Adding new tools or tasks to their workload wouldn't make me popular, so I've searched high and low to find things that will increase a nonprofit's productivity at little or no cost. SlideShare. What is it?

A little known feature within your Facebook Page gives you the ability to target wall updates to a specific group of connections. Some examples of why you’d want to do this: You want to update certain fans about an event taking place in their geographic area. Who cares about a breast-cancer screening in Boston when they live 2,000 miles away?

Renée Rybak Lang, New Media Specialist, Education Sector. Live-tweeting -- the kind of tweeting where you replay to your Twitter followers what people are saying at an event in real time -- is something that seems to be gaining popularity at conferences around the nonprofit circuit. Choose Wisely.  Is it to bring attention to a certain issue?

The latest version of Microsoft Office came out last month and since then we've been fiddling, playing, testing, and tweaking to learn all we can about the 2010 version of the popular office productivity suite. In addition, we're conducting a webinar with Microsoft to go over some these features in more detail (sorry, it's full!)

was in NYC for the 2010 BlogHer Conference, and on a little vacation, so I'm a couple days late posting this month's August/September 2010 Big Vision Worksheet (illustrated by my hubs ). You can view and download past 2010 Big Vision worksheets here. Hello Have Fun, Do Gooders! You can download the PDF from Dropbox here.

Foursquare now has 1.6 million users. That That may not seem like very many compared to Facebook’s 465 million users, but Foursquare is only one year-old and growing quickly. Part social networking site, part smartphone App, Foursquare is a tool meant to be primary used on the go on your smartphone. million venues. Mary’s Food Bank.

We, as social change organizations, exist to enable the power of our supporters. That is how change happens. Through getting thousands of people to take mass action. Through getting one person to pressure a decision maker. It is the power of our supporters, collective or individual, that we are trying to enable. Marches? Politics? Direct service?

A while back, we looked how your non-profit can use visualization tools to help tell the human story behind your data and statistics, along with some free tools and inspiring examples to make your own infographic. Yes, you’ve seen some of those visualization tools reviewed here already.( read more ).

Author: Jordan Viator. It's no secret by now that social media is hot topic with nonprofit organizations, and quickly the topic of social media measurement is becoming a common conversation thread across the community. Guest Post: Measuring Social Media with Multichannel Integration and Meaningful Metrics. By Shabbir Imber Safdar and Shayna Englin.

Are the new Facebook Pages here? Well, yes… kinda, according to Mashable. It’s been one heck of a long, drawn out launch riddled with false starts and confusion, but it does seem that at last the new Pages are finally here. Well, kinda. At first glance, I was taken aback, but after a few days thought the changes made a lot sense to me.

Ed Granger-Happ, Nethope; Claire Bonilla, Disaster Response Microsoft; Daniel Ben-Horin, TechSoup Global, Vida Durant, CARE USA. Chatting with David Connor , we both had the same reaction – who knew?  Take for example  deploying 200 sensors throughout the Brazilian rainforest to measure and visualize the effects of climate change. 

Has the world gone mobile crazy? Apple’s app store just cracked a quarter million available mobile applications, Google’s Android is giving them a run for their money, and Microsoft is waiting in the wings with a Windows 7 Mobile. Does your organization have a mobile and app strategy? Thinking about Developing Your Own Custom App?

Author: Jordan Viator. It’s less than 24 hours until the masses start filling the Austin Convention Center for one of the biggest and best Interactive conferences of the year: South By Southwest. For news and happenings from the live event, feel free to follow me at @jordanv on Twitter). The Beacon: Lounge with a Conscience! ” 6.

In March of 2010, the Mecklenburg County manager advised library leaders that we should plan for a 50% reduction in our operating budget due to a drastic reduction in taxable revenues throughout the county; projecting an $85million shortfall. Jenifer R Daniels, Communications & Marketing Specialist, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. 8, pp.

My latest Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion piece is up and copied below. You can read and comment on the original post here. —– There’s been some interesting discussion about Apple, donations and This American Life ’s iPhone application lately that I want to touch on.  public media is all about donations.

While there are a good number of tech-savvy hipsters out there that understand terms like “ Static Web ”, “ Dynamic Content ”, “ User-Generated ”, “ Cloud Computing ”, and “ Semantic Web ”, the majority of nonprofits don’t talk or understand such tech speak. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Web 1.0 The donation process is not interactive or public. Web 3.0

By Nancy Lublin, CEO and Chief Old Person, DoSomething.org. If I had a crystal ball. I'd sell it and donate the money to  DoSomething.org. But here are some predictions about the future of the not-for-profit world, in no specific order. More organizations will depend on mobile donations. And, at an event, it is a means of taking action immediately.

Here’s a look at the most popular links submitted to Association Jam in October 2010, by topic category: Membership Are you a membership based nonprofit? ways to be better Mazarine Treyz | Wild Woman Fundraising Do you want to improve retention and.( read more ).

But for the second largest Internet company in the world with 2010 profit estimates to be between $1-2 billion, is that enough? As of April 2010, Fan Pages are now called “Official&# Pages and there is new Page in the mix called Community Pages. Reconsider. To think about again. To reassess. To reevaluate. Really?&#. on Facebook.

This session with Beth Kanter and Allison Fine will be presented as a webinar and recorded as part of 10NTC Live.  10NTC Registrants can register for the free recording by entering the source code you received via email. Register Now! —— [link]. The writing process for the book: Expository vs storytelling. BE: understand networks. link].

Are you measuring the right social media metrics or do you have your head in the sand? Think about that for a minute or so. The answer matters. Oh, and don’t worry if you answered yes. I’ve done it. We all do at some point. Either way those are bad places to exist because they result in you wondering aimlessly with no real purpose.

Ning , the leading free social media platform provider has recently lost not only its CEO, but also about 40 percent of its workforce. For its nearly 20 million monthly visitors, this means a rate increase. Freshly-appointed CEO Jason Rosenthal posted last week , Ning will now "double down on our premium services business." www.webjam.com.

After the recent barrage of changes to Facebook Pages , you’re probably about the rip the final strands of hair out of your head. The good news is that you never ever worry about things like this. Plus bald is beautiful. The bad news is the next big change is a pretty big change. What the heck is FBML? What the heck is an iframe?

The ecosystem of nonprofits is exploding, yet the problems society faces are larger than nonprofits, said Allison Fine, on the Care2 webinar The Networked Nonprofit. The solution? Networking. “Nonprofits are fortresses trying to manage the message. Free agents will free you from your cage,&# said Kanter. What’s a free agent?

I’m currently working with a number of nonprofits who want to start a blog. They’ve all gone through a process on deciding whether of not a blog is right for them (Also see tomorrow’s free webinar with Charityhowto ). After we establish goals , one of the first steps is to create a blog strategy. The Killer Blog Strategy Mind-Map.

If you're in charge of your organization's web analytics, you undoubtedly know about bounce rate -- the measure of visitors who enter your site, say "Enh" (or something ruder), and immediately leave, without viewing any more of your carefully crafted pages. Yeah, those people annoy me, too. But that's no reason not to keep improving!

A lively LinkedIn discussion was kicked off when Elizabeth Watkin , program coordinator at Africa Carbon Credit Exchange,asked, “ What makes a good non-profit website? What do you like to see on a charity/non-profit/NGO website and what do you dislike? Would a website encourage you to donate or get involved? read more ).

percent for the 3 months ending May 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009 while the online giving index reports that online revenue increased by 23.0 percent for the 3 months ending May 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009 We recently released a pretty cool resource for the nonprofit industry – The Blackbaud Index !

The Foundation Center released a report that documents the usage of social media tools by foundation executives based on survey responses from 73 members of the Center’s Grantmaker Leadership Panel.   in philanthropic work, and highlights the social media activity of two “power users&# in the field.

New ideas for Benetech projects come to us from interesting people all the time. The challenges that people bring are rarely technology problems: they are market problems. Rebecca was looking for help with a familiar problem. Her students at Rice University have been busy inventing new tools and equipment for global health. So far, so good.

My latest contribution to the Stanford Social Innovation Review is now up – it’s reposted below, but you can find the original post and conversation on SSIR. You may or may not have seen a message from those same friends encouraging you and everyone else to do it, too, as a way of increasing awareness of child abuse. What do you think?

Microsoft's new version of Office 2010 is interesting in several ways, especially in its approach to green IT and cloud computing. The free online version of Microsoft Office 2010, called Office Web Apps for Home and School is free to anyone regardless of whether or not they use a desktop version of Microsoft Office. read more.

Let's say you want to make a documentary about the World Cup. Or sail around the world. Or produce an art exhibit with elementary school students. Or build an open-source PCR machine for copying DNA. How would you fund it? Kickstarter is a website for creative folks to find funding for their dream projects. Funding goal. Pledge levels.

Saving the web for the future - 02 Mar 2010 - Computing: "The British Library’s UK Web Archive project to save all the UK’s free-access web sites underlines just how pervasive the internet’s role in people’s lives has become.

Over the years I have stumbled across countless Internet gems, but the 10 below are those that I regularly and repeatedly return to. These resources are invaluable when looking for quality content to utilize and share on social media sites. If you have any favorites that you would like to share, please add them in a comment below. Thanks.

I normally try to leave politics and religion out of my work with nonprofits, but this time I need to make an exception. month ago I launched a Facebook Page called Accomplishments of President Barack Obama. You’ll have to deal with them maybe 2-3 times a year. And for most nonprofits, that’s still true. You have to moderate. Thanks!

Now that most nonprofits have a Community Page on Facebook in addition to their Official Page, it is crucial that nonprofits create a Wikipedia account to edit, maintain, and “Watch&# their organization’s Wikipedia Page. For example, I used to work for a nonprofit called Global Exchange. Notice how the Community Page has a Wikipedia Tab?

I attend a lot of conferences , but mostly as a keynote speaker, workshop leader, or panelist. don’t often get a chance to listen and learn.  That was the gift of attending Nonprofit 2.0 Conference , especially the “ unconference sessions “  in Washington, DC on Friday.  A big thank you conference organizers! Don’t give up!

AFP Presentation 2010: Navigating the Waters in the Sea of Social Media View more presentations from Convio. Author: Jordan Viator. Former President of AFP Golden Gate Nicci Noble and current AFP Golden Gate President and Development Director of Center for Environmental Health Sean Sullivan presented on "How Tweet It Is!: Where are you now?

Yesterday, I had the fun opportunity to present a webinar session with Allen Gunn of Aspiration in part of the TechSoup Talks series.  I can’t believe we had to, and managed to, fit everything into just one hour, including questions/answers! If you missed the webinar, that’s okay! Presentation slides. Audio recording. Leave a comment!

The Social Media for Social Good collection from NTEN and NetSquared calls for your case studies in leveraging social media tools in your program work. Social Media for Social Good. Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. We know that social media can be used to change the world.

Is your nonprofit reaching women and harnessing their power for social change? If your nonprofit is not actively marketing to women and recruiting them, your organization is missing out on major fundraising opportunities. “Women have numerical advantages,&# said Witter and Mele. The average profile of a volunteer in the US is a working mother.

Notes from the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference for: Who : Speakers: Susan Tenby | TechSoup Global; Janet Fouts; Kira Marchenese. Listen first and discover where the conversations are! —– Tools for listening: Goodbyebuddy – find out when people aren’t listening to you any more. Learn what people want to hear.

HP is giving away laptop and printer bundles as part of its  HP’s Create Change program which is an example of " embedded giving."   That's a buzz word coined by Lucy Bernholz to describe the common practice of building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction.  Become a fan of HP for Home to share your ideas. Fine Blog  .

2010 is the first year that the NMC has released a museum-specific report, but previous reports have been informed by museum professionals (as well as other educational technologists). From my perspective, the Horizon Report's value is in its quick technology descriptions and links, not its predictive power. Happy reading!

Kivi Leroux Miller, EcoScribe Communications. Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging? Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to do a Webinar called " Social Media for Trainers: A Bag of Tricks " over at the Engage 365 Online Community site.  I blogged about the content last week.  I had sooo much fun creating and delivering it.  And, in looking over the evaluations and reviews , I think the participants did too.   How: 6 Tools and Tips.

Over my career I’ve noticed that most applications have very limited reporting and charting features. I’ve tried to write some of my own and realized quickly why this is–analytics is hard! Visual query builders, dynamic charting, aggregation of data, it’s all really tough to do right. Why are the analytics so good? For free.

One of the questions that comes up most frequently when I talk with folks about participation is: what should we do with the things that visitors create? What should we do with their post-its and stories and drawings and poems? This question is a byproduct of the reality that most participatory projects have poorly articulated value.

Did You Know? 300 billion was raised in 2008 (Giving USA); * $15 billion was raised online in 2008 – a 44% increase over 2007) (Blackbaud); * $21 million has been raised by Causes since its launch three years ago; * 30% of online giving happens in December. How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Up? Create Killer Landing Pages.