Nonprofit Technology - New York

“I just don’t get that generation.”

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:39:16 PDT

admit that I also question some of the things my parents say and do – I thought I raised them better. :-) The generations are different... Today, Jordan Viator, our super communications manager for all things interactive, fun and digital was featured in The New York Times about using Foursquare to broadcast to her friends where she is during SXSW Interactive . Author: Tad Druart Being a father of high school and college age daughters, I say "I just don't get it" quite often. I

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What the Third Sector Can Learn from the Public Sector

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:41:31 PDT

The New York State Senate has a Twitter feed. The New York State Senate website is built on Drupal. All of the content produced and published by the New York State Senate is published under a Creative Commons license. Look for a new "About Us" page on this site soon. Flickr Photo: h.koppdelaney Transparent. Participatory.

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Your Free, Fun Spring 2010 Big Vision Goals Worksheet

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:49:00 PST

Last month I posted a worksheet for your Big Vision Goals for 2010 with places for you to write down three goals for 2010, three goals for winter, and three goals for the lunar month ( new moon, Feb 13-new moon, March 15). Well, the next new moon is coming up on March 15th, and the first day of spring is around the corner on March 20th, so it's time for us to review, revise, and recommit to our goals. I've posted a new illustrated March/April/Spring Big Vision Goals worksheet , that my hubs designed, for you to download. As you work on filling out your new worksheet,

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TechSoup Global Needs Your Vote in the Social Innovation Awards

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:56:41 PST

TechSoup Global has entered The Financial Times-Justmeans Social Innovation Awards competition with winners selected by a panel of judges and presented in a New York City on March 23. In addition to the main competition, there is also a Citizens Choice Award. Help recognize the innovative work our many partners make possible with your vote now.

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Chatroulette: Giving Stranger Interactions a Bad Name

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:16:00 PST

As New York reporter Sam Anderson put it : I got off the ChatRoulette wheel determined never to get back on. This morning, in less than fifteen seconds, I saw live video of: a guy on the phone, lounging in front of his computer a guy taking a photo of me while ignoring simple questions a guy who used a mirror effect to look like an alien a penis The penis was the last straw. I

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Mobile Commons Helps Non-Profit Organizations Responding to the Chile Earthquake

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:01:20 PST

NEW YORK – March 8, 2010 – In the aftermath of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile, nonprofit organizations raced to mobilize aid and plan recovery efforts, while also raising resources and funds to support their humanitarian programs in Chile. In response, AmeriCares, Catholic Relief Services and Habitat for Humanity have expanded their use of SMS and mobile marketing beyond just text-to-give to include critical, informational updates on their relief efforts to donors, as well as to bring new supporters into their organizations. AmeriCares, Catholic Relief Services and Habitat for Humanity adopt mobile for engaging supporters and fundraising

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Mobile donations and dating – The world has changed

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:50:58 PST

Author: Tad Druart As I look back at my communication’s and development career technology has changed the way I work - I remember the days when we had a major product launch and had teams of people in New York and Washington D.C. We must adapt to change, to data intensive applications and new technologies that push us in new directions and beyond our comfort zone. the morning of the announcement to "run" the press releases to the key media outlets/reporters. Technology has changed all that.

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Guest Post by Katherine Hutt: A Small Nonprofit's Strategy for Pepsi Refresh Contest

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:32:29 PST

Photo: Jim Harrison Note from Beth: This post was written before the New York Times article describing a misstep with the Pepsi Charity Contest. Here's my analysis . Pepsi decided to give away their Super Bowl Bowl ad budget and instead give away $1.3 million million a month for 12 months to good causes.

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Pepsi Charity Contest: Learning From Mistakes and Level Playing Fields

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:26:27 PST

The New York Times published an article called " Pepsi Trips Over Its Own Submission Rules " which describes what happened: In an email exchange with Bonin Bough from Pepsi about the New York Times piece, I shared my view. From my son's kindergarten class The Pepsi Refresh Contest is the boldest experiment so

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Interview: Marshall Kirkpatrick on the Real Time Web Report

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:26:24 PST

The Real-Time Web and Its Future , a new report from ReadWriteWeb , focused on the changing ecosystem of the Web, one that runs in real-time. “For the following report, we interviewed 50 companies, developers and executives building or leveraging real-time Web technology. It means different things to different people, but the most literal meaning is probably this: real-time systems push information from a publisher to a subscriber (be they a human reader or a machine consuming information) as soon as it’s available, without the subscriber having to ask if there’s anything

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Should CEOs and Executive Directors Use Social Media?

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:02:24 PST

She uses Twitter to share what's going on at NTEN, announce new initiatives, and have conversations with NTEN members. 8 Nonprofit CEOs Who Tweet by Beth Kanter Foundations That Tweet - Different Patterns by Beth Kanter CEOs Take To Twitter from Businessweek The CEO's Secret Handbook from Money Magazine CEOs Are Social Media Slackers from Wired Magazine First CEO to Tweet Resignation from New York Times The NASSCOM India Leadership Forum has multiple tracks based on theme. It also has a track that takes place in a large room with roundtables and a designated

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The iPad will probably be a great device. Someday.

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:34:40 PST

And that means her local newspaper, not The New York Times . I'm not buying an iPad , nor am I buying into the hype about it. I love that with Apple products, folks don't realize that they can't live without something until Steve Jobs tells them what they can't live without.

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Interview: John Brennan of OpenAction

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:01:19 PST

8221; In June 2009, John decided to sell nearly everything he owned and set out for New York City (via San Diego). left my 9-5 in San Diego on June 4, set out on a month long road trip with my brother across the United States to New York . Instead of paying a web developer to add new project data, they can do it using a few simple form fields. I recently had the opportunity to connect with John Brennan , the driving force behind OpenAction.org , which empowers individuals and organizations by helping them tell the world about the positive impact their actions have.

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Chase Giving Contest: Winners Announced Amidst Yet More Controversy

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:33:33 PST

new with little to no activity, it's unclear if that is a violation of This happened right before the holidays in December and an article by Stephanie Strom in the New York Times reported: JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities. Less than two hours ago, Chase Community Giving made the much anticipated announcement of the lucky winner of $1 million dollars and five finalists each receiving $100,000 on its contest Fan Page. This contest was

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Free Webinar: Sharing Trainer's Social Media Bag of Tricks and Secrets

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:41:01 PST

I've been involved with teaching and learning technology for nonprofits since 1993 when I worked for the New York Foundation for the Arts' online network for artists, Arts Wire. free copies of Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Back Channel, required reading I've been involved with teaching and learning technology for nonprofits since 1993 when I worked for the New York Foundation for the Social Media Trainer's Bag of Tricks View more presentations from Beth Kanter . My job was the network weaver.

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Micro Volunteering for the Haiti Earthquake

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:59:23 PST

For a more details about the SMS fundraising results, see this this detailed report on the SMS fundraising campaign from MobileActive and yesterday's article in the New York Times from Stephanie Strom . It uses their new researcher tool Tweet from kateatyrownrisk When a disaster of this magnitude strikes, our impulse is to help in some way.

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Are Online Vote-for-Me Contests A Good Idea?

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:29:01 PST

Jared Paul, the co-founder of a new nonprofit that has a focus on homeless youth and one of the winners of the $25,000 in the first phase of Chase's Giving Community Contest offered to share his thoughts. While as of this writing, his organization is in the bottom 25% of the leaderboard he shares a few points below about why contests like this can be helpful for small, new nonprofits. As a fairly new nonprofit, this online contest gave us the ability to gain exposure and compete with some more established organizations. Note from Beth: There has been a variety of criticism of contests.

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A Couple of Do Good iPhone Apps

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:38:34 PST

One of the more exciting iPhone apps to appear in the last month or so is CauseWorld that uses a new form of "embedded" giving that I dubbed " Foot Traffic Philanthropy ." New York Philharmonic Last week, I created an iPhone app out of my blog in ten minutes at a cost of $50 using a service call AppMkr. It made wonder when we'll start to see more iPhone apps from and to benefit nonprofits.

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Is Wikipedia Loves Art Getting "Better"?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:08:00 PST

It started with a request from a group of New York Wikimedians to the Brooklyn Museum. There is a large community of people who will use the digital images in their new home on Wikimedia Commons, and who am I to say they are not equally important? It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians).

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Things We Like: Best of 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:17:36 PST

If the New York Times ' terrific interactive map of the recession or this spectacularly frightening time-based map of the expansion of Walmart bring you down, cheer up with the most amazing chart we saw this year . (Hand Here are the most clicked on "Things We Like" links from 2009. Patience pants .

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What Lessons Will Pepsi Learn About Crowdsourcing for Social Good from Chase Bank Contest Fail?

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:12:43 PST

Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported: JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities. Pepsi is taking a bold move. It's not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages. Instead, Pepsi is using the money

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Charities Cry Foul on Chase Facebook Charitable Giving Contest

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:32:24 PST

Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported: JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities. The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is one of the biggest online contests thus far, open open to more than 500,000 charities.

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It’s coming – Black Thursday – Tax Deadline Drives Donation Activity on December 31 – are you ready?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:51:04 PST

Today, Stephanie Strom, Philanthropy reporter for The New York Times did a nice article around data from the Convio system that shows, at least behaviorally, the year-end tax deadline makes a big difference in online giving volume and revenue. Author: Tad Druart Back in February there was a great deal of discussion and debate on the role of tax-deductions in charitable giving around proposed changes in the tax code.

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Little Things Can Mean A Lot: 404 Pages

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:28:00 PST

New York City Coalition Against Hunger : [link] is friendly and helpful with a touch of their own personality Grist : [link] continues their tongue in cheek image without going over the top. Easily Overlooked Opportunities to Polish your Brand Online You've probably heard the adage that your brand isn't just your logo or tagline, its every experience people have with your organization. And its true that having a consistent message in everything you do, from the words your staff uses answer the phone to exactly matching your colors on print materials, does pay off in terms

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Does Your Fundraising Make Me Feel Happy and Hopeful?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:17:00 PST

In it, the New York Times columnist and blogger writes about what mobilizes people to get involved in social change. I've been sharing the Outside article, Nicholas Kristof's Advice for Saving the World with lots of folks this week. The gist of his conclusions were: People are moved to do good in order to feel good.

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Passports With Purpose: Travel Bloggers Helping Cambodia

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:53:47 PST

And when I stumbled over an article about AAfC in the New York times, I KNEW I wanted to do this. Passports with Purpose (PwP) is a collaborative online fundraiser created created by four Seattle-based travel bloggers, returns for a second year year with the goal of raising USD13,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia through

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Reply Comments on the Proposed Treaty for Access to Copyrighted Works

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:06:00 PST

Every New York Times Bestseller from the last few years, every Newbery award winning book ever, are all available to Americans with qualifying print disabilities on Bookshare today. We filed the following comments to the Copyright Office's request for comments on issues about access for people with print disabilities. Background on this can be reviewed at the Knowledge Ecology International website.

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NTEN Member Buzz Round-Up: December 4th

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:16:08 PST

NTEN 501 Tech Club event in New York presented a panel on the topic of multi-channel the presentation to help nonprofits understand the role of new media in storytelling, And, finally, help Beth Kanter and Allison Fine come up with the subtitle for their new book: The Networked Nonprofit . ...Tags: (Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing their their nptech awesome.

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Multi-Channel Fundraising: Strategies and Tools to Engage Donors through Integrated Campaigns

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:24:17 PST

Last week I had the pleasure of moderating a panel about this timely topic of multi-channel fundraising and communication for NTEN’s 501 Tech Club New York City at the TADA! With all the new technology out there, nonprofit organizations have more ways than ever to reach donors online. Youth Theater. Simon Moloney, NPower Network & Conifer Analytics and Rebecca Willett, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, joined me on the panel discussion.

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Have Fun Do Good Day: 29-Day Giving Challenge

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:08:00 PST

What you might not know is that since I first wrote about the Challenge in April 2008 , Cami has published a New York Times bestselling book, 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life , and has appeared on the TODAY Show ! Long time readers of Have Fun Do Good probably already know about the 29 Day Giving Challenge created by my friend, Cami Walker. During the 29 Day Giving Challenge, you give away one thing each day for 29 days.

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Quick Followup: VCTips at Web 2.0 Expo

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:03:33 PST

Expo New York . Expo New York. Just a quick post to take care of two VCTips housekeeping items: 1. A big thank-you to Amish Jani from FIRSTMARK Capital , Oren Netzer from DoubleVerify , and Avner Ronen from Boxee for joining me and Bryce Roberts at this week's VCTips workshop at Web 2.0

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This Twitter Fundraisers, Next Year FourSquare Fundraisers ....

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:37:00 PST

This is a great way to give.” TechiesGiveBack.org is dedicated to unifying the New York tech industry for the purpose of improving the local community through volunteering and fundraising. Today, Pete Cashmore had a piece on CNN " Next Year's Twitter? Foursquare " predicting that FourSquare will be the darling of 2010.

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Tis the Season for Creativity in Holiday/Year-end Giving – Share your gift opportunity here

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:10:54 PST

Thus, we have talked to a number of clients who are giving constituents the best of both worlds this holiday season – giving the gift of charity and giving a gift from charity. Our founder and CSO, Vinay Bhagat was quoted last week in The New York Times about the trend, and today our client American Red Cross was also written up in the Times about their first "Gifts that Save the Day" catalogue. Author: Tad Druart With the Holiday Giving season ramping and the recession having a negative impact on donations, charities are expanding their eCommerce offerings

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Guest Post on Tactical Philanthropy: Causes, MySpace and ideablob

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:58:27 PST

to which New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom tweeted back “No kidding.” For example, when you post a message (whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or even Change.org) telling your supporters that you’re ramping up for some big news, a new project or something else, include a link where they can sign up with you to be on the email/announcement list. This isn’t about creating a new splash page, this is involving the users in the design of the Gallery where their Sean Stannard-Stockton has just posted my guest post on the Tactical Philanthropy blog .

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Lou Dobbs quits CNN

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:42:09 PST

NEW YORK – Responding to the news Wednesday that Lou Dobbs will leave his post as a longtime anchor on CNN, the leaders of BastaDobbs.com – a national Latino-led coalition that had been advocating for his ouster – released the following statement: “Our The big news in the media today is that Lou Dobbs has quit CNN. Mobile Commons would like to congratulate Presente.org and the BastaDobbs.com campaign.

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Twitter: I think I get it. Now what do I tweet?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:07:46 PST

In combination with retweeting, this tells your followers that your updates are worth following, because you’re constantly giving them new reasons to check back. Some Twitter basics from the New York Times Elizabeth Ricca, Big Duck [Ed. Ed. note: This article is part of NTEN's Member

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Technology is all about the Eyeballs

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:58:02 PST

Some could tell us how many hits they expected on their new website (sometimes), but not what traffic source was driving donations. Others could tell us how many donors they needed to store in their new database, but not what the results of an email campaign had been. recent New York Times article outlined the increasing value of Statisticians in society . Jeremy Heffner, Avencia [Ed. Ed.

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Social Media and Technology: What Nonprofits Need To Know

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:58:02 PST

Yesterday, I attended — and live tweeted (#baruchnp) — an interesting panel discussion at Baruch College here in New York , “ Social Media and Technology: What Nonprofits Need To Know .” was not particularly new for those of us who have been following, studying, This is still such a new field. Here Farra Trompeter, Big Duck [Ed. Ed.

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Beaconfire Survey: The News

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:43 PDT

For real in-depth analysis, I read monthly and weekly magazines (Harpers, the New Yorker, and The Economist). Amadie, Marketing Consultant: On the weekends, I love to sit down with the print newspaper – the Post on Saturday and Sunday, and the Sunday New York Times – and read them pretty much cover-to-cover. Periodically, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors.

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Guest Post by Aspen Baker: Friend or Foe? UC Berkeley Investigates the Legal Landscape of Social Networking

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:58:53 PDT

Only a very small amount of data is needed to produce quite a lot of information about each and every one of us and the law is so far behind the times that according to Facebook’s Deputy General Counselor, Mark Howitson , the social networking website aggressively invites litigation because they need new case law to set precedent. The conference, according to Jason Schultz , Co-Director of the Samuelson Clinic for Law , Technology and Public Policy, was designed as “a chance to address the ramifications of what happens when people write permanently to a giant network.” As nonprofit

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Guilting Donors in 30 Seconds or Less

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:25:33 PDT

The New York Jets would never let fans into the big game for free and then request donations as they leave the stadium. This week, Slate has a cute article on the lines public radio stations use to get pledge drive donations. If you listen to public radio, these will all have a familiar ring, particularly around this time of year: Public

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Great reads from around the web on October 20th

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:00:33 PDT

Social Media and Technology: What Nonprofits Need To Know « Nonprofit Communications: Duck Call Blog - I really love the highlights Farra shares from the “Social Media and Technology: What Nonprofits Need To Know" panel she attended yesterday as part of #baruchnp, at Baruch College in New York . 34;There are a lot of new technologies which already affect news consumption and future business models. These are some links I wanted to share from October 20th. Find me on Delicious for more!

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29 Nonprofit Bloggers to Follow on Twitter

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:40:39 PDT

Katrin Verclas: @Katrinskaya from New York , NY Blog: Nancy Schwartz: @NancySchwartz from New York , NY Blog: Blog: New Voices of Philanthropy Allison Fine: @Afine from New York , NY Blog: Last week I asked the followers of @NonprofitOrgs to nominate their favorite nonprofit bloggers. The list below is the result of that “Tweet Out”.

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5 Tips for Finding Time to Cook

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:15:00 PDT

One of my favorite parts of The New York Times Magazine article last weekend about Jamie Oliver, Putting America's Diet on a Diet , was when after Oliver made Mini Shell Pasta With a Creamy Smoked Bacon and Pea Sauce for his two daughters and the article's author, Alex Witchel observed: "He [Oliver] is not a diet cop; he’s about scratch cooking, which to him means avoiding processed and fast food, learning pride of ownership, encouraging sparks of creativity and finding a reason to gather family and friends in one place." Inspired by a Joy Behar interview last week with Alicia

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Text Message Reminders to Take Medication Works

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:15:40 PDT

The medical journal Pediatrics published a new study showing the effectiveness of using text messages to remind young patients to take their medication . Mobile Commons has worked with a number of organizations and state health departments, including New York and California, to test the efficacy of using text messaging to improve public health. There were 41 patients in the study who recently underwent a liver transplant. They showed “significant improvement” in medication compliance after 1 year.

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Twitter Adds Nonprofits to Suggested Users List

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:20:54 PDT

The New York Times says that a spot on Twitter’s “suggested users” list guarantees 500,000 additional followers. CNET calls this the “ New Socialism: a redistribution of attention, not of material wealth.” 8221; Up until a few days there were less then a handful of nonprofits on Twitter’s “suggested users” list. But things changed for the nonprofit world on Friday.

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Using Chris Brogan's Archimedes Principle To Leverage Nonprofits on Twitter Suggested User List

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:14:18 PDT

Sean listed the new users: The new “suggested users” are: Sean also described a wonderful example of the Chris Brogan's leverage principle by Social Edge which immediately sent out a message to all their new users pointing them to a list of 100 other social entrepreneur focused Twitter users. Sean points out the value of being on the list: In June the New York Times wrote about the “suggested user” list saying Chris Brogan's Archimedes Effect is from his book Trust Agents (co-authored with Julien Smith). The principle is about leverage.

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Jed Emerson: Steady Returns With Social Impact

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:50:00 PDT

Last week I was in New York City and had the opportunity to meet with many interesting people (and got lots of ideas). One key connection was with Jed Emerson. Jed's just published a new article in Forbes.com entitled Steady Returns With Social Impact . Ten years ago, Jed was the head of REDF, the famous social enterprise foundation in San Francisco. His point is: The little secret of this past year's capital crisis is that while many mainstream investments incurred significant losses in value, one category remained steady--with some investors significantly outperforming

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Have Fun Do Good Link Love: Right Brain Business Plan, Blog Action Day, and Oprah

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:40:00 PDT

Stanfield, ArtBizCoach.com on the Arts and Healing Podcast LINK LOVE The October 1st episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show will feature New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, and his wife his wife Sheryl WuDunn talking about their book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide . The Case Foundation, Causes, and PARADE are joining together to present the 2009 America’s Giving Challenge , a national competition launching on October 7. 77 ways to build community in your neighborhood from Our Blocks . How charities harness

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Some Thoughts on Livestreamed Interviews, Engagement, Book Winners, and Finger Puppets

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:39:28 PDT

As new questions came in through the Ustream chatroom, Kari would select them as follow up questions. The winners: Ashley Messick from the Blood Centers Vikki Baptiste from Mid Central Communication Action Barbara Christensen from Conservation Northwest Jessica Fillinger from Bridge New York Some Highlights from the Interview The first question that Kari was terrific. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to be interviewed as part of a series of online interviews with nonprofit social media gurus about how to use social media. The month long event was hosted by the

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Dancefloor and Balcony: What I learned about emergent online collaboration from Eugene Eric Kim

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:55:20 PDT

With the entire network engaged, the leaders worked together to create a report to document the lessons they were learning from implementing leadership programs for reproductive health, through a new wiki . Eugene Eric Kim is an expert in online culture and collaboration, particularly with new tools. His work was recently profiled in this New York Times piece Yesterday at the Packard Foundation, as part of a series of "deeper dives" to learn about networks and social media, Eugene Eric Kim of Blue Oxen Associates gave a talk about "Networks in an International Context."

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Mobile Commons in the NY Times!

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:27:01 PDT

A great article was published today in the New York Times: Emitations , an online retailer of costume jewelry, is about to start a texting campaign promoting a new product line inspired by the “Twilight” vampire-themed book and movie series. Users who text in to register will receive regular alerts about new releases and sales on products tied to their favorite characters. A Small Business Guide to Text-Message Marketing by by

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Join me for a chat with The Feast

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:23:09 PDT

Location: The Times Center, New York City Join us for a chat! NetSquared is the guest host of The Feast’s next Twitter chat about the power of social media for social good. We’ll be tweeting questions such as “how can we better leverage social media for less talk and more action?” and we’re looking

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Green Jobs Update - Van Jones Resignation and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition Green Jobs Platform

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:26:29 PDT

The New York Times reported that the resignation was a "victory for Republicans and the Obama administration's conservative critics" and that the mounting criticism of him was based largely on remarks Jones had made before his White House appointment, including particularly derogatory statements about Republicans as well as Jones' signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. In our weekly GreenTech columns, we've been closely following the career of Van Jones , author of The Green Collar Economy and more recently special advisor for green jobs at the White House Council for Environmental Quality in the Obama administration.

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Mobile Commons, 9/11 Memorial and NASCAR Partner on “Text to Remember” Program

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:00:10 PDT

NEW YORK – September 10, 2009 – Mobile Commons, Inc. , The 9/11 commemorative car is black, blue and white, with patriotic stars and stripes, and it features a new logo for the 9/11 Memorial. Our hope is to engage thousands of new supporters through the “Text to Remember” program, which we will promote at the race.” “It Public can add name to 9/11 “Honor Roll” with option to donate $5 via text message a pioneer of easy-to-use technology for mobile marketing campaigns, today announced its partnership with the National September 11th Memorial & Museum

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What's Your Leisure Identity? Does it Bring You Into Museums?

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:17:00 PDT

Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk's new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience . In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things. We both love carrying all necessary belongings on our own backs, producing our own food and shelter, and using our physical abilities to propel ourselves into new, I spent last week on vacation in the High Sierras rock climbing. In it, John provides a model for the museum visitor experience based on one fundamental idea: people

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Social Actions Community Call, July 2009

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:55:50 PDT

Then there are our projects and I don’t think they’re fully visible from a new person’s perspective. The New York Times will be uploading their entire corpus. Someone trying to find out about philanthropic activity in any location would be able to draw from the cloud and find data from the New York Times or Social Actions. On July 1, 2009, Social Actions convened a Community Conference Call. Below is the transcript from that discussion ~

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Constituent Empowerment, as old as Lady Liberty

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:00:03 PDT

Recently, I was in New York City for a mini vacation with my family, seeing all of the tourist traps with my kids, who had never been to the big apple. In stepped the owner of the biggest newspaper of the time, The New York World, Joseph Pulitzer. Author: James Young Of course we saw Central Park and the Zoo therein, to see if the animals from Madagascar were hanging out, and we saw FAO Schwartz and Times Square and the Empire State Building.

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The countdown is on & your vote counts

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:00:03 PDT

One of my concerns about these new online giving models is whether big donors will now choose to go online to fund loans to entrepreneurs of their choosing versus giving donations that can be used at the organization’s discretion to support the most needed programs and operations. It’s one thing to make a gift to cover the costs of snacks for children in a New York City school (as is possible through orgs like DonorsChoose). Odds are, you have heard about all the amazing Non Profit panels being proposed for South by Southwest interactive 2010 , and your vote has been courted over and over again.

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Have Fun Do Good Link Love: WeAreMedia Webinar, Pottery Bloggers & Cupcakes in Mason Jars

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:18:00 PDT

I've got 2 new posts up on WE Volunteer : HopePhones.org: Donate Your Cell Phone; Help a Medical Clinic September is Hunger Action Month: Getting Involved + Feeding America I've also started writing for a new blog for the Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship ( full disclosure: my Dad is the Co-Founder ). My newest post for them is 7 Ways Potters Can Use Blogs . LINK LOVE A new Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp podcast is up How to Approach a Foundation Encourage volunteering from your site by downloading VolunteerMatch's SearchLite

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Tips to Strengthen Your Email Campaigns

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:00:00 PDT

Our own Allison Van Diest had the opportunity to lead a session at the DMA Nonprofit Federation's 2009 New York Nonprofit Conference entitled "The Right Message: Making the Most of E-mail Marketing in a Down Economy" where she shared best practices for creating strong email positioning and message architectur

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Try Eating for $4 a Day. Join The Hunger Challenge

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:47:00 PDT

International and National Hunger Organizations Action Against Hunger Bread for the World Feeding America Friends of the World Food Program International Food Policy Institute MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger Share Our Strength United Nations World Food Programme WHY World Food Prize Food Bank Blogs Capital Area Food Bank of Texas Food Bank of New York City Food Bank of Northern Nevada Food Bank of Southeastern Virginia High Plains Food Bank North Texas Food Bank San Francisco Food Bank Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San

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Designing Talkback Platforms for Different Dialogic Goals

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:55:00 PDT

If you are hoping for visitors to discuss their responses to questions with each other, or to share their answers with the institution, you can't end with the question; you need to provide several opportunities for questions and responses. If your goal is to encourage visitors to share complex, personal responses to questions, consider offering private booths and progressive questions for visitor responses. This technique was used in the Slavery in New York exhibition at the New - York Historical Society and continues in the popular StoryCorps project.

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Mashable: Summer of Social Good Conference in NYC

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:02:34 PDT

As we reach the final days of summer and folks head back to school, the Summer of Social Good will have its last hurrah at the Social Good Conference on Friday, August 28 at New York ’s historic 92nd Street Y. (I'm Mashable , a popular social media and technology blog and geek favorite, has caught the generosity meme with its Summer of Social Good , an initiative that raises money for the Humane Society of the United States , World Wildlife Fund , Oxfam , and LIVESTRONG . Mashable has been using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and others to help promote

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Did you know the Bronx Zoo is run by one of the oldest conservation organizations in the United States?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:00:50 PDT

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society, saves wildlife and wild lands. Due to the geocoding in place behind the map, WCS simply needs to add a new map item and it is displayed within the map dynamically. And so is the NY Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo, Central Park Zoo and the Queens Zoo. They do so through careful science, international conservation, education, and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks.

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Guest Post by Rebecca Krause: How Can Artists Inspire Service in Community?

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:33:58 PDT

0160; I worked for the New York Foundation for the Arts for 12 years on a range of arts and technology programs, including a network for artists called Arts Wire. shaping communities with particular focus on plans for 9/11, a new National Day of 0160; A new section Photo by Wally G Note from Beth: If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I was trained as a classical musician ( flute ), then later worked in nonprofit arts organizations in marketing, fundraising, and eventually was an executive director of a small chamber orchestra

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Pick up the Sunday NYT Magazine: It's All About Empowering, Funding & Educating Women

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:09:00 PDT

Hopefully, this Sunday's New York Times Magazine , which is focused on women in the developing world, will convince more people to support organizations and policies that empower and educate all women and girls. Cross-posted from BlogHer.com . women philanthropy education rights New York Time Even though I've had to cut back on a lot of my donations this year, I've continued to sponsor a woman survivor of war each month through Women for Women International . I also celebrated my 40th birthday by setting up a Birthday Wish using the

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Mobile Commons Appoints Anthony Risicato as CEO and Expands Client Rosterd

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:51:57 PDT

New York — August 19th, 2009 — Mobile Commons, Inc., The company has a growing roster of clients, including Credo Mobile, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam International, Andre Agassi Foundation, New York City Department of Public Health, Care USA, National Association of Realtors and most recently, the National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) Sacramento Kings. “As Mobile Commons’ mobile messaging platform provides innovative solutions to marketers and agencies for mobile campaign management a pioneer of easy-to-use technology

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Free Tools for Creating iPhone and iTouch Web Apps

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:55:06 PDT

Over the course of my trip to New York City this weekend, I realized exactly how valuable my iPhone is. Available at Brave New Code , the WPTouch Mobile Theme and Plugin for WordPress takes your standard WordPress blog and makes it look, feel, and behave as an iPhone application with nice transitions. The iPhone is inarguably the most advanced piece of technology in people’s hands these days. It has a GPS to tell you where you are.

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University Presses Cooperate with Bookshare

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:17:00 PDT

We have been very lucky to continue to partner more closely with the publishing industry, as a major segment of educational publishers come on board with Bookshare: the university presses. We recently announced partnerships with The University of Chicago Press, the University of California Press and New York University Press, where they will be sending digital files of their books to Bookshare to be made available to people with print disabilities. As the debate rages about the accessibility of ebooks, it's good to know that most publishers are committed to seeing their works reach people

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Article - WSJ.com-Twitter Doesn't Yet Measure Up For Advisers

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:24:00 PDT

Article - WSJ.com: " NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--For building a financial adviser's business, Twitter might not be all it's tweeted up to be.Droves of financial advisers who flocked to the micro-blogging site as a route to new clients haven't gotten the results they wanted. Others are confronting a host of compliance issues around what advisers can say in such a public arena.'Twitter Twitter seems to be just a ...Tags:

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Community Funded Reporting: Interview with David Cohn of Spot.us

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:50:00 PDT

David is a journalist turned entrepreneur who has written for Wired , Seed , Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times . think at the national level we're always going to have The New York Times , CNN, and The Washington Post to do national investigations, but what we really are threatened to lose in the next year to five years is local investigations and local reporting. It's becoming this new tool that "You cannot run a community if you're not informed. Journalism is really the act of informing communities so that they can make better decisions,

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Managing an Online Reputation

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:43:00 PDT

Therefore, I was excited today to read an excellent article from the New York Times on the same subject ( [link] ). A while back, Steve and I wrote a blog post about brand reputation and how to discover what people are saying about you . Check out the article for even more thoughts about how you manage the task of your brand reputation with social media tools.

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Have Fun Do Good Link Love: Artists and Social Media, Be Bold Podcast, Miss Do-Gooder T-shirts and More!

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:18:00 PDT

I get requests to post about more things than I have time to write a full blog post about, plus I'm going to be blogging on a couple of new blogs soon that I can't cross-post from so I'm going to start experimenting with Have Fun Do Good Link Love lists to share some quick links and short posts with you. The project is a collaboration of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation Shops and the City of Santa Fe Economic Development Division. Hi Have Fun * Do Gooders! Lemme know what you think.

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Compensating for Chaos

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:02:00 PDT

In San Francisco or New York , a good System Administrator can make $70-80k a year at a for-profit. What is the ramp-up time for your new staff when they have to research and guess how everything works on arrival? The general instinct of a new IT person is to rip everything out and install their favorite things. In 2000, after spending 15 years at corporate law firms, I made a personal choice to start working for organizations that promote social good by reducing poverty and protecting our planet . I

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Resource Roundup 7/20

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:47:00 PDT

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned ( New York Times) An interesting summary of insights based on Twitter's use in mass political protests in Moldova and Ira The State of Print and Electronic Publications in Higher Ed (Higher Ed Experts) An informal survey looking at the use of print vs. electronic publications, and the pace of movement from one to the other. (Tip

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The NonProfit Times -Getting Familiar Via Social Media

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:04:00 PDT

The NonProfit Times - The Leading Business Publication For Nonprofit Management: "Sreenivasan led a session on how Web tools are transforming prospect research during the recent Fundraising Day New York , sponsored by the Greater New York Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals." ...Tags: Tags: NPWeb2.0 NPtec

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Nancy Schwartz, Guest Post: Don't Even THINK about Social Media until Your Web Site and E-news Are Working Well

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:00:00 PDT

Courtesy of Nancy Schwartz, publisher of Getting Attention We have a family membership at an upstate New York sculpture center featuring outside exhibitions. Schwartz helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing and communications as the publisher of the Getting Attention blog and e-newsletter (www.gettingattention.org), and as President of New York City-based Nancy Schwartz & Company (NS&C) ...Tags: It's a unique and beautiful place; one we can't visit that often (it's an hour away) but a venue we want to support.

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Marc van Bree, Guest Post: Social media, money and the mission statement

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:00:00 PDT

The speakers kept talking about the “ new business model.” New York To maintain and foster an interest in the enjoyment of music and musical affairs, and to inculcate in its members in the community of New York city and the nation at large, an interest in symphony music and in order to foster such interest and the appreciation of music, among other things to cause the performance of symphonic and other musical performances in the concert and other halls, over the radio, television, by phonographic recordings, Submitted by Marc van Bree, editor of Dutch Perspective During last week’s League of American Orchestras conference, I was following the session on social networking on Twitter.

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Guest Post by Heather McLeod Grant: Reflections on the Personal Democracy Forum

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:00:00 PDT

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the Personal Democracy Forum in New York – a conference about all things digital and democracy – now in its sixth year. The other most compelling presentation of the conference was by Michael Wesch , from Kansas State, who talked about how YouTube and online video is shaping our notions of self and identity, allowing for new possibilities of connection and community. (He’s Submitted by Heather McLeod Grant, senior consultant at the Monitor Institute and a principal contributor to Working Wikily I

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Hey Non Profit Rockstars : How’s your balance?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:28:52 PDT

Emily has served with College Forward in various capacities since she moved to Austin from upstate New York in 2004. Everyone knows a well-balanced diet is essential for a healthy life-style, right? But, what about a well-balanced life? YNPN delved into the mysteries of work-life balance earlier this year and in response to members’ overwhelming interest on this

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Guest Post by Stacey Monk: Dogooders Won’t Change the World (Alone)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:53:09 PDT

The quotes below are taken from a New York Observer story about an incredibly interesting panel that included Ann Curry, Robert Scoble, and other journalists from CNN, FOX and NBC in a discussion about the evolution of journalism in the context of Twitter and social media. starts around 4:35) “[there's] a [ new ] feature that is amazing and fun…A song is being written…Anything we can do to get the community involved because twitter has alot of artists, alot of musicians…anything we can do to come together…2 weeks ago was my first chemo treatment I felt like crap and I sat there

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New on SSIR: First and Foremost Know Your Community

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:03:45 PDT

As profiled in the New York Observer , Danah talked to the data uncovered in her four years of research on new media use in a presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum. Be sure you don’t get caught up only on functionality that’s new and cool; remember why you’re there. My newest post is now up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review. You can read the post and participation in the conversation on the SSIR blog here! The piece is reposted below:

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Socialbrite: Social Tools for Social Change

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:31:22 PDT

The strategists – located in New York , San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and London – are: Nonprofit tech experts team up to help others master ‘social tools for social change’ Eight leading experts in social media and nonprofit technology have joined forces to create Socialbrite.org, a hub that showcases social tools for social change. The site, which serves as a learning and sharing

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24-Hour 12for12k Video-a-Thon

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:48:56 PDT

Special comedy skits including Soul Possum and a New York comedy troupe. Its aim is to raise a minimum of $144,000 for 12 charities over the course of 2009, with a new charity being supported every month. Today, 12for12k is holding a 24-hour video tweetathon to help raise funds for this month’s charity and end the first six months of operations in style! Some of the events include:

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Tips for Using the Web, E-mail and Social Networking to Net Wired Wealthy Donors : By Abny Santicola : FundRaising Success

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:56:00 PDT

Tips for Using the Web, E-mail and Social Networking to Net Wired Wealthy Donors : By Abny Santicola : FundRaising Success: "In the session 'Taking Leadership Online: What's Hype and What Works in Online Fundraising' at Fund Raising Day in New York 2009 presented by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Greater New York Chapter in early June, presenters Nancy Haitch, deputy vice presiden

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First Lady Michelle Obama and United We Serve

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:32:00 PDT

Last fall, I had the opportunity to attend and cover the September 11th Presidential Forum on Service during the Service Nation conference in New York City. This, more than anything, is the key point I want to make today," said the First Lady," that this new Obama Administration doesn't view service as separate from our national priorities, or just something in addition to our national priorities--we have an administration that sees it as the key to achieving our national priorities. "It's been said that our true calling in life is where our heart's greatest gladness meets the world's deepest need." --First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service .

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All for Good and Social Actions conference call transcript and takeaways

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:05:46 PDT

Last Friday, Social Actions hosted a conference call for its 50+ action sources and other partners to discuss the launch of a new platform called All for Good (event description and list of 60+ participants posted here ). Social Actions is excited to use the All for Good API to mirror the volunteer opportunities that have been aggregated through this new platform. The purpose of the call was to: • Provide an overview of the All for Good platform as we understand it; •

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Babies at the Bronx Zoo… A treasure to Support.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:02:00 PDT

On a recent vacation to New York , I was able to really take the time to visit the Bronx Zoo and see all the new baby animals in their glory. If not, the next time you find yourself in New York make it a priority (and be sure to plan your trip on the Web site , which we implemented last year). If you can’t make it to New York , consider telling your friends and family who do live in New York Normally when I visit the zoo it is for client meetings with the good folks at the Wildlife Conservation Society and I don’t get to see much besides the seals and a few deer on the way to their offices. (Yes

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I Made My First Kiva Loan to an American Entrepreneur Today

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:23:00 PDT

to Elizabeth , a beauty salon owner in Queens, New York who needs $6,000 to purchase new chairs, hair dryers, and other items for her salon. I'm excited about this new service first, because I'm sure more American entrepreneurs than ever could use help getting their businesses started, and second, because it makes the program less one-sided--Americans helping people in the developing world--to people helping people, wherever they live. Today I used Kiva.org to loan $25.00 This is the fourth loan I've made to an entrepreneur using Kiva, but the first one to an entrepreneur

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Help Us Redesign the NTEN Web Site

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:28:26 PDT

lost all your money on a street corner in New York City, trying to follow the Queen. Flickr Photo: zaklee Our web site is over two years old, and the botox just isn't hiding the cracks cracks anymore. Fortunately, the good folks at Beaconfire are helping us out with a professional

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Wendy Sternberg Leaves Her Medical Career to Heal the World

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:42:04 PDT

The group later travelled to Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. People often become doctors because they want to heal people, and by extension, heal the world. Wendy Sternberg left her successful internal medicine practice in Evanston Illinois because she decided she could better heal the world through Genesis at the Crossroads (GATC), an organization she founded. GATC mission “is to

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Open Source Donor Management Systems: Know Your Options

Thu, 28 May 2009 08:10:03 PDT

Fund for the City of New York A There’s community support for the basic product, or The Fund for the City of New York offers a setup and support package. Orange Eric Leland, Five Paths , Laura Quinn, Idealware , Chris Bernard, italics media Donors Donors are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations.

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URL shorteners: how to stay out of trouble

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:15:48 PDT

From a shortened url, you can’t tell whether the destination is the New York Times, a non-profit, a personal blog, or something far less reputable. Recently, there’s been a proliferation of url shortening services, driven largely by Twitter’s 140 character limit and the need to keep links as short as possible to fit in your tweets. They are run on websites with names like bit.ly

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Meet the Idealware Bloggers Part 4: Eric Leland

Wed, 20 May 2009 14:40:00 PDT

Based in New York he had to travel down to DC repeatedly to fix the computer handling their email list so he jumped in to figure out why it was having so many problems. Putting 2 and 2 together, Eric saw that email and online mattered more to the organization than they knew and became inspired about finding out how to work with new technologies. On Blogging Having started a blog years ago that Another in the Meet the Bloggers series, this one from a very fun interview with Eric Leland. As in all of the interviews, time was too short and I look forward to having more time

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Untitled Document

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:19:00 PDT

Press ReleaseUntitled Document: " NEW YORK , May 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Foundation Center has announced that Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) will serve as the exclusive beta site for its new mapping tool, 'Philanthropy In/Sight(tm),' leading up to the product's release later this spring. During this soft-launch period, staff at approximately 350 GEO member organizations wil

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A “Starbucks Locator” for the Rest of Us

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:49:01 PDT

86 Chambers St, New York NY 10007","The closest Mobile Commons office is at 86 Chambers St, New York NY 10007" "100 A couple years ago, Starbucks rolled out a popular SMS application. Users could text their zip code to MYSBUX and they would get back the closest Starbucks location. Google has an SMS service that lets you text in to GOOGLE and get back weather,

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A “Starbucks Locator” for the Rest of Us

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:49:01 PDT

AOL and Philanthropy Project Launch Philanthropy Feature on AOL News

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:59:00 PDT

PRESS RELEASEAOL and Philanthropy Project Launch Philanthropy Feature on AOL News: " NEW YORK --(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL’s MediaGlow announced a new feature on AOL News that provides information and news about philanthropic efforts across America, as well as the latest scientific information and advice about the benefits of living a philanthropic lifestyle. The feature, [lin

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Self-Identification and Status Updates: Personal Entrypoints to Museum Experiences

Thu, 14 May 2009 07:57:00 PDT

Consider, for example, the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in New York City. I've become convinced that successful paths to participation in museums start with self-identification. If you want visitors to share stories or personal expression in your institution, you need to respect them as individuals who have something of value to contribute. The easiest way to do that is to acknowledge their

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Location, Location, Location

Tue, 12 May 2009 15:11:28 PDT

Every phone & profile in our database is now associated with a geographical location and location is added for all new users. (Note: text everyone within 25 miles of New York City) And while we were at it, we also created some useful new group functionality for our advanced users: Over the past few months, we’ve slowly been incorporating location information to all parts of the Mobile Commons application. Note: we aren’t tracking users in real-time; just their address).

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Location, Location, Location

Tue, 12 May 2009 15:11:28 PDT

Reduce Travel with Online Collaboration

Tue, 12 May 2009 14:22:30 PDT

For example, for every short-haul round trip on an airplane (for example, New York to Chicago or Frankfurt to London) you don't take, you'll save the environment around one half of a metric ton of CO2 . This is our last week in our TeleGreen Your Work travel reduction campaign so if you haven't done so already, we hope that you’ll have a look at our 10 technology tips to help you reduce your need to travel, and try out some of the travel reduction tools we've collected. In this blog post I'll cover ways you can increase online collaboration to reduce travel and work

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Target Facebook Challenge: Ten Large Charities Compete for Votes To Divide the $3 Million Pot

Sun, 10 May 2009 20:31:06 PDT

We've seen a number of reiterations, from those that allow anyone nonprofit to enter to those that are for a select group of participants. Today's New York Times article by Stephanie Strom describes some of the most recent online contests, including the Case Foundation ’s Giving Challenge, a contest conducted through Causes on While I was offline today enjoying Mother's Day and the beautiful weather (as much as I could with seasonal allergies), Target launched its version of an online contest. It's called Bullseye Gives, a special Facebook page inviting folks to decide

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NTC Day of Service 2010 As Pizza By The Slice

Tue, 05 May 2009 15:26:52 PDT

Let me explain. Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky , keynote speaker at NTEN's Nonprfit Technology Conference told many inspiring stories and offered pithy quotes (captured expertly by Chad Norman ) One story that stuck in mine came when he explained how moving to New York York City from the midwest changed his perspective, because the population was big enough that you could sell pizza by the slice. Photo by Joel Zimmer The annual Day of Service at the NTEN NTC Conference has been a tradition since 2000. A group of nonprofit techies share their time and

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SSIR Post: Swine Flu or Why Local Organizations Matter

Tue, 05 May 2009 15:06:00 PDT

I have a new blog post up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog. Check it out here! In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times , David Brooks compared the global response vs localized response to the outbreak. New messages, campaigns, and strategies can be tested, deployed, and analyzed in separate groups. The “Swine Flu” scare was fun, wasn’t it? No, it really wasn’t; but it did give most of the world a chance to react in real-time to what could have been much worse.

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Recap of Unite for Sight '09 Global Health Conference, and Innovative Open Health Tools

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:12:40 PDT

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof encouraged us to remember how critical it is to empower women and girls in developing countries. Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 6th annual global health conference sponsored by a dynamic young group called Unite for Site at Yale University. I spoke on a panel on Saturday afternoon and discussed internet technologies and trends in global health, including examples in data visualization, social networking, community development, and transparency.

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Washington Post Piece on Facebook Causes Prompts More Dissing and Some Brilliant Reflections

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:29:37 PDT

Post or New York Times (not to mention CNN, the Philanthropy Journal, and Photo by Matt Callow There is more analysis and reaction to the Washington Post piece two days ago that trashed the Facebook Causes application and caused quite a lot of commentary and reactions from those of us work with nonprofits. I summarized the article and reactions in my post " Hey Washington Post - Dollars Per Donor Is The Wrong Way to Measure Success ." The Tech Hermit blogger,

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Latest Cloud Forecast from McKinsey - Takeaways for Nonprofits?

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:18:38 PDT

Various media outlets such as the New York Times , Forbes , and Ars Technica are reporting that McKinsey; along with The Uptime Institute, a data center consulting group; released a report this week on the value (and hype) of cloud usage, cloud computing, and cloud services. Although the report is geared towards large enterprises and their potential ROI and TCO, I think there are some takeaways for the nonprofit sector as well, especially small and medium organizations: Although nonprofits have been keen to adopt cloud services such as Google Apps and Salesforce, it may

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More Arcs adopting Social Media

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:39:02 PDT

AHRC New York City @AHRCNYC Here is a list of chapters that I’ve come across today that are using Twitter . These are in addition to the Arc Hamilton and The Albany Arc , which I have mentioned previously. The Arc of the US @TheArcUS

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How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Upload Upload Upload

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:55:39 PDT

guy gets into a cab in New York City and asks the cab driver, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Does represent a possible new business model in the light of crumbling arts nonprofits ? That's an old joke from my music school days. A and the cab driver replies, "practice, practice, practice." And

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See3 Welcomes Shirley Sexton as Director, Interactive Marketing and Fundraising

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:38:04 PDT

Leading provider of new media services to nonprofit community adds experienced online fundraiser and strategist to manage expanded service offering. Her direct mail portfolio includes work for Highlights Magazine, The New York Times and AOL. See3 Communications Names Shirley Sexton Director, Interactive Marketing and Fundraising Leading Chicago – April 3, 2009 – Continuing its growth as a national provider of interactive services to the nonprofit and cause community, See3 Communications proudly announces the addition of Shirley Sexton to its team as Director, Interactive

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What Are Your Best Tips for Organizing or Facilitating a Charity 2.0 Event?

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 21:45:34 PDT

Flickr Photo by DaveFishernc Charity Balls, Dinner Dances, Black Tie Charity Events, and other parties where people donate money to a charity to have fun together are nothing new . While initially driven by "free agent" fundraisers (those not on the organization's board or staff, but who are fans and social media users), we'll begin to see more and more as nonprofits adopt social media as part of their fundraising tool box. (From an article in the New York Times dated April, 1896 about the Hackensack Hospital's Charity Ball) Take a look at the web site of any well-established nonprofit organization , and you'll probably see past invitations to these types of events or one for an upcoming event We're seeing the rise of social media to promote, organize, and in some cases hold the actual charity event itself.

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2009 NTC Preview: Brian Rowe on Fair Use and User Generated Content

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:30:11 PDT

Can you edit the videos your supporters created for your video contest into something entirely new? How much of the New York Times technology blog can you quote on your own site? The When someone posts a positive comment on your blog, can you use it in your fundraising materials? The world of technology is changing so quickly, the laws that govern intellectual property can barely keep up.

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Things We Like (March 2009)

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:59:39 PDT

The New York Times continues to produce great examples of interactive maps. A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog . Here's one visualizing the recession . As wine enthusiasts, we hate

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Can Social Media for Social Change Reinvent Charity Work? Maybe! | The New York Observer

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:33:00 PDT

The New York Observer: "Mr. Can Social Media for Social Change Reinvent Charity Work? Maybe! | Knell, MTV’s senior manager of social media product development--along with Gradon Tripp, who works in business development for online donation company Firstgiving, and Meg Fowler, a Vancouver-based writer--had organized a virtual “pajama party” for their charity organization, Social Media for Socia

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Becoming Generous Thieves: Notes from the Museums in Conversation Keynote

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:18:00 PDT

I learned to cultivate creative greed while working on Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum, where I was lucky to be working on a project that was so new to us that we didn't have any pre-established models or structures for doing it. Two of my favorite examples of museums that found strategic ways to be generous are COSI in Columbus, OH, and the Wild Center in the Adirondacks of New York . On Monday, I gave the keynote at the Museums in Conversation conference in Tarrytown, NY. It happened at 7:45 in the morning, and I know that many of you were not there,

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10 Ideas for Firefox Extensions That Could Change the World!

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:58:34 PDT

For example, what if you typed: "volunteer: homeless New York " and got directed to the search results page on search.socialactions.com for the keywords 'homeless' and ' New York ' for only the Volunteer action type, ie this URL: [link] - Peter Deitz What would a Firefox Extension look like that helped you make a difference as you browsed the web? Below are 10 ideas – All potential submissions for Social Actions’ Change the Web Challenge !

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Online Giving Smackdown :: A Very Special Baudcast

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:18:00 PDT

The study is packed with insightful nuggets, but one trend is capturing everyone's attention (including The New York Times ): First time online donors are often migrating to other channels, like direct mail. When Target Analytics released its 2008 donor Centrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis , the sector responded with keen interest. Yikes!

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A Kiva.org for Native American Entrepreneurs?

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:36:00 PDT

Flipping through the Sunday New York Times earlier this month, I noticed a public service announcement (left) for the American Indian College Fund , with the slogan, "Think Indian: To think Indian is to save a plant that can save a people." In April, PBS will air a new mini-series, We Shall Remain , about U.S. "Our tribal colleges and universities teach sustainability in everything they do, proving American Indians have long been ahead of the curve. This is what we call 'Thinking Indian.'

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Reactions to the 2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:03:00 PDT

Study Shows First-Time Online Donors Often Do Not Return Stephanie Strom — The New York Times "The findings suggest that while the Internet can be a valuable fund-raising tool for charities, particularly in soliciting gifts after disasters like Hurricane Katrina, it is not a replacement for direct mail or other forms of fund-raising." Truths & Myths About Online Donors Roger Craver — The Agitator "Effective online fundraising clearly goes beyond technique — such as focusing on “hits” and “open rates” — and must absolutely involve integrating this new channel

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Daily News, Daily Blues

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:25:00 PDT

Back in the summer of '06, The Economist was already talking about the decline of print, and predicting that the future would see the closing of most local papers, and a new mix that consisted of "an elite group of serious newspapers available everywhere online, independent journalism backed by charities, thousands of fired-up bloggers and well-informed citizen journalists..." The problem of course is the collapse of the traditional business model of the newspaper . As essay by new -media guru Clay Shirky points out, this is no longer the case, because "...the In the last few months, it seems that at every social gathering I attend, the conversation gets around to "Newspapers - what's going to happen to them?"

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Lessons from SXSW

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:36:29 PDT

And the New York Times does the same with their Most Emailed lists. (SXSW And we’re back! After 5 jam-packed days at SXSW Interactive in Austin, the Beaconfire contingent is back in the office, catching up on email and trying to process everything we saw and learned. In my case, what I learned was incredibly diverse - from the Beacon lounge to the panels to late-night conversations, from case studies to philosophical musings.

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2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:03:00 PDT

The report is featured in today's edition of The New York Times and covers some of its many findings. Through these discussions, and aggregating their giving data, an updated picture of integrated fundraising is presented in the new report. Over the past few years, online giving has become an increasingly significant source of new donor acquisition. Target Analytics , a Blackbaud Company, has released the 2008 donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis . This is a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2006 report and provides insights into the online

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2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:00:00 PDT

The report is featured in today's edition of The New York Times and covers some of its many findings. Target Analytics , a Blackbaud Company, has released the 2008 donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis . This is a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2006 report and provides insights into the online and offline trends of donors. Over

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Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:07:00 PDT

According to the company, they had a record 107 books on the New York Times bestseller list in 2008, with 35 of them ranked #1. Bookshare looks for publishers to partner with us to make books more available to people with disabilities. It's very exciting that we can announce that one of the largest book groups in the United States has just made the commitment: Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare To Make Thousands of Books Available to People with Print Disabilities . Hachette Book Group publishes under quite a number of famous imprints, such as Little Brown and Company

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Coming to a Public School Near You: Hopefully, You as a Volunteer

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:34:00 PDT

Today, 826 has chapters in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Michigan, and Boston. You can help fund everything from Gardening Club Supplies in Brooklyn, to a computer for a classroom in Alabama, or new recess equipment for a school in Indiana. Tuesday was my first day volunteering with the "reading partners" program at my neighborhood public elementary school. Every week I get to go in and read with the same two children for a half an hour each in the school library.

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Google Voice: A New Tool For Nonprofits But Not So Great for Community Voicemail

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:30:21 PDT

the past, I was responsible for handling the technical side of Community Voicemail for New York City. When it was bought out by Google, Grandcentral unfortunately stopped giving out new accounts. In 2006, the writing was on the wall and I counseled the Coalition to shut down the New York CVM service and we did. Launched today, Google Voice is the newest update to Grandcentral , a service I’ve used since near its inception . It generates a universal phone number that ties together various services such as all your other phone numbers, voicemail, VOIP,

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Great Unconference Sessions at FreeTech (ETech) Today

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:04:31 PDT

as new things get posted. 05 to 1:55 PM “Making and Sharing: Building New Hacker Spaces” ( Rose White , City University of New York – Graduate Center / NYC Resistor) Feeling poor since you tightened your startup's belt last quarter? There's a GREAT set of free, community-scheduled sessions for today’s FreeTech unconference at ETech 2009 , being held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.

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Bryant Terry: Eco-chef, Food Justice Activist, Author of Vegan Soul Kitchen

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:42:00 PDT

I chatted with Bryant in early February about his new cookbook, food justice, how to eat cheaply in tough economic times, and course, the yumminess of food! You have a new book coming out, Vegan Soul Kitchen . At the end of 2008, I initiated a new project called the Grow. "I think, in the organizing, and in the activism what gets lost so often is what we're working for. What we want is for all people to have some delicious, amazing, banging food!" Bryant Terry is an eco-chef, food justice activist, and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American

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The Conversation Graph: The Social Life of A Blog Post

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:28:42 PDT

This diagram, credited to the “ New York Times via Ed Philp ,” (original source ) illustrates Many of us are familiar with the term " Social Graph " defined as the global mapping of everybody and how they're related. The other day of I saw the term "Conversation Graph" in a title on a post by Brian Solis . The origin of this phrase was a blog post

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The Struggle for Book Access: Amazon (Blog Post #2)

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:39:00 PDT

in his New York Times essay Kindle Swindle? For example, when Google went from being very accessible to starting to release inaccessible features of new products, numerous people mentioned it to them and within a year Google was obviously fixing the problems. Why You Shouldn't Depend on a For-Profit Business to Defend Your Civil Rights The Kindle2 is a hot topic in the disability field right now. Many print-disabled people (people who are blind, severely dyslexic or a have a physical disability that keeps them from reading regular print books) see electronic books as

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Van Jones Will be Green Advisor to Obama

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:10:00 PDT

According to this AP article , and this New York Times article, Van Jones will be a green jobs adviser for the Obama administration. Wahoo! Jones is the author of The Green Collar Economy and Founder of the Oakland-based, Green for All . I had the opportunity to interview Van in the spring of 2007 as he was leaving the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights , which he co-founded, to start Green for All.

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Deliberately Unsustainable Business Models

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:46:00 PDT

I once asked Eric Siegel, the Director of the New York Hall of Science, why museums are rarely innovative shining stars on the cutting edge of culture. He commented that as non-profits, museums are built to survive, not to succeed. Unlike startups and rock stars, museums aren't structured to shoot for the moon and burn up trying. They're

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How To: Put Technology to Use (February 2009)

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:07:35 PST

Your guide to the resources that will help you put technology to work for your cause. Find an NPTech Job An investment banker recently incensed the nonprofit community by asking the New York Times, "If you just take your base home, the question becomes, why not just work at a nonprofit from 8 to 4 instead of a bank where you’re expected to work weekends and every night till 10 or 11?" Setting aside the whole greed-as-motivation issue that got us into this mess in the first place, it's a bad assumption because it's becoming harder and harder to land a job at a nonprofit . So, what should you do?

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IgniteNYC on 2/23/2009

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:15:47 PST

ED will present on the stage at an IgniteNYC and just royally geeks out over their cool heatmap overlay over metropolitan New York . Please click on the thumbnails below to get the full picture. I

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New Directions at Google.org

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:57:03 PST

The New York Times reports that Larry Brilliant will be stepping down as executive director of Google.org and taking on the role of chief philanthropy evangelist at Google. Brilliant explains the move in a blog post and gives some clues about the new direction that Google's philanthropy department will be taking. "During Some people are cynical: as the New York Times article quot;During our review it became clear that while we have been able to support some remarkable non-profit organizations over the past three years, our greatest impact has come when we've attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and information."

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Blackbaud Delivers - Vancouver

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:15:00 PST

In 2009, Blackbaud Delivers is hitting the road and the Web with some brand new speakers and topics. New York , NY | 03/11/09 The Right Message, The Right People, The Right Time: Making the Most of Email Marketing Allison Van Diest, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Blackbaud I'm back in Vancouver , one of my favorite cities, for the Blackbaud Delivers series. I'm doing a free half-day session on changes and trends in online fundraising.

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1stfans: An Audience-Specific Membership Program at the Brooklyn Museum

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:01:00 PST

What about the families who show up on your free days religiously or the ones blogging about your new artifacts? 1stfans is a new kind of membership launched on January 3, 2009 that combines in-person meetups, private groups on Facebook and Flickr, and a private Twitter feed featuring work by original artists (for more background, check out Will and Shelley's blog posts and videos ). You can read our thoughts (and lots of good comments from detractors and 1stfans The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings.

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Businessweek Names Four Social Media Innovators for 2009: Scott Monty, Noah Brier, Eric Brown and Me!

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:27:00 PST

I was selected as "eyes to the world." The profile is here . I was asked to do a brief video talking about what I thought the next innovation on the web is - you can see here where I talked about how these new tools are allowing people to come together and do things for charities out of love at a grand scale, not just money. 1) Toolmasters: Imaginative techies whose schemes and applications open new doors and lead to insights. BusinessWeek innovation blog reached out to its readers on Facebook, Twitter, and its blog asking for suggestions for social media innovators for 2009.

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6 Ways to Use the Web to Find a Nonprofit Job

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:07:00 PST

One of today's New York Times' headlines is, Economy Shed 598,000 Jobs in January . If you can't afford to attend an event or conference, see if they'll let you volunteer in exchange for a reduced fee. Find Volunteer Opportunities Volunteering for a nonprofit is not only a chance to make a connection with a group you would eventually like to work for, it can also teach you new skills, and help you determine if working for a nonprofit is a fit for you. Yikes! If you're one of the folks looking for a job with a nonprofit right now, here are some ways to use the

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Buy a Song, Support a Cause

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:54:00 PST

For each (free) download of Peter Buffett's Christmas album, Star of Wonder , Amie Street and The Robin Hood Foundation will donate enough money to feed 15 people through The Food Bank of New York . Remember during Christmas 1984 when everyone got the 45, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" recorded by Band Aid?

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From Ashton Kutcher to Soup: Super Bowl Giving

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:33:00 PST

The New York Times article, Is Star Power Enough to Sell Beer in Hard Times? It never hurts to organize a fundraising campaign around an event, even the Super Bowl . I've compiled some Super Bowl fundraiser ideas, celebrity events, and corporate cause marketing campaigns below. The Following the Equator blog has several ideas for Super Bowl Fundraisers including raffling off a

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Mobile Tech Barcamp In New York!

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:34:16 PST

one-day event on Saturday, 21 February 2009 in New York /Hunter College’s ‘ Black Box ‘ If you’re in the NYC area, please visit Mobile Tech For Social Change NewYork . It’s a $25 Barcamp over in Manhattan: Event details

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NPower Names New CEO

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:30:43 PST

NPower Logo NPower , the national network of nonprofit technology support organizations, announced a new CEO on Friday. Stephanie Stephanie Cuskley will not only serve as the CEO of the national network, but will also be Executive Director of the New York NPower organization. We We want to give a big welcome to Stephanie and send our best wishes to the NPower network, long-time members and supporters of NTEN and important contributors to the nonprofit technology community. You

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Gobs and Gobs of Data: Strategies for Visualizing and Sharing Policy Content

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:32:31 PST

Compare that to New York City, which posts city agency information within 10 days of their publication, as PDFs. Other Kurt Voelker, Forum One Communications Policy-oriented Policy-oriented organizations have long produced dizzying amounts of statistical content. In the past, rows and rows of data would die a quick death in thick policy reports or inscrutable spreadsheets.

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Mashable, ProgrammableWeb, and Osocio: New Sponsors for Social Actions' Change the Web Challenge

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:19:30 PST

Now Peter, Romina, and I are excited to announce three new media sponsors - with more stepping up soon. If your nonprofit, foundation or company is interested in becoming an official or media sponsor, please contact Peter Deitz,Social Actions' Founder/Executive Director peter@socialactions.com New Confirmed Media Sponsors : Mashable Expo in New York . This week has been full of super exciting news for Social Actions' Change the Web Challenge . On Tuesday, we announced that NetSquared will host the Change the Web Challenge .

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Inaugural Video Driving Internet Traffic Record

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:07:45 PST

Akamai, which helps companies meet demand for their online offerings, worked with media companies like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Viacom to stream live video. Internet traffic hit a record peak on Tuesday as millions of people around the world sought to watch and read about the inauguration of President Obama. The web and TV are coming together and we saw evidence of that yesterday.

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SocComm - New York on February 10

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:34:08 PST

On February 10th 2009 at the 3LD Art and Technology Center in New York City, social media guru Jeff Pulver is producing SocComm - The Social Communications Summit. Register and reserve your seat at birth of a new industry. 11:20 - 11:40 - (M) Jeff Jarvis, Associate Professor and Director of the Interactive Journalism program at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. At SocComm, they will explore the state of “Social Communications”, where things are headed in the future and where the money is today and will be tomorrow.

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Win a Trip to Report for the NYT with Nicholas Kristof

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:55:00 PST

In today's Sunday New York Times article , Win a Trip You Won't Forget , two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof , writes, "[I]f you want to save the world, you first must understand it." It's this belief that prompted Kristof to create his Win-a-Trip contest for graduate and undergraduate students at American universities. You can watch Kristof's video reports at www.youtube.com/NicholasKristof student journalism poverty New York Times Nicholas Kristo The winner will go on an international reporting trip with him to focus attention on the problems of global poverty, and its solutions.

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I'll Text for Food

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:28:41 PST

They are currently running a comments for food donation campaign for New York City Food Pantries . Photo by Joi No, I'm not talking about texting in your take out order. I'm taking about No Kid Hungry Text Donation and Canned Food Campaign just launched by Share Our Strength. Hunger is a serious issue in America, especially in these hard times.

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How Do You Browse By Category Blog Content from NpTech Bloggers?

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:46:28 PST

Places Cambodia America New York DC Boston More >> I have a confession. I have many years of blog content. It is hard for me to find posts because I have too many categories categories (over 200) and an idiosyncratic

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How Many Donor Databases Are There?

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:31:55 PST

the Fund for the City of New York I thought it might be useful to compile a list of all of the commercial donor databases I’m aware of. This list came from my head, my bookmarks, and lists compiled by NTEN and Idealware for their donor management software surveys (and I’m not certain all of these are actually donor databases). It does not include custom systems, of which there are many. I am not

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December 2008: Most Popular Cause-Related Search Terms

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:08:40 PST

new orleans (10) new york (2) Social Actions is committed to making freely available the statistics we generate on the flows of philanthropic activity. One indicator of popular action areas is the search terms that people use to find opportunities to make a difference. Below are the most popular search terms for December 2008.

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December 2008: Most Popular Cause-Related Search Terms

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:08:40 PST

The Information Overload Calculator

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:12:37 PST

This was reported on an article in the New York Times last June and the implications summarized here and here ) The paper raises the question, "Is information overload too many e-mails, too many interruptions, too many tasks or much stress?" Photo by Breakmould Steve Rubel has a post pointing to an " Information Overload Calculator " from the research firm Basex that is estimating that information overload costs the U.S. economy $900 billion

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Encouraging Volunteerism: An Interview with Ruthanne Feinberg

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:21:00 PST

I'm embarrassed for how little I've done since I've moved to New York , "I think, especially now, there is so much talent out there that is sitting idle. . . . Cross-posted from The Extraordinaries , on-demand volunteering by mobile phone. Ruthanne Feinberg is a busy woman. In addition to being Managing Director, Head of

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Hey Baby, Want to See My Artifact?

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:01:00 PST

In this way, online dating forms new relationships rather than virtually extending those that already exist. For decades, the New York Review of Books personals section has been the place for Ivy League singles. In the UK, Penguin Books has teamed up with Match.com to offer a book-focused specialty dating site , and in the Netherlands, new media artists can find a "muse, flatmate, or one-night adventure" on the Mediamatic dating site . I've been thinking about online dating recently. No, not because my partner refuses to wash his hair.

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Guest Post: An ARG at the Smithsonian--A Success?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:08:00 PST

The Smithsonian American Art Museum originally decided to create and implement an ARG with three goals in mind: to get people talking about our museum, to attract a new audience, and to encourage discovery around our collections. wish more visits could be this uniquely satisfying and multifaceted,” and “It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, and turned an already interesting museum into an exciting place of wonder, where every question led to another new discovery.” This guest post was written by Georgina Bath Goodlander, the Interpretative Programs Manger for the Luce Foundation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:22:49 PST

Though the numbers aren't in, it must be likely be higher in 2008 as this article by David Cay Johnston in the New York Times points out. Later today, our family will sit down for a lovely Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings. But many other people across America won't have that luxury. According to the Food Research and

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Kids and Philanthropy: Teaching Your Children To Be Charitable

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:10:42 PST

And while video games like Zoo Tycoon or online games can teach them all sorts of skills that will need to be successful adults (and this has been validated recently by a MacArthur Foundation funded study ,) I was excited to discover this wonderful list of games for change . This new genre of video games are about solving real world problems such as environment, global hunger, poverty and disease. The class of 27 students have been collecting pennies and donated $100 to Ohio Nature Education, a nonprofit offering environmental education programs, and secured $150 for the organization.

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Welcome to Our New Board Members!

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:30:13 PST

national headquarters of the American Lung Association in New York . His capacities at the national level starting in 1987 and moved to New York York in 1992. volunteer trainer at New York City's Support Center for Nonprofit Management. The best part of working at NTEN is you: the great people in our community. I

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To Dubai on an Emirates Airbus 380

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:53:00 PST

It was easier to say yes than usual: I'd never been to Dubai or the region, and the government of Dubai and Emirates airline offered to fly me there business class! I was stunned when I found out in New York that the plane I was boarding was the new Airbus A380, the massive, double-decker airliner. My current business trip started by heading for Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I

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A Charitable Giving Stimulus Package?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:45:04 PST

Yesterday's New York Times published the annual giving section with articles by David Cay Johnston , Joe Nocera and And while some businesses are cutting back in product donations, Payless just announced that it is donating $1 Million in new shoes to American families in need. It's hard times and many nonprofits are and will experience the pain of tightening budgets and perhaps worse. Take for the example the saga that has unfolded over at Kjerstin Erickison's blog about her organization, FORGE .

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Yes Men> War Ends Proclamined from the NYTimes. Network Distribution

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:53:20 PST

If, that is, they happened to read a "special edition" of today's New York Times. Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes International, National, New York , and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars November 12, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SPECIAL TIMES EDITION BLANKETS U.S.

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Bracing for Lean Times Ahead

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:20:52 PST

If anything you need to redouble your efforts at fundraising, begin to build new constituents online and be more aggressive in getting your entire existing constituency to become part of your development team by making it easy for them to recruit and solicit their friends. Link [ New York Times In today’s dead tree edition of the NY Times, there is a special section called Giving, all about philanthropy. The lead story is about the economic downturn and some conjecture about what kind of hit the philanthropy sector will take. …Patrick M.

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Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact, Episode #3

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:48:00 PST

Also, check out the Be Bold Resources page , and the New York Times' Social Impact Career Center, created in partnership with Echoing Green. The third episode of Echoing Green's Be Bold Podcast , that I host, is up. The show features a discussion of two career related questions with Lara Galinsky, author of Be Bold: Create A Career with Impact . The questions are: 1.

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Dreamforce 2008 post-mortem - back to the cheap seats

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:36:23 PST

Om Malik has a bigger picture view of the new announcements here . finally got to meet folks from the Nonprofit Salesforce NPSF Google group that I had gotten to know online, reconnected with friends from the Philadelphia and New York user group communities and with people I met at NTEN’s NTC last year. I had never been to a large, high-priced business conference like Dreamforce before, much less spoken at one. Oh, the details!

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The Philanthropic Web, Questions and Answers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:04:14 PST

And if we succeed in that, then maybe SF Gate or New York Times would [say] there isn’t as much value in our content any more because it doesn’t have those calls to action. How do you get to people who are reading the New York Times who aren’t thinking, while they’re surfing the web, how do I make a change in my community? Lloyd And that will open them to a whole new world of social On October 20, Social Actions hosted a lunch for partners in the Bay Area. Below is the video and transcription of the question and answer session that followed Peter Deitz's presentation.

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Marketing & Online Communities Conference - Tribeca / NYC - Live Twittering

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:32:35 PST

Some great discussions going on today at our event " Marketing & Online Communities " Conference here in New York . (Tag Tag MOC2008) More insights later but here is live feed of Twitter posts via Twemes (and see full set of comments on Twemes/MOC2008

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Causewired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:41:14 PST

...Tags: Last January , while I in the final days of fundraising for the Sharing Foundation as part of the America's Giving Challenge I received an email from Tom Watson asking me if I would come to New York and spend the day being interviewed for a book he was writing on raising money or taking action online using social networking tools. 0160; It is a very well written and researched look at how these tools have been are being leveraged for social change in way that is new and will continue have major implications. 0160; I told him I was really focused on the fundraising goal and I agreed to answer some questions via email.

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Things We Like (October 2008)

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:43:54 PST

The New York Times has a cool visualization of how people around the world spend their money . A monthly roundup of our favorite (zombie-related) nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog . Zombie Harmony : For all your zombie dating needs.

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Colombiaâ€™s â€œFalse Positivesâ€�

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:22:00 PDT

The ugly truth is out, and it is being picked up by international media that can hardly be accused of cozying up to the guerrilla, such as the New York Times. Guest blog from Beatriz, one of Benetech's human rights team members in Colombia. We Colombians are a resilient breed, accustomed to waking up to all kinds of distressing news and still somehow managing to go about our daily business.

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Developing a Social Media Plan: Lessons from Election 2008

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:44:29 PDT

Voter registration is headed for new highs across the nation -- with a firestorm of newly registered voters under the age of thirty. Starting with the new (ish) generation of interactive websites and blogs, we can observe how mainstream and alternative organizations serve up news, critical analysis, community building and civic engagement. According to the New Voter's Project , texting increased young voter turn out by 4.6% Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV Center for Media and Democracy Election Election 2008 is remarkable for so many reasons.

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If No One Sees It, Is It A Cause Worth Donating To?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:48:23 PDT

Link [ New York Times In the Times yesterday is a story with the title “ If No One Sees It, Is It An Invention ?” 8221; It’s about an inventor who, instead of writing a paper seen by a few tens of people in a journal instead made YouTube videos and became a huge sensation. These videos led him to all kinds of job offers and tremendous recognition.

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Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact, Episode #2

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:28:00 PDT

As I mentioned last week, I've started hosting a new podcast produced by Echoing Green , the Be Bold Podcast . You can send in your questions to be answered on the Be Bold Podcast to bebold@echoinggreen.org Also, be sure to also check out the Be Bold Resources page , and the New York Times' Social Impact Career Center, created in partnership with Echoing Green. career social entrepreneur nonprofit podcast advice ...Tags: This week's show features a discussion of two career related questions with Lara Galinsky, author of Be Bold: Create A Career with Impact .

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txt-ing out the vote

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:01:48 PDT

came here to New York from the Boston area where I worked as a consultant to organizations including ActBlue, The Public Radio Exchange, and MoveOn. Credo Wireless , an early Mobile Commons customer, in partnership with the Student PIRGS New Voters Project and the University of Notre Dame just released a study testing txt messaging as a voter turnout tool. First of all, I would like to introduce myself; I’m Nathan Woodhull. I

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Do Something Now Challenge: Gen Y + Mobile + Volunteering + Community

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:57:00 PDT

1000 Recruits: 20 SWAG Sets, 20 ecobags, 20 t-shirts, a $100 pizza party, and 2 plane tickets to New York City for Do Something Boot Camp . For more information, go to www.dosomething.org/challenge Hat tip to Creativity in Public Relations for their post Volunteering Via Mobile: Dialing Up New Ways To Help. Cross-posted from The Extraordinaries blog . vounteer mobile cell Millennials Generation The Millennials, or Generation Y, want to make a difference. As Tactical Philanthropy's post, Millennials as Social Citizens, observes, " USA Today

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Jenny Dirksen Dishes on Cause Marketing in Restaurants

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:24:00 PDT

Union Square Hospitality Group and her role in shaping the high-stakes game of cause marketing in New York City and across the countr Jenny Dirksen works for illustrious NYC restaurateur Danny Meyer, who owns Tabla , Gramercy Tavern , Union Square CafÃ© and several other of Manhattan's finest eateries. But Jenny is not a chef, waitress, hostess or bartender.

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How Can Changebloggers Make a Greater Impact Online and Offline?

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:38:00 PDT

In addition to making an impact online, I'd like to see changebloggers meeting offline as well. Members of the Changeblogger Network have started meeting face-to-face in New York , Washington, DC and Philadelphia . Changeblogger New York organizer, Naomi Hirabayashi, posted about their recent meetup on Idealist.org: Calling All Changemakers and Changebloggers in NYC . October 15th was Blog Action Day , a day for bloggers, podcasters and vloggers to write about and raise awareness about an issue. The theme for this year was poverty.

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Meet Ben Rigby, Author of "Mobilizing Generation 2.0"

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:21:01 PDT

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama's campaign has purchased virtual billboards in a video game . We wonder if they've read Ben Rigby's new book, Mobilizing Generation 2.0: It describes in a clear manner how to leverage new media -- blogs, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, mobile phones, wikis, online maps, and virtual worlds -- to reach the youth audience. Of That's one way to reach the kids! A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0

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An Interview with Rebecca Corliss: A Millenial Who Wants to Change the World

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:05:24 PDT

Rebecca Corliss Today, I attended the New Marketing Summit and I was struck by a panel called " Millenial Marketing Moves " that featured four millenials talking about how to market to this segment. I am working as a consultant and I'm also doing work with Social Media for Social Change , a new nonprofit. 2. We're going to have our event in New York City. Rebecca Corliss , a marketing consultant, told everyone, "I want to change the world," shared a story about how she used social media to raise over $20,000 for Jane Doe, Inc , domestic violence victims - for Social Media for Social Change .

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Beijing School for the Blind

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:23:00 PDT

The Beijing School for the Blind dates back to the 19th century, back in the days where the colonial presence was strong. The facilities are impressive, more or less brand new . These were quite familiar to folks like Frank Simpson of the Lavelle School in New York and Miki Jordan of the Junior Blind of America in Los Angeles. We visited the English language classroom. The principal of the school, proudly showed off plans to expand the campus over the next few years, with high quality architectural site drawings that would have looked perfectly in place in Chicago. Our team toured the school.

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4 Tips for Beating Bailout Election Malaise: Give, Laugh, Appreciate, and Look for the Open Door

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:27:00 PDT

According to a March 2008 New York Times article, Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness . . . According to the September 1999 New York Times article, Route to Creativity: Following Bliss or Dots? Last Saturday I woke up early in the morning from a dream where I'd been crying. The last remnant of the dream that came wafting through before I woke up was, "Stop watching CNN."

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What Cross-Platform Gaming is Doing for Books... and Can Do for Museums

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:20:00 PDT

A few weeks ago, I learned about Scholastic Books' new series, The 39 Clues , which ties together a ten-book mystery with an online gaming environment. I've long been interested in the power of cross-platform experiences, so I was excited to see today's New York Times article about the evolving relationship between books and video games . To achieve new goals--deepening the experience for obsessives and bringing But the Times missed the boat. Their article focuses on an "either-or" relationships, tackling the question of whether reading or gaming is more conducive

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Come to SocialDev Camp East!

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:49:00 PDT

Because of the central location, the event draws from Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York , and Boston -- the emerging "Amtrak Corridor" technology scene. "SocialDevCamp East is the Unconference for Thought Leaders of the Future Social Web Following up on the successful premiere of SocialDevCampEastSpring2008, held in Baltimore in May, SocialDevCamp East Fall 2008 once again invites east coast developers and technology business leaders to come together for a thoughtful discussion of the ideas and technologies that will drive the future of the social web. Where

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Backtype: Another Listening Tool - Who's Talking About You In The Blog Comments?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:09:43 PDT

Dan Schwabel's 5 Free Tools For Reputation Management introduced me to a new listening tool, backtype . New York Times via Ed Philp ,??? (original The service notifies users when new comments are left, left, and allows the user to 0160; It solves the problem of monitoring blog comments comments where people specifically mention you.

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Passionate Experts and the Museums that Avoid Them

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:23:00 PDT

For those of you who can't or choose not to watch the video, Bela was sitting in NBC's New York studio with Bob Costas, reacting energetically and effusively to Nastia's routine. And that got me thinking about how bad museums are at doing the same thing--using passion to promote visitor engagement in new content. I'm not a fan of Olympic gymnastics; I don't really know enough about the sport to be blown away by the action. This summer, however, one little video clip changed that.

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The best ad plans of marketers and menâ€¦

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:21:17 PDT

Inspired by a post on Occum’s Razor , I recently applied for and received access to Google’s new Ad Planner (it took about a week for my application to be processed, so if you’re intrigued, don’t delay - apply right now . These range from about two-thirds, with Facebook or Yahoo, to around 23% with Amazon, to 9% with the New York Times, all the way down to 0.7% It’s okay - I can wait…). Test driving the tool, I found three things:

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What would you do with $700 billion?

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:03:21 PDT

It just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when at the United Nations General Assembly in New York , Gordon Brown advocates a “ new global order, founded on transparency, not opacity”. We do need a new global order. I can’t get this out of my head. I

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Arts Summit 2008: The Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations - Reflections

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:21:53 PDT

I just got back from doing a plenary session at the Arts Summit organized by the Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations . It's gathering of arts leader from throughout New York State. have a long history with the arts community in New York . I spoke about social media and future leadership in the arts - and also did a workshop. I had the pleasure of sharing the podium with Susan Chun who spoke about the Steve project. (Since

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Fish Tale Has DNA Hook

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:23:00 PDT

I recently was forwarded a post from David Duthie (of the UN Environment Program) that spotted a new application: truth in sushi labeling. Below is a story from the New York times that gives us a glimpse of what that world might be like - where two high school children, albeit with some good connections, can demonstrate that some NY sushi is not "kosher" - offering farmed tilapia at tuna prices. I've written about Dan Janzen's idea for a DNA barcoding device , which you could use to identify the different kinds of life you encounter. I have been a "fan" of DNA barcoding

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DC Does Public Information Right

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:14:42 PDT

just encountered another interesting posting on PBS' MediaShift Labs from Amanda Hickman of Gotham Gazette Commenting on a presentation by DC Chief Technical Officer Vivek Kundra, Hickman writes that Washington DC is giving New York City a run for the money: While New York City busies itself posting PDFs of city agency documents within 10 days of their publication, the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Technical Officer is churning out no less than 261 live data feeds and maps, and has mandated that no city agency may acquire software that cannot publish to the data

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Love Thy Neighbor: Governor David Patterson at the Presidential Forum on Service

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:46:00 PDT

Seeing the Presidential candidates at the Presidential Forum on Service at the Service Nation Summit was thrilling, but I think my favorite speaker last night was New York Governor David Patterson. And so I'm hoping that perhaps that Christian adage will take on a new meaning in the 21st century as more of us are involved in service as we come closer to that oneness of the human spirit and we, actually, re-amplify the idea of helping our neighbors as we would help ourselves, to helping our neighbors because they are ourselves ." He wasn't afraid to get spiritual and address our interconnectednes saying: "Pope Gregory the first, known as Saint Gregory the Great, always admonished Christians to love their neighbors as they would love themselves.

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Being the Media at the Service Nation Summit Sept. 11 & 12

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:39:00 PDT

I'm sitting in the press area at the Presidential Forum on Service at Columbia University in New York City. I also sat in on a press conference with Usher, the Summit's Youth Chair, and two participants from Usher's New Look youth program. Kennedy and Orrin Hatch will introduce new legislation, the "Serve America Act," to increase service opportunities for people of all ages, and to put service to work to solve specific national problems. It's not often that a little do-good blogger like myself gets invited to cover a big 'ole event, but I am! Senators John McCain

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Funding Personal and Social Transformation: Paula Sammons, Seasons Fund

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:45:00 PDT

And Social Justice Leadership, a group that offers tools and trainings to grassroots organizers in New York City. Here is a complete list of our first set of grantees: Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice Center for Contemplative Mind in Society ForestEthics Gamaliel Foundation Institute for Jewish Spirituality Make the Road, New York Movement Strategy Center Native Movement Alaska Rockwood Leadership Program Social Justice Leadership stone circles Unlimited Love urbanPEACE YES! Why is it important to fund projects like these at this time?

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The Voicemail Museum: A Call-In Collection

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:37:00 PDT

This week, I'm launching a new site: the Voicemail Museum . Once I have a few responses I'll start posting them and adding new questions. Why am I doing this? There are a few reasons... To explore the potential use of cellphones as feedback devices. Right now, most museums that use handhelds and cellphones use them to serve content, not to receive it. Visitors can send audio, text, or even video from their phones and need not be constrained by whatever particular format the museum offers in It's an experiment that merges two of my greatest interests: finding novel, easy ways for visitors to contribute content to museums finding questions that draw such compelling responses that random peoples' answers would be worth browsing To participate, all you need is a phone.

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Fiscal Sponsorship Resources

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:44:00 PDT

has charitable status) that will steward the new program and take care of being a nonprofit and filing the annual returns. They offer a range of services for their fee. I also know a tech project that has used the FJC Fiscal Sponsorship Program , based in New York . Setting up as a nonprofit is not easy. Starting a for-profit in California took me one or two weeks, and I think it's still that fast.

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New Models for Community Partnerships: Museums Hosting Meetups

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:43:00 PDT

If museums get involved in these online-offline partnerships, we can bring new audiences through our doors, familiarize them with museum-going in a comfortable way, and reap the benefits of their online musings about their real-life experiences. This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! That's not part of our mission! But these events have benefits both in terms of audience development and word-of-mouth marketing. Audience Development These events bring

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NpTech Roundup: Grasshoppers and Ants - Social Fundraising Off Season

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:45:11 PDT

Global Giving's " Giving Made Green " launched last week and was written up in the New York Times . Amy Sample Ward writes about the new plugin launched by Social Actions that will place ???possibly From TMCNet.com : Blackbaud launched a new release of Blackbaud NetCommunity which includes enhancements in both function and features. Photo by Mr. Clean1982 The NpTech Tag Summary is a weekly compilation of resources tagged with "nptech" by those who follow all things nonprofits and social media.

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A Romance on Three Legs

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:11:00 PDT

I've had the pleasure of knowing Katie Hafner, New York Times reporter and author, for at least five years. She generally writes on tech topics, so I was interested to see her latest book on the famous pianist Glenn Gould, A Romance on Three Legs . As a geek, it feels good to see some of the oddities of tech people translated into the music world.

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Office Fundraiser Ideas

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:58:00 PDT

Sarah promised her blog's readers that she would go to work (at Rockefeller Center in New York City) wearing a tomato costume if they would collectively donate $40,000 dollars. When you're in charge of your office's fundraiser, you've got two goals to meet: 1. Raise the amount of money you've been assigned.

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Notes from the Future: Reflections on the IMLS Meeting on Museums and Libraries in the 21st Century

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:48:00 PDT

What follows are my notes from the meeting, separated roughly into six major topics of discussion. The six topics are: How do you plan for the future? What are the essential differences and similarities between libraries and museums? How do you measure and articulate the value of museums and libraries? How can our expertise and assets be applied towards new ends? Who owns the stuff? How can our expertise and assets be applied towards new ends? There was lots of discussion about the relevance of our assets and interpretative methods. What’s in the crystal ball for museums and libraries?

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Just found something intensely cool.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:56:00 PDT

it hadn't been posting my new blog posts to Twitter) for a couple of weeks. Here's some press: Fast Company , Business Week and the New York Times . I discovered over the weekend that my twitterfeed had not been working (i.e. I went to the help site to try and figure out what happened, and ended up on this site: Get Satisfaction is a one-stop "help center" for a whole ton of companies and services including Apple, PBwiki, Brightkite, Seesmic, Mozilla, MyBlogLog, Paypal (the company with the worst customer service on the planet, IMHO - hate 'em intensely since

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The Girl Effect: Watch This Video

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:59:00 PDT

Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [ New York : Rizzoli, 2007], 13.) " These statistics come from The Girl Effect , a web site created by the Nike Foundation and NoVo Foundation to educate people about the positive impact educating and empowering girls can have on a community. You can get involved with The Girl Effect by sharing the web site and videos , learning more about the issue , and donating to a project that support girls on The Girl Effect's Global Giving page. New York Times columnist

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Why Click! is My Hero (What Museum Innovation Looks Like)

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:15:00 PDT

To people like James and Jeff Howe, it’s a new data set in their work on crowd-sourcing and collective intelligence. To the museum world, it’s a new attempt to merge people, the web, and a physical exhibition. Shelley’s team created new rules for every step, from the attribution options during the open call to the way the photos were sized and hung to represent the data set. You may not think it’s pretty. There’s a value of this exhibition that extends beyond the exhibition itself. We’re accustomed to the notion that people are enfranchised in the democratic process.

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A new chapter.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:11:00 PDT

So the more successfully independent the chapters become, the harder administrative life is in Washington or New York . The other day a friend dropped by the office to talk to us about how we manage chapters in our software. For example, he wondered if we assumed that the national organization did the dues billing, and distributed revenue to the chapters?

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Big Paycheck or Service? Is There a Middle Way?

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:45:00 PDT

The New York Times recently published an article, Big Paycheck or Service? Students are Put to Test , about graduates who go into school with high ideals for changing the world, but come out working for big business. (Hat Hat tip to Echoing Green for the link). According to the article, Harvard professor, Howard Gardner, is teaching “reflection”

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What's the sweet spot between personal productivity and social productivity?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:10:22 PDT

Written while being stranded at O'Hare airport due to flight cancellations does not always allow neurons to connect ....) After posting it, I remembered the phrase - "Social Productivity" that I read in one of the final chapters of " Connect: A Guide To the New Way of Working on the Web " by Anne Zelenka . Then I got a track back from the email dashboard blog that rounded up all posts that responded to the New York Times article about information overload. Photo by Natala007 While stuck in O'Hare on Saturday, I wrote a post about personal

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Information Coping Skills: Turn Off the Damn Email Software and Get Some Work Done (Or go for a walk)!

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:20:22 PDT

An interesting article in today's New York Times called " Lost in E=Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast ." The article describes a new nonprofit organization called " Information Overload Research Group ." A new E-Mail Addict feature in Gmail can help you. Clicking Photo by Will Lion quot; The article describes how some technology firms, including Microsoft , Intel , Google and I.B.M. ,

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Shameless plug... but could be of interest

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:02:00 PDT

Weisberg, a Director in Talent at Deloitte, on how Mass Career Customization™, a new model for how careers are built, creates a customized career experience that enhances individual as well as organizational success. Successful Workplaces Digest features promising practices from: AARP, Accenture, Ernst & Young, The New York Times Company, Verizon and more! I will be leading a round table discussion (at 2:45, under "Build a Practice" Round Table in the agenda) on putting social media into practice next Friday at the Business and Professional Women's Foundation National Employer Summit .

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Innovation and the Future of Science Centers: Your Thoughts Wanted

Thu, 29 May 2008 09:23:00 PDT

This is a conference that purports to focus on big picture, international science center strategy rather than how to explode balloons (which, frankly, is one of my favorite parts of ASTC). As part of the conference, I'll be presenting with Eric Siegel (Director, New York Hall of Science ), Jennifer Martin (VP Programs and Operations, Telus World of Science Calgary ), Andrea Bandelli ( independent brilliant guy , Netherlands), and Beverly Damonse (Executive Director, South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement ) about "innovation and the future of science centers."

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Curated Collaborative Filtering: Listening to Pandora

Tue, 27 May 2008 13:54:00 PDT

Both are collections of discreet, loosely organized content pieces that are both familiar and new. Your overall enjoyment of the content experience is determined to a large extent by the balance of items you like and those you don’t, those you know and those that are new. But recently I’ve become obsessed with a new kind of (internet) radio station, one that’s converted me back from my CDs to the radio. How is a museum like a radio station? The more time between the good stuff, the less likely you are to tune in again in the future.

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What Can I Do About Genocide? An Interview with Janessa Goldbeck

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:30:00 PDT

came into it when I was a junior at Northwestern University, and I was living in New York at that time. One of the world's challenges that disturbs me the most is genocide. Perhaps it is because my generation was raised reading The Diary of Anne Frank and watching dozens of movies about the Holocaust. Over and over we were told, someone should have said something.

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Arts 2.0: Examples of Arts Organizations Social Media Strategies

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:40:26 PDT

So, thought I'd take an opportunity to query my network via Twitter and Facebook and see what's new . Elizabeth Perry, an artist in Pittsburgh and pioneer of "sketch blogging" reported that local arts organizations have been good at integrating social media without having to create or maintain anything new . " Fresh + new (er) is an institutional blog from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia written by staff member Seb Chan. | View | Upload your own The The above slide show was created based on all the information I gathered from my

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Win 2 Tickets to the Global Fund for Women 20th Anniversary Gala

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:10:00 PDT

If you are excited about GFW's work, take a moment to enter their raffle for a chance to win two free tickets to their 20th anniversay gala fundraiser in New York City on June 5th. Many of you contacted me to say that you enjoyed my interview with Kavita Ramdas , the President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women . Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Honorable President of Liberia, as well as women leaders from Colombia, South Africa, Malaysia, Liberia, Bosnia/Herzogovina and Egypt will be honored at the event.

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Brooklyn Clicks with the Crowd: What Makes a Smart Mob?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:32:00 PDT

The view counts, comments, favorites, most e-mailed, and leader boards of sites we all love (Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, NetFlix, The New York Times, etc.) In short, museums have the assets to assume a new value proposition as leading participatory institutions, places you go to have the most content-rich, compelling, networked user experiences . I've written before about the inspiring work that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing with their community-focused efforts. They're now running a compelling experiment in crowd-sourced exhibition creation and curation via the

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Muhammed Yunus on tech, profit, and the poor - Apr. 3, 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:15:00 PDT

3, 2008: " NEW YORK (Fortune) -- 'Technology is making more changes in our way of life than ever in human history,' says Muhammad Yunus. 'The Muhammed Yunus on tech, profit, and the poor - Apr. The way the Internet and the mobile phone are spreading, you cannot compare with any technology of the past.' Yunus is known for his visionary leadership in microfinance and helping the

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Games for Change Announces 5th Annual Festival

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:51:00 PDT

The only festival dedicated to the new movement using Digital Games for Social Change will explore real-world impact, the latest games and funding strategies. Hosted in New York City by Parsons The New School for Design, the 5th annual Games for Change Festival will take place in June 2 - 4, 2008. You will have a chance to see a variety of new games in development first-hand, and at the Games Expo sponsored This is will be third Games for Change Festival! The Expert practitioners -- academics, activists, non-profits, funders -- will be called in to

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The Global Fund for Women: An Interview with Kavita Ramdas

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:36:00 PDT

I think that is an area in which in our new strategic plan we are really committed to strengthening that understanding of how do all these efforts collectively contribute to stronger, more sustainable, more democratic communities. The challenges around how women's poverty is exacerbated by a process of globalization, which on the one hand gives them new opportunities, and on the other hand takes away certain kinds of economic securities that they have known in the past. "I think there are many different ways in which you define leadership. As a feminist, and as a feminine feminist,

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Rest in Peace Dith Pran: We Will Not Forget

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:17:31 PDT

Little did we know that one year after bringing home our first child, we'd get an opportunity to meet Dith Pran at a Cambodian New Year's Celebration in Rhode Island. Dith Pran came to a New Year's Celebration at a friend's home that included many children adopted from Cambodia. The quote from the New York Times obit says it all: ???One As we were boarding the plane to Florida, I read a tweet from Ben Greenberg and was saddened to learn that Dith Pran, of the Killing Fields fame, had passed away . When we decided to adopt from Cambodia, we tried to learn as

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Trust Me, Know Me, Love Me: Trust in the Participatory Age

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:10:00 PDT

It's just plain courteous, and if we trust our visitors the way we trust clients or friends, we should make this available. Make content authorship transparent. When I read the New York Times online, each article's author's name is hotlinked and there is an easy and direct way to contact him/her. It gets trickier when you move from the encyclopedia to citizen journalism (check out this interesting article from the New Yorker about the rise of Huffington Post, an online hodge podge news source), but there are plenty of techniques, from staff editorial boards ( OhMyNews )

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Do What You Can: National Week of Action for Darfur April 6-13

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:27:00 PDT

Check out Dave Eggers' recent Op -Ed in the New York Times , "Dropping the Torch" about the event. "[Y]ou don't necessarily have to solve a problem. You just have to take the steps that are available to you. . . . I

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Listen up and pay attention. Please!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:50:00 PST

Light , an expert on nonprofit groups and a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. "It's really a significant problem and one that is just so important to the future of the sector," he said. "Nonprofits Got home last night after several hours yesterday discussing personnel issues with my staff and ED, and by a crazy coincidence, saw this article as the main headline in the Washington Posts' Metro Section. (My My bold).

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Once Upon a School: Help Dave Eggers' TED Wish Come True

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:26:00 PST

Over the next six years additional 826 centers opened in New York , Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Michigan and Boston under the umbrella of 826 National . This week Eggers is one of three recipients of the 2008 TED Prize during the TED Conference in Monterey, CA. "Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth."--Helen Helen Caldicott In 2002, Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What, co-founded a writing and tutoring center,

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Women Musicians Shine a Light on New Orleans

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:41:00 PST

March 2-6, four women arts activists ( Cris Williamson , Vicki Randle , Alix Olson and Pamela Means) will travel to New Orleans to collaborate with four local women musicians ( Asia Rainey , GaBrilla Ballard , Sunni Patterson , and Charmaine Neville ). On April 27 the eight musicians will meet again in New York City to perform new songs inspired by their trip as part of the Women Center Stage Festival. The trip is being organized by the Artistic Director of Women Center Stage, Olivia Greer , who I interviewed last year, as part of Culture Project's EMANCIPATE program.

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America's Giving Challenge Official Results: We Came In First! Thank You Everyone!

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:13:47 PST

Intergenerational Wired Fundraisers: A Conversation Eugene Chan's New Year's Resolution New York Times Article - Too Busy Fundraising To Notice It Until Now The final, official results have arrived for America's Giving Challenge and I'm happy say that we came in first place for global causes ! This was truly a group effort - no one person could have done this alone. I want to thank each and everyone of you who donated, asked their friends and network to donate, spread the word through blogging it or other ways, and helped us cross the finish line in

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Facebook Philanthropos

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:26:16 PST

The article goes on to quote Jean Case "Philanthropy shouldn't be defined as a bunch of rich people writing checks," she told the New York Times . "Small But, it not necessarily anything new . I Note: I've had this blog post in a draft for about a week and was reminded about it when I saw this post over at the NTEN blog asking Is Facebook A Bust or Is Obama's Model the Future ? The title of this blog post is taken from an article posted over at Slate mostly talking about the Facebook component of the recent America's Giving Challenge, posing the question, "Can social networks and virtual communities revolutionize charitable giving?"

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Digital Natives and Twitter (and RSS)

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:42:09 PST

In this recent New York Times article, " If You Can't Let Go, Twitter " the writer talks about the difficulty of getting her three digital natives and early adopter users to switch from mobile phone texting to using Twitter and without success. These criticisms confounded me. Last week, I did a workshop for a board of a secondary school interested in taking the first steps into social media. While I was there, I got a tour, visited some classrooms, and talked to a few students.

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Got the Winter Blues? Giving May Cheer You Up

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:54:00 PST

Maya Angelou In December 2007, the New York Sun article, Why Giving Makes You Happy reported that: "According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, a survey of 30,000 American households, people who gave money to charity in 2000 were 43% more likely than non-givers to say they were 'very happy' about their lives. Similarly, volunteers were 42% more likely to be very happy than non-volunteers. "I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver."--Maya It didn't matter whether gifts of money and time went to churches or

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Data Visualization: Honest, Powerful Interpretative Design

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:12:00 PST

I met one of these data artists last year while visiting a friend/journalist at the New York Times. His name is Mark Hansen, a UCLA statistician, and he was working on the finishing touches of the installation of Moveable Type in the lobby of the new Times building (shown above). Moveable Type is one of the most accessible pieces of art I've ever experienced, and I think its honesty and power come from the fact that it is a distillation, not an interpretation, I have seen the future of interpretative design, and that future is data visualization. I'm talking tables of

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NY Times Article from Last Day of America's Giving Challenge

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:24:23 PST

I was so busy online working my social media and social networks that I failed to notice the article from the New York Times about the America's Giving Challenge titled "Charities Vie for Prizes in Online Giving Experiment. quo

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Noel Hidalgo Knows What Ten Dollars Can Do In Cambodia

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:04:27 PST

The luck of seven is an open-source, around the world project by noel hidalgo , a new york city based activist, organizer, blogger, barcamper and coworker. (Here's Photo by Noneck Here's the official press release ) For For seven months, he traveled to world to see all the seven continents, dive into the seven

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The Valley Goes to the Mountains, in Full Blogging Mode - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:43:00 PST

The Valley Goes to the Mountains, in Full Blogging Mode - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds -- DealBook - New York Times: "Tech is back at Davos this year,” one of the participants exclaimed to me before I left Silicon Valley for the annual conference at this ski resort town.It doesn’t feel that way. Silicon Valley’s participation at Davos peaked just before the dot-com bubbl

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The Op-Ed Project: Writing to Change the World

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:13:00 PST

According to the New York Times article, Stop the Presses, Boys! If you live in New York , Lindsey Pollak has posted a special code on her blog that gives you 10% off registration for the February 23rd Op-Ed Project class in NYC. I've never written an Op-Ed piece, have you? Seems like a good skill to have these days, especially for nonprofits trying to get the word out about their cause.

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Observations from The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, Month 1

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:20:00 PST

I think a lot of museum people are waiting to see the result, how the whole exhibit cycle goes, before signing up to learn a new platform and engage resources in this way. Since Second Life is such a new technology, most people using it in a professional capacity are knowledgeable about how it works (and are building things themselves) because they have to be--there's no in-house IT guy who's going to do it for them. This week marks one month of live activity for the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop , a collaborative, online platform for exhibit development. I've been working for

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Center for Health, Environment and Justice Seeks Fundraising Manager

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:04:31 PST

The Center was founded in 1981 by our executive director, Lois Gibbs, who was the community leader at Love Canal, New York . â€¢ Develop strategies to upgrade the giving levels of existing donors and also acquire new ones. â€¢ Arrange We are seeking someone who can travel occasionally (about six times a year) to meet with donors, and bring new ideas for enhancing our ability to acquire and upgrade individual donors. CENTER FOR HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT AND JUSTICE FUNDRAISING FUNDRAISING MANAGER The

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Behind the Intel/OLPC Breakup

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:37:00 PST

Behind the Intel/OLPC Breakup: "n mid-December, in the hip, Frank Gehry-designed IAC (IACI) building in New York , Intel (INTC) held a small gathering for a dozen or so journalists to preview the corporation's planned showcase at this week's 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Curiously missing: any mention of a much-anticipated, low-cost laptop, called the XO, for children i

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Keeping a Gratitude Journal: Fuel for the Activist Life

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:26:00 PST

Usually, however, I’m able to find five things that I’m truly thankful for!" Philippa Kennealy of The Entrepreneurial MD shares the story of how one of her clients, a doctor, used a gratitude journal to move through depression in her post, Can a Gratitude Journal Be An Effective Business Tool? She also links to a New York Times article, Let Us Give Thanks. An activist friend of mine recently asked, "How do you get over it when life is unfair in a really big way?" I told her, "Keep a gratitude journal." I can't remember where I first saw this idea.

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Intergenerational Wired Fundraisers: A Conversation

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:02:03 PST

Beth Dunn wrote a great piece called " We're The Young Generation " reflecting on an article in the New York Times about the growing use of social networks by young people for social good. Nhuong Son , Wired Fundraiser for Cambodian Children! Her reflection questions: How might young people

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Training Social Changemakers: An Interview with Andre Carothers of the Rockwood Leadership Program

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:12:00 PST

We tried to create a new definition of leadership on the progressive end of the spectrum, one that focuses on people's humanity, connecting with people on a personal level, and being very focused on very specific goals and objectives. I think what he meant by that is that if we are to win some of the policy issues we are challenged by currently here in the beginning of the 21st century, there needs to be a new way of organizing ourselves. "These skills, which one sees in action around the country with certain key individuals who seem to be able to bridge gaps between organizations and issue areas, we can teach them.

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Cyberinfrastructure: What is it? What does it mean?

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:01:21 PST

Back in the early 1990s, I was "hoisting" web pages onto the Internet with a colleague David Green who worked at the New York Foundation for the Arts on the Arts Wire project. David (and Arts Wire) is long gone, but recently David contacted me to tell me of a new collection of essays he has edited on "cyberinfrastructure" We all remember how the First Wave of the Internet hit: the first time we used a web-browser, the first time we ventured forth with our (or our institution's) first website, the first time we started using web-based resources. Now a Second Wave is about to hit: Cyberinfrastructure.

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Foundation Testing Potential of Philanthropy via Internet - New York Times National Feed - GainesvilleSun.com

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:07:00 PST

Foundation Testing Potential of Philanthropy via Internet - New York Times National Feed - GainesvilleSun.com: "Foundation Testing Potential of Philanthropy via Internet 12:00 am, December 13, 2007The Case Foundation is embarking on an effort to test the potential of citizen-led philanthropy via the Internet. Continue to 2nd paragraph The Case Foundation is embarking on an effort to test the ...Tags: Tags: NPtech NPContests NPOnlineGivin

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A Tour of Free Geek in Portland

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:23:00 PST

The space reminded of the many artist-run spaces and community centers I've visited when I worked with the New York Foundation of the Arts. If you lived in Portland (or a growing number of other cities), you could take it to Free Geek where it would usable parts would be salvaged and recycled into a perfectly good computer for a person who couldn't afford to purchase a shiny new one. I must confess something here. Skeleton Dance by jpmercury Creative Creative Commons Licensed Music from CCmixter

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The Kindle: Pretty Cool!

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:35:00 PST

It goes pretty fast on the New York Times, but I wonder about being on a plane wishing it had downloaded something already when the wireless needs to be off. Amazon.com: Kindle This is the first ebook product that gives me a vision of where the book is going to go. I am imagining students with complete

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In Search of Hope: The Global Diaries of Mariane Pearl

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:30:00 PST

Cambodia: Somaly Mam Acting for Women in Distressing Situations (AFESIP) Canada: Sheila Watt-Cloutier The Center for Environmental Law Colombia: Mayerly Sanchez World Vision Hong Kong: Anson Chan Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF Liberia: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf The Liberian Education Trust (LET) Mexico: Lydia Cacho Ciamcancun New York : Dr. "[N]ow I have an answer for my son, who lost his father to blind hatred. Yes, there is hope in the world, and it isn't naive or even idealistic.

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10 Holiday Gifts That Give Back

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:12:00 PST

You can buy beautiful, handmade gifts made by artisans from companies and organizations like World of Good , Be Sweet , Global Girlfriend , The Amber Chand Collection and New Mexico Creates . The Jackson Street Book blog recently reported that the New York Times and NPR have added BookSense.com as an online book purchasing option, in addition to Amazon.com. According to the CCNMoney.com article, Splurges Will Be Scarce This Holiday Season : "Americans will spend an average of $923.36 on holiday gifts, which includes $106.67

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Visitor Voices Book Club: Talking Back

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:05:00 PDT

One such example was at the New York Historical Society's exhibition Slavery in New York . Welcome to the first installment of the Visitor Voices book club. This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. Rather than rehash each of the projects (hint:

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Asthma Free School Zones

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:36:00 PDT

Seems simple enough, but our friends at New York's Asthma Free School Zones have been finding it quite a challenge to get this message across. One really simple way to use less fuel and improve air quality is to avoid using your vehicle's engine - except when driving. Focusing on the idling of school buses in front of elementary schools, the organization has been able to demonstrate that the air quality at the schools is measurably worse than just a few blocks away.

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Games for Change Is Seeking A Community Manager

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:56:59 PDT

New York I'd be appying mysel Games for Change is looking to hire a community manager to manage a variety of online projects, primarily the Knowledge Network. This is a resource directory and social networking space for the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, a 4-year funded project going into its 2nd year. This person will also oversee G4C's online presence, listserv, and future

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The Path to Survival: Relocalization, Water Conservation and Heirloom Preservation

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:47:00 PDT

new form of colonialism, known as biocolonialism, is reaching deep into the heart of these communities." In response to yesterday's New York Times article, The Future is Drying Up , Lisa Moore, writes on the Environmental Defense Blog , "So what can we do? Thanks to a referral from fellow BlogHer, Tara Hunt , I had the opportunity to fill in for a panelist at the Bioneers Conference yesterday--an annual meeting of environmental and social justice activists. For me, the highlight of the day was hearing Winona LaDuke's talk, "Seeds the Creator Gave Us."

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Human + coLAB Experiment Post Mortem

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:13:00 PDT

The exhibition is being developed by the New York Hall of Science , and I worked with Eric Siegel, the Director of NY Science, to initiate this project. I also would have liked an update function where people (myself included) could be notified when a new comment was added to the stream. I left the experiment with a few core questions: How can we encourage sustained participation throughout the life of a project, rather than just at its outset? Thanks to all who visited the coLAB and participated in the Human + collaborative experiment over the past ten days.

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Voice Thread for Museums: A Test

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:58:38 PDT

So, if you have a minute, please participate: I've set up a simple experimental project with Eric Siegel of the New York Hall of Science, a mini-collaboration on an exhibition they are working on, "Human +," about human enhancement technologies. My friend Nina who writes the Museum2.0 blog has set up an experiment using VoiceThreads, a multimedia presentation software that allows people to add their voices to the presentation.

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Using Film to Change the World: An Interview with Shalini Kantayya

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:49:00 PDT

I think that we need a new mythology, we need a new story, we need a new hero, we need a new she-ro, and I think that's what my mission and my gift is, to create really compelling stories that engage people in the most critical issues of our times. From that moment, I started to put imaginary picture frames on everything I saw, and sort of experienced my seeing in this new way. Sixty years ago, very few people would have seen the connection between peace and hydrology, but today that connection is clear to the foresighted. If we do not deal with the water

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Twitter for Airport Travel Hassles

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:03:02 PDT

I'm in the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon/Washington border (finally) to do my Nonprofits and Social Media Workshop at the RWJ Foundation's annual meeting for grantees. My connecting flight out of New York was delayed by 4 hours! We sat on the runway. They served us drinks and let us use our cell phones.

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Try This! Experiment in the Museum 2.0 coLAB

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:20:00 PDT

This week, with the gracious help of Eric Siegel of the New York Hall of Science , Museum 2.0 This one-week test will hopefully be followed by many more progressively ambitious projects to develop new tools for museums, scientists, artists, experience designers, visitors, and all kinds of folks to work together to create high-quality exhi bitions. is launching an experiment in collaborative exhibition design. I (and probably many of you) have always wondered about the basic challenge of deriving quality from mass participation.

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What color is your blog?

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:15:22 PDT

0160; Emily and Cooper have launched a new action on a blog called " Cool It Moms ." quot; This blog in response to an op-ed that appeared in the New York Times, A Swiftly Melting Planet calling on the mothers to band together on global warming. Many blogHers, like Rebeca at the Razoo blog , went red on Thursday as part of Free Burma: International Bloggers Day . 0160; But, on Friday, my blog turned from red to pink!

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Quickie Excitement: My Current Project in the News

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:39:00 PDT

There's a New York Times article today about the virtual CSI:NY experience that will be launching in Second Life on October 24. There's a link to a video clip from the episode that will kick it off here . I've had a blast working with The Electric Sheep Company and Anthony Zuiker (creator of CSI) to design the narrative game that will accompany the superlative CSI:NY virtual environment.

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The Perils of Popularity

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:04:15 PDT

I like Rashmi's new slide show, especially the title. social network, replacing a Facebook, each is a leader in new forms of social rivals the New York Times Website, Digg lets users vote their favorite stories to the top of the site. It helped me clarify some fuzzy thoughts about social networking, pattern analysis, and information overload. Rashmi illustrates how social networks have and are evolving over the past five years from the perspective of an information architect/interaction designer/cognitive psychologist. The general overview:

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Clinton Global Initiative

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:26:00 PDT

I'm greatly enjoying the CGI event this week in New York . Many great social entrepreneurs running around along with the world leaders (and of course, Angelina Jolie). I've been taking a fair number of pictures. Clinton has a great talent for making everybody feel like they're important: I liked the way he interacted with Vicky Colbert, the great education social entrepreneur from Colombi

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Give One, Get One: One Laptop Per Child ....

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:51:47 PDT

So, I was hopeful when I heard about The One Laptop Per Child - XO Giving on NPR yesterday morning and it also reported in the New York Times and ABC news . DC Metblogger Flickr Photo Almost exactly two years ago, the One Laptop Per Child launched. I blogged it and was initially very excited!

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Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free - New York Times

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:31:00 PDT

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free - New York Times: "nd he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399. One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to th

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Master Mashup: Viral Marketing from Bob Dylan

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:00:00 PDT

speak, it's a web application that combines data from more than one source to create a new tool. One fun example is overplot , a mashup that takes quotes overheard in New York City ( the data ) and places them on a Google map (the tool), so you can browse the quotations by address. And if you know New York , it's so much more delicious to "see" the quote location rather than just reading the intersection listing. (warning: Someone should give Bob Dylan's publicist a raise. He or she has created one of the most innovative, enjoyable mashups out of a cultural

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The Larger Challenge (and Opportunity) for One Laptop Per Child - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:10:00 PDT

The Larger Challenge (and Opportunity) for One Laptop Per Child - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog: "The One Laptop Per Child project is starting a “Give 1 Get 1? campaign to try to jumpstart its drive to bring computers to children in the developing world. As its name suggests, the marketing campaign combines philanthropy with geeky self-interest — give one of the innovative laptops to

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Blogging for Writers

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 11:26:00 PDT

Birdie Jaworksi birdiejaworski.com ( New blog. Birdie's blogs and stories have been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Positive Thinking Magazine , and the Wall Street Journal as well as many other news outlets. Corante , and other topics for The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Worthwhile , and The New York Times . I'm giving a talk about blogging at the meeting of the Marin Branch of the California Writers Club tomorrow at the Book Passage in Corte Madera. I always like folks to be able to have an electronic handout, in addition to

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Kiva in Second Life: Interview With Official SL Volunteers

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:19:31 PDT

Kiva.org has already had a very big year, funding about $9 million worth of loans so far, and having been featured in the mainstream media including the Wall Street Journal , New York Times , Oprah and on ABC News . It's exciting to meet other people in world who care about kiva.org and work together. What are your goals for having a presence in SL with an office? Exposing the Kiva organization to new people in this interesting digital world and raising money to fund loans. Second Life kiva.org volunteer: Julles Boucher Kiva.org , a micro-finance organization, has funded nearly 17,0000 loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries and last week crossed the $11 million rank .

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A few Expat Bloggers in Cambodia

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:10:33 PDT

Andy Roberts is a doctoral student from the New York Botanical Garden doing his research in a rural province in Cambodia . Photo by Mythicaldude The Cambodian Blog community has many facets, including an active group of "ex-pat" bloggers. Ex-pats are people who are citizens from other countries, but are living in Cambodia.

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USA Today Offers News Modules Users Can Put On Personal Pages

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 06:29:00 PDT

USA Today Offers News Modules Users Can Put On Personal Pages: " NEW YORK (AP)--USA Today is plunging into a hot new Internet technology, offering users the ability to install 'widgets' on their blogs and personal Web pages that contain news updates and other information from the newspaper. Widgets are a Web accessory that people are using in rapidly growing numbers to jazz up their home page

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The Cirque De Soleil Model: “Entertaining” Doesn’t Have to Mean Low-Brow

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:03:00 PDT

Last week, there was a New York Times article about the recently opened Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and Madame Tussauds attractions in Times Square. The author focused on the appeal of the lurid, the sensational, and the devilishly entertaining, and there’s certainly a lot to be said for these attributes. Heck, sign me up for a ticket to the zombie museum.

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I'm Enroute to Cambodia: From Logan to LAX and Productive Blogging Tip

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:01:40 PDT

And now I'm waiting for the check-in desk for Singapore Airlines to open in a few hours. Before I left, Robert Weiner shared an article in the New York Times by Jane Brody on How to Outwit Jetlag using melatonin and controlled exposure to sunlight. At Logan Airport loaded up with swag Found a plug and wifi at LAX My husband and kids dropped me off at Logan Airport a couple of hours before my flight to LA to connect to my flight to Phnom Penh via Singapore to attend the Cambodia Bloggers Summit . I flew American Airlines and the terminal was a zoo.

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Darfur: An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:19:00 PDT

The Benetech team read with great interest the recent Op-Ed in The New York Times, entitled An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration . The Op-Ed notes the recent ruling in Britain against the Save Darfur Coalition for overstating the number of dead in Darfur. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority found that Save Darfur's estimate of 400,000 killed in the conflict is based on flawed research.

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Blog Day and One Web Day: Are You Participating?

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 21:44:05 PDT

a law professor in New York City, a member of the ICANN board , and a fellow of the Center for Democracy & Technology , and the Yale Information Society Project . August 31, 2007 is the third annual Blog Day . BlogDay is focused on getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day, you write a post recommending 5 blogs to read.

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NpTechTag Summary: NpTech Events, Twitters, and Green Web Hosting

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:03:46 PDT

Speaking of personal fundraising campaign, check out the " luck of seven " - an open source journey around the world documenting free culture, social innovators, and global change from noel hildalgo, a new york city-based activist, organizer, blogger, and barcamper. Using New Technology to Enhance Grantmaker Practices " Lots of links to examples of foundation's using Web2.0 Net2 Houston, August Photo by Eschipul Nonprofits in Second Life Gala Opening Photo by RubyJi By looking at the photos tagged with NpTech, nonprofit techies were either on vacation or attending events.

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Writing for Change Conference: An Interview with Elizabeth Pomada

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:51:00 PDT

We are both from New York , but felt that California was the right place to be. And then, of course, we have Riane Eisler , whose new book is about the wealth of nations, speaking, and she, too, is an idealist. And if you can think of other new ideas, we'd love to hear from you. [laughing] As I mentioned last week, I'll be speaking about blogging at the Writing for Change Conference in San Francisco this month. I told the conference co-founders, a husband and wife literary agent team, Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen , that I'd help to spread the word about

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I'm Speaking at the Writing for Change Conference in San Francisco

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:43:00 PDT

Attendees will have the chance to network, learn from and share their ideas with authors, agents, editors and publishing professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York ." Guess what? I'm going to be speaking about blogging at the Writing for Change Conference that I mentioned in my Writing to Change the World post earlier this month.

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Game Friday: The Aftermath of the ARG World Without Oil

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:22:00 PDT

Thirty-two "weeks" of events were condensed into the 10-week game, and each week, both in-game characters and real people--players all over the world--documented life in the new reality and swapped stories, solutions, and possibilities for survival. The newly reopened Liberty Science Center was recently criticized by the New York Times for making everything "personal, urgent, and political." There has been some fascinating coverage recently about the wrap-up of Ken Eklund and Jane McGonigal's ARG World Without Oil , a huge community game in which players roleplayed within a fictitious scenario in which gas prices are at $7 a gallon, market and weather volatility is sky-high, and the state of both the natural and man-made world are in crisis.

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Book Club Part 6: Getting People in the Door

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:01:00 PDT

But there’s another kind of threshold fear I care about: the one that keeps museums from fully embracing and jumping into new ways of engaging the public, new ways of including visitors. It seems like they're about objects, not people.” He, and Elaine, have noticed the trends over the last several decades that hinder inclusion and community development, including: pursuance of iconic museum architecture which promotes aesthetic over community design lack of access by public transportation and rise in entrance fees, contributing to the perception of the museum as a special

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Twitter Fan Wiki

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:01:53 PDT

round-the-clock updates , credited to BRAD STONE and MATT RICHTEL, New York Times article, April 30, 2007 What's your best phrase to describe twitte I just had to blog this, the Twitter Fan Wiki . There's some great stuff here. What I liked is the section that pulls together some phrases that describe twitter.

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Green Coworking: An Interview with Chris Messina and Ivan Storck of Citizen Space

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:01:00 PDT

It allowed us to sort of escape for the weekend, to be in a new environment, and yet to never really lose a beat. It's also a benefit to the renters to have interesting new people coming in, keeping the space fresh, keeping new ideas flowing and so on. The folks in New York came up with this idea called Jelly , and the folks in Philly came up with a similar thing called The Cream Cheese Sessions , I think, it's all around food. According to the U.S. Census Bureau , almost half (49 percent) of the nation’s businesses are operated from home.

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When Is Natural Food Natural?

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 08:54:00 PDT

Its hard to know what is "healthy" and "natural" based on labels. The Star-Ledger reported yesterday that a New Jersey woman filed a suit against Snapple because their labels say that their drinks are "all natural" and "made from the best stuff on Earth," but they contain high fructose corn syrup. They will travel in a bio-fueled bus approximately 5,000 miles in 38 days, stopping in over 25 cities on their way to the Farm Aid concert in New York City. My husband and I like to tell the story of the first time he met my parents. We had to take separate flights to get

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Do You Digg?

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:46:00 PDT

to Digg that they think are awesome. Other users do the same, and or check out these new “diggs” on the site via connections they have to other members, interest areas, or general browsing. Items that get lots of diggs within a period of time get posted to the Digg.com homepage, which millions of people look at daily. You may have seen a symbol at the bottom of some news articles or blog posts on the web, enabling you to “digg this.” Or the new FEMA report on Katrina. No, this is not a post on the misspelling of be-bop era slang words. It’s about “the people’s choice.”

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Virtual Platforms for Good: Empowering Individuals

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 09:23:17 PDT

She points out why this was such a groundbreaking event and suggests a compelling new metaphor for philanthropy: Imagine if respected - these are new ways for philanthropic institutions to act. achieving their goals: listening to new s, providing means for isolated Photo UgoTrade Blog I

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Live Blog Post from MacArthur Foundation: Virtual World Event on Philanthropy

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:40:15 PDT

MacArthur Foundation hosted its first discussion in Second Life to explore the role that philanthropy might play in virtual worlds. For context, see the event announcement and today's New York Times article. Jonathan Fanton, above next to my Second Life avatar, engaged in a discussion with Philip Rosedale (Linden) of Linden labs about the role of civil society in virtual worlds and answered questions from the more than 200 avatars that packed the space. (although this new medium, we should not control people's choices. I just came from an historic and ground breaking event.

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MacArthur Foundation Event About To Start!

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:49:31 PDT

Check out the article on the New York Times There are almost 200 hundred avatars here and it's twenty minutes before the event! Check

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CNN to steer audience to charities - baltimoresun.com

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:19:00 PDT

CNN to steer audience to charities - baltimoresun.com: " NEW YORK // CNN plans to go beyond reporting the news by directing its viewers to charity and relief efforts involved in some of their stories." ...Tags: Tags: NPtech NPFundraisin

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Communicating the soul of your non-profit

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:40:16 PDT

A bunch of creative types in New York are hiring and did this video one night after work. This is bloody brilliant. You can see by the comments , that they’ve received no shortage of offers. Could this be a tactic for a non-profit to communicate the energy and passion of its staff to supporters and potential employees… or vice-versa?

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The Creation Museum: Dangerous Storytelling

Sun, 27 May 2007 07:41:00 PDT

Lots has been written about it, including the somewhat perplexed and perplexing New York Times review that appeared last week and is the third most emailed article this week. Here's what fascinates me about the Creation Museum: it is the perfect example of a museum embracing and presenting a single story. "The Bible is true." And at least from the New York Times' perspective, the Creation Museum tells a good story, tells it so well that the reviewer is willing to sit back and enjoy the "mixture of spectacle and narrative" without entertaining doubts or debate about

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Donors vs. Visitors Deathmatch: Can Collecting Museums be Democratic?

Mon, 21 May 2007 13:05:00 PDT

We generate all our revenue at the ticket counter, and since we can't draw a straight line from adding to the collection to increasing ticket sales, we don't actively seek out new artifacts. But art museums and other institutions that collect specialized artifacts are judged by their collections more than by the visitor experience they provide. I was amazed to hear an art museum person once tell me that at one museum where he worked, a review in the New York Times was valued as highly as one million visitors. It's late at night at the Museum Curator smackdown. The

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Game Friday: Games for Lurkers

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:23:00 PDT

fresh+ new has had a couple great posts recently about the primacy of lurkers on web 2.0 In the Connections exhibit at the New York Hall of Science, there’s an arm wrestling interactive in which you can arm wrestle with someone at another museum via a network and robotic sensing arms. sites. Seb Chan ended one with this comment: One user contribution should spark the interest of one thousand lurkers, rather than requiring one thousand contributions from other users.

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All for Green, and Green for All: An Interview with Van Jones

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:33:00 PDT

We say, one way to do that is to kind of focus on Oakland, and make sure that there are people who are being trained, who are peered, to be a part of this new green economy right here in Oakland. We want our young people to be in the front of the line for the new clean and green jobs. When a country has to get off of its basic energy source--oil--and come up with something completely When I went to see Van Jones speak for the first time at the Green Festival in November 2002 about, "Green Jobs, Not Packed Jails," people in the States were just starting to lift their heads up from a year of fear and despair after September 11th.

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Games for Change: June 11-12th

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:40:49 PDT

Here is the official announcement : Games for Change is proud to announce that registration is now open for the Fourth Annual Games for Change Festival, to be held in New York City, June 11-12, 2007! everyone will be on hand for the only festival dedicated to this exciting new movement! Last year, I attended the Games for Change Conference and lived blogged it. (here's here's my blog posts ) So, I'm delighted to post this announcement for this year's Games for Change - and guess what?

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The Eye of the Beholder

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:02:00 PDT

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Usually this blog is more about analysis than links. But this week, two articles about art, in the NYT and the Washington Post Magazine respectively, called out to be combined into a post about the role of visitors in art interpretation. The NYT article is about a photography show by artist Thomas Struth at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Manhattan . Struth takes photographs of museum-goers as they gaze, pick their noses, chat on cell phones, and fidget in front of classically great works of art. You can’t see the paintings, only the

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Slashdot | Bloggers Propose Code of Conduct

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 05:42:00 PDT

Slashdot | Bloggers Propose Code of Conduct: "Bloggers Propose Code of ConductPosted by CowboyNeal on Tuesday April 10, @03:55AMfrom the manners-maketh-man dept.The Internet Privacyakintayo writes 'The New York Times reports that in response to the recent brouhaha, some technology bloggers have suggested raising the level of civility on tech blogs by implementing a code of conduct."Tags: Tags: NPTec

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Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:35:00 PDT

Mostly plants," school as described by Michael Pollan in his New York Times article, " Unhappy Meals " (which is a great read). It really doesn't get much more have fun and do good than vegan cupcakes. That's why I requested a review copy of Vegan Cupakes Take Over the World , and I haven't been disappointed. Last week I made vanilla cupcakes with chocolate

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Open Source Cinema

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:28:13 PDT

My first challenge is in acknowledgment of March being Boycott The RIAA Month: The RIAA theme song by the New York Times' David Pogue. Brett's Remix of Lessig's Words Brett Gaylor is a amazing! His newest project is Open Source Cinema .

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Better By the Dozen? Exhibits that Require Multiple People

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:35:00 PDT

At the New York Hall of Science in Queens, there is a floor-mounted installation, Near , in the Connections exhibition that demonstrates how different elements are related in nodal networks. Most of the new interactive technology I see is focused on enabling individuals, not groups. In a hard hat tour of the new Newseum, we were proudly shown a room that will Here's a design question: is an exhibit better or worse if it requires multiple people to "work" properly? Two quick examples: 1.

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Women Rise Up Against War: Rae Abileah of CODEPINK

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 08:12:00 PST

What is CODEPINK? CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities. In a practical sense, that means that I: answer dozens of emails, write action alerts, facilitate training conference calls, paint on giant pink slip banners, coordinate activist trainings and national events in DC, empower women to take a risk and speak up for peace, think of creative ideas to get our message out, counsel women on how to effectively and peacefully

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David Tames's Excellent Video of the Production Values Discussion

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:25:49 PST

He edited the above short little video of the discussion while on the train to New York and uploaded it to blip.tv David Tames is a filmmaker, podcaster, media technologist, strategist, and designer who has has worked as a producer, director, editor, or cinematographer on numerous numerous film, video, web, and multimedia projects.

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Tagged Again ... Media Consumption ..

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 10:07:00 PST

A new form of work advoidance. Newspapers: When I used to pay for newspaper subscriptions, it was the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times (Sunday) I'm tired of spending extra time at the dump on Saturday -- so decided to forgo the subscriptions and find whatever I could online. Sometimes when I get overwhelmed, my reaction is to dive into my blog reader. So, a few days when I was particularly crazy, I went rolling through my reader.

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ISO Understanding: Rethinking Art Museum Labels

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:29:00 PST

I don't usually fist-pump while reading the New York Times. But I’d been scribbling notes for an art museum label post for awhile, and then yesterday, the NY Times had a review of a new show at MOMA, Comic Abstraction . If you are new to art, you don’t know what you are missing. The review was harsh. And it ended with this: No wonder it [MOMA] ends up showing shallow, label-dependent art rather than work that offers deeper, more contradictory encounters.

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I Think You'll Like This... Staff Picks

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:01:00 PST

I realized that my trip to the New York Hall of Science was significantly improved by the specific exhibit recommendations (staff picks) I received before visiting. staff picks Originally uploaded by BrianDamage . What’s the most endearing part of your local book/music/video store? The cats lounging in the corner?

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Mapping Experiences: Rethinking Wayfinding in Museums

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:48:00 PST

This weekend, I visited the New York Hall of Science . We had just finished perusing an excellent exhibit, “Places and Spaces,” pouring over a complex map of 1.3 million scientific papers grouped into scientific paradigms. Next, we wanted to see “Connections,” an exhibition on networks.

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Apply to Give Money Away on Oprah's Reality Show, "The Big Give"

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:31:00 PST

That is the premise of Oprah's new reality show, "The Big Give." It also looks like they are doing open casting calls in Los Angeles, Nashville, Chicago and New York at the end of this month and the beginning of next month. If someone asked you, and ten other contestants, to come up with the most creative way to, " take a given amount of money and other resources and multiply them before giving them away to help others ," would you win? You have until February 23rd to send Oprah a 3-minute tape explaining why you should be on the show.

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The Dixie Chicks and Hambo in the Snow

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 03:41:00 PST

But the New - York based Klezmatics took the World Music/Contemporary prize for their up-to-date take on the traditional Jewish Klezmer sound. I don't usually pay much attention to the Grammys, but there was so much reason to this year. National attention was focused on the resounding show of support for the Dixie Chicks and their right to speak their mind those many months ago about the president and his war.

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Jayne Cravens to Serve as Advisor to UN program in Afghanistan

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 10:59:35 PST

That's when I was working with the New York Foundation for the Arts on its technology capacity building programs, including offline/online workshops for online skill building called SpiderSchool . ways for offline friends to "gather" online, and to meet new people, either giving your work exposure to potential new volunteers and donors, who will A photo of meeting Jayne Cravens face-to-face after following her work for ten plus years online. I've been a big fan of Jayne Craven's work at Coyote Communications since the mid-1990s.

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Carrie Karnos, recipient of the 2006 James H. Veale Humanitarian Award.

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:47:00 PST

Here's the letter from the editor of Matilda Ziegler Magazine, which explains why Carrie was deserving of this award: A Letter from the Editor New York City Dec. Bookshare's collection includes all the books that have appeared in the top 10 on The New York Times Best Sellers lists in fiction and nonfiction, hardback and paperback alike, from September 2005 through November 2006. found Bookshare's It's great when one of our team is honored for their work, and Carrie Karnos has been one of our top Bookshare.org volunteers for years, including being Volunteer of the Year.

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Art and Activism: Olivia Greer and Women Center Stage

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:50:00 PST

It's not enough for us to tell the stories that we connect to, or that we believe in, or that we think are the most important ones, but that we really need to be seeking out people who challenge our opinions, and who have different views, and to be telling those stories as well." --Olivia Greer, Producing Director, Women Center Stage, about her experience at the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi. Just over a year ago, musician, Olivia Greer , was commissioned by Culture Project , a New York City theater company, to write a song for the Women Center Stage Festival. " I think there is a really powerful understanding that I came to, that we in movements, and not just the women's movement, we have a tendency to fight for the space that we have, rather than fight to expand it.

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Flickr As Mechanism To Reconnect With Professional Colleagues

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:53:00 PST

I met her like ten years ago when I leading training workshops for arts educators, artists, and arts organizations throughout New York State on how to use the Internet. Meet Susan Silverman . I was teaching Web1.0 skills like how to search the Internet, how to manage email, how to build a simple web page with HTML, and other good stuff.

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An Interview with Lorene Straka, Joanna Eng, and Mari Velasco from the Idealist

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:06:39 PST

If you want to get involved in social change issues or work with nonprofits anyplace on the globe, the Idealist is one of the first desinations on the web you should visit. The Idealist recently launched a new initiative, Can You Imagine a Better World ? I recently tracked down several women who work for the organization in their New York and Buenos Aires offices, including Lorene Straka , Joanna Eng , and Mari Velasco for an interview. An interview Mari Velasco, Lorene Staka, and Joanna Eng of the Idealist Photos in flickr The Idealist , a project of Action Without Borders ,connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a better world.

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Internet Governance

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:40:00 PST

Fascinating panel: Vint Cerf (Google), Michael Dell(), John Markoff ( New York Times), Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Jonathan Zittrain (Oxford) and moderated by Paul Saffo (Institute for the Future). I attended the Internet governance panel this morning (lest you think that Davos is all play and no work). Just a few snapshots: John Markoff did an effective job of telling us how bad things are.

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Confessions of a Non-Profit IT Director

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:23:32 PST

I'm a Filipino American guy hailing out of New York , but originally from California. So the work flow goes -- check for new comments, respond, check RSS feeds, decide whether to write about it, rinse cycle and repeat. That's Allan Benamer who writes the Non-Profit Tech Blog My mental image of him for a very long time was the painting of St.

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Balancing People, Profit & Planet: An Interview with Reem Rahim of Numi Tea

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:51:00 PST

try, I have a studio and I try to go to my studio whenever I can; and then, I have done various art shows here, in San Francisco, in New York , and friends that I have that live abroad have put me in some shows. So in this new space that we are going to be moving into, we want to create events where, musical events, or poetry events, or art events, and have Numi really be that space where people can express themselves, and just sort of be heard, and share their creativity. Reem Rahim is the Co-founder and Vice President of Marketing of the Oakland-based green business Numi Tea .

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NpTech Tag Summary: Five Hot Conversations!

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:33:57 PST

Or will Convio innovate less due to their massive new market share and potential perceived lack of competition? Good article from the New York Times about widgets, " Some Bling for Your Blog " and a post on the Yahoo Blog about social media meets fundraising . New (to me) Blogs Blau Exchange is posting interviews with interesting ict-minded folks and occasional research and presentations. Screenshot of a poll from Philanthropy 2173 Still time to register your opinion! Five Hot Conversations

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Second Life Education Programs in NY Times, Goes Open Source, and other tidbits

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:13:04 PST

Photo from Kate in Flickr Social Signal Open House in TechSoup Office last week I'm playing catch up here on a bunch of Second Life stuff happening over the past week that I didn't want to let slip through my fingers: Social Signal held an open house in Second Life to welcome their new virtual worlds manager, Catherine Winters , to Social Signal. Over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article about education programs in Second Life. Over fifty avatars attended. If you look at the photo closely, you'll notice that Alex replicated her Mac sticker cover

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Judi Sohn of the Colorectal Cancer Coalition: Blogging for Cancer Advocacy

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:31:26 PST

button on any post, I always ask myself, 'if the New York Times linked to this would I be okay? Judi Sohn, Director of Operations and Communications, for the Colorectal Cancer Coalition . I had the pleasure of interviewing Judi Sohn for Blogher and have finally published it.

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New Year's Resolution: Virtual Volunteering

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:26:00 PST

Did you write, "Volunteer" on your New Year's resolution list? One option you might want to consider is online or virtual volunteering. Here's what some bloggers are saying about virtual volunteering: Holly Ross, of the NTEN blog , points to a New York Times article about virtual volunteering, " Flexible Hours, Using Your PC and Never Leaving Home ". The article mentions Sidelines National Support Network, a nonprofit that provides support to women with high-risk pregnancies via the Internet and phone. It also lists onlinevolunteer.org and VolunteerMatch as

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Five Things I Would Like to Know About You

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 08:52:00 PST

Some of my favorite places to eat cupcakes are the Teacake Bakeshop in Emeryville, CA, Sprinkles Cupcakes in Los Angeles, CA and the Magnolia Bakery , in New York City. A week or so ago Jory Des Jardins of Pause tagged me for the meme that is going around, Five Things You Don't Know About Me . I'll list my five and continue the chain by tagging five more bloggers: Beth Kanter , Green LA Girl , Urban Sprouts School Gardens (Abby Jaramillo), HappyKatie , and Vale of Evening Fog, but since Time magazine named the person of the year, you , I would like to know

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Cool Mashup of GoogleMaps for Advocacy via Global s

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:01:24 PST

Check out the Tunisian Prison Map . Tunisian exile Sami Ben Gharbia is the creator of the Tunisian Prison Map -- an idea inspired by a New York Times interactive map charting murder locations in New York City. I couldn't attend the Global s Summit this year in person, but did it via IRC ever so briefly. I'm kept up to date by traditional means too - like this Wired article .

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Remote Attendance at a conference and birthday party!

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:43:11 PST

At the same time, there was a wild and crazy 4th Birthday Party going for Creative Commons in multiple real world locations , Warsaw, Beijing, Amsterdam, Turin, Copenhagen, Lisbon, New York City and headquarters in SF. Photo from Nehavish I'm so sad not to be able to participate live and in person at the Global s Summit this year which is taking place in Dehli.

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Bay Localize & Green Roofs: An Interview with Ingrid Severson

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:29:00 PST

One of the things that has inspired us is the city of Chicago and the city of New York. Ingrid Severson is the lead project organizer of the Rooftop Resources project, a project of the Oakland non-profit Bay Localize . You can listen to my interview with Ingrid on the Big Vision Podcast , or read a transcript here. Ingrid: Bay Localize is a non-profit project

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Have We Crossed the Chasm yet? Org2.0 Cheat Sheet from Squidoo/Npower New York

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:46:41 PST

Chris Brogan sent me a link to the new NpowerNY/Squido Handout on Seth's Blog. Graphic in Flickr Source: Tara Hunt's post " Cross the Chasm " It's call org.2.0! It signals to me that we are beginning to cross the chasm in Web2.0

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WorldChanging Launches Book & Local Blogs

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:05:00 PST

Bloggers (like me) in Austin, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York , Portland, San Francisco, the Twin Citites, Washington DC, and Canada are volunteering to post a couple times a month about WorldChanging projects, ideas and people in their city. They are still looking for bloggers in the cities I mentioned above, and for people who want to launch local WorldChanging blogs for new cities. Shop Local is a trend picking up speed this holiday season. Will Blog Local be far behind?

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She's Such A Geek

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:02:13 PST

Her new book, "She's Such A Geek" is out now. New York Times Technology reporter Katie Hafner called the book "exhilerating, hilarious, inspiring and infuriating. Click To Play I live blogged and recorded the above vlog interview with Annalee Newitz almost a year ago - my write up is here .

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We Got Issues: A New Collection of Young Women's Voices

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:59:00 PST

I will vote the day after a presidential candidate spends a day picking pesticide-encrusted vegetables in a blazing California field. Buying fair trade coffee and family farm-raised food is casting my vote. --Anna Lappé and Sara Littlecrow Russell, from "I Will Vote" in We Got Issues! Last week fifty people squeezed into the Marcus Bookstore in Oakland to hear young women share their stories, their rants, and their issues from a new collection of women's writing, We Got Issues! In September 2004, the piece opened for Vaginas Rock, Chicks Vote at the Apollo Theater in

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The Birth of a Field: Digital Media and Learning

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:49:25 PDT

From my office in the Boston, I teleported myself into the Virtual World of Second Life and headed straight for the New Media Consortium virtual campus where I joined about 65 other avatars representing educators from all over the world (even Austrailia where it was 3:00 a.m. While the speakers were talking, the avatars in Second Life were carrying on a lively debate in chat about the points raised, suggesting questions to be asked in the room in New York City, and passing along urls/resources related to the discussion at hand. Several avatars were also in "real life"

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What is your 15SecondPitch? An Interview with Laura Allen

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:13:44 PDT

Why did you launch your company? After 9/11/01 in New York , the economy was truly dismal. Network and New York Opportunity Network also sing in three different languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese) Right now I am recording a new CD of original Latin Pop songs and looking to tour internationally. You can see her picture and her pitch on our website here Mara had a limited budget, so she could not just go out and hire the people Photo courtesy of Laura Allen Laura Allen is the co-founder 15SecondPitch , a company that help

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Isn't the name spelled incorrectly?

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:42:11 PDT

Made me nostaligic for Katz's Deli in New York and went through my photo archives and found my shots from 1998 taken with my Sony Mavica floppy disk camer Canter's Deli Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid . Scott Beale Laughing Squid More of the Scott Beale from Laughing Squid deli photos here .

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Gavin's Diner

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:49:37 PDT

I made that header almost ten years for a training curriculum for artists in New York State. It was to introduce artists to some digital tools - like scanners, photoshop, web pages, etc. I did a series of analogies for dinner food and technology. I can't seem to find the handouts, but I remember they were pretty funny.

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The Young and Generous: A New Research Report from Network for Good

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:12:28 PDT

My first thought when I opened this email from Katya Andresen , VP Marketing, Network for Good , pointing me to some new research, " The Young and the Generous " (you have to register to download) was about fried green tomatoes. Virtually all of online givers (96%) have given to charity before, but a sizable proportion (38%) is new to online philanthropy. -Online Flickr photo from: Just Me Robin Photos "Fried Green Tomatoes anyone?" quot;

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Cary McQueen Morrow: Arts and Technology Thought Leader

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:54:11 PDT

Cary McQueen Morrow, executive director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology , is the woman and visionary who organized this landmark event. (Disclaimer: I'm on the honorary committee because 13 years ago I worked on an online artist network with the New York Foundation for the Arts and CAMT was the partner.) 1. Tell me a little bit about how you got into arts management? recently launched a new product, CueRate, which allows organizations to collect digital images and review them in a panel for fellowships, juried exhibitions, art school admissions, etc.

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From Community Arts To Community of Online Learners: Janet Salmons, Ph.D

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:19:15 PDT

I met Janet Salmons many years ago while I working on various arts and technology projects in New York State for the New York Foundation for the Arts . I developed a Taxonomy of Collaborative E-Learning- -a new conceptual framework for understanding levels of collaboration and ways to organize learning activities so participants learn to achieve collective outcomes. Since the Ever since, our paths have crossed several times in nonprofit technology circles online, most recently via the Digital Divide Network listserv and the online forums at TechSoup .

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Solutionary Women: Anna Lappé of Grub

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:38:00 PDT

I was thrilled when Ilyse Hogue , contacted me to say that her friend Anna Lappé was in town to promote her new book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen , and might be available for an interview. And so after that experience, of writing that book, and talking to those people around the world and coming home, I had moved back to Brooklyn, New York , and I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my next project. You can hear the interview on the Big Vision Podcast , or read the transcript below. In addition to co-authoring Grub with Bryant Terry, Anna also co-authored

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Laura Quinn: Founder and Director of Idealware

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:55:03 PDT

I caught up with her at the Games for Change Conference in New York for an interview. Laura Quinn, Idealware Laura Quinn is a researcher, writer, and nonprofit technologist who started her career designing interfaces and doing user research for software and large websites. For the past five years, she has worked with nonprofits doing website strategy, navigation design, software selection, and now, as director of Idealware , a whole lot of software research.

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Friday Links: July 7

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:33:00 PDT

The article was created by Laura Quinn's Idealware project - a New York based organization that strives to be a Consumer Reports focused on non-profit IT. Still lost on the whole RSS thing? Every tech blog I know has, for at least two years, posted the occassional tutorial on how to use RSS to access information feeds. Help Desk as Customer Service I had a client years ago who ran a company providing continuing education to nurses and other health professionals. From time to time I'd be there when one of the folks working the phones would get an irate call from a customer

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Technology in the Arts Conference: Oct. 20-21

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:14:56 PDT

CAMT was a partner with the New York Foundation for the Arts for its now defunct Arts Wire program. I've been invited to be on the Honorary Committee for the Technology in the Arts Conference . The conference will take place in Pittsburgh on October 20-21, 2006. The idea is to bring together a variety of people in the arts sector to examine the commonalities that exist

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Solutionary Women: Rebecca Kalin

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:21:00 PDT

It is now before the New York City Council, which, if passed, would be implemented in all 1400 schools citywide. What do you enjoy the most about your work with Asthma Free School Zone? Any project built from the ground up is, by nature, creative. This week's Solutionary Woman, Rebecca Kalin, was recommended by Michael Stein . Rebecca is the founder of the nonprofit, Asthma Free School Zone and she was kind enough to answer my e-interview questions: Briefly describe Asthma Free School Zone. The Asthma Free School Zone aims to reduce asthma-related illness

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Victory for Bloggers in California Court

Sun, 28 May 2006 06:16:00 PDT

The New York Times story (free registration required to view) quotes the decision as saying: We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes "legitimate journalism". It's good news for bloggers: On Friday a California Court of Appeals ruled the bloggers are entitled to the same protections as journalists in traditional media when it comes to being required to reveal confidential sources. The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here.

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Solutionary Women: Heddy Nam

Tue, 23 May 2006 08:44:00 PDT

When I returned to the US, I founded the USA chapter in New York City with long-time Never Again member, Marian Hodgkin from the UK. Specifically with Never Again, our challenges stem from the fact that we are the new kid on the block within the US non-profit market. This week's Solutionary Woman is 24-year-old Heddy Nam, the Associate to the Chief Operating Officer of Amnesty International USA and co-founder of Never Again , an international network of young people working for peace. Heddy also writes for the Global Youth Fund blog .

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People are Ready for a Vision-led Movement

Sun, 21 May 2006 11:43:00 PDT

are going to make Oakland the new Silicon Valley for green capital." MacArthur "Genius Fellow" Majora Carter talked about her work in the South Bronx, where there are 15 waste transfer stations within a one mile radius that handle about 25% percent of New York City's waste. Hawken, who is writing a new book, Blessed Unrest , about the growing movement toward sustainability and social justice, estimates that 99% of the energy we use is wasted and that, "an economy that wastes its resources always Last Thursday I went to hear Majora Carter from Sustainable South Bronx , Paul Hawken , author of Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce , Van Jones from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights , Geralina Fortier from People's Grocery , and Bruce Cox of the Alliance for West Oakland Development speak at the first Solutions Salon .

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Raising Money and Having Fun

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:07:00 PDT

Corey Pudhorodsky from the 501c3cast sent me a great New York Times article called Having a Blast for a Good Cause . The article profiles groups who are appealing to donors, particularly young ones, with events that are fun AND raise money such as the Society for Mature Adults Seeking to Help Entertain and Donate who raise money with social events like Amazing Race Scavenger Hunts, Rec Room Olympics and the Idiotarod (pictured above). The Iditarod is a famous long-distance race in which big burly yapping dogs tow a sled and driver across Alaska.

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Rumors of Blogs' Demise and Revolution Are Exaggerated!

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:47:30 PST

sucker's bet for new -media fame seekers? New York Magazine: Blogs to Riches - The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom by Clive Thompson. "Blogs are not causing a revolution. Blog are just another Internet communication strategy and tool!" quot;

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Donate Books: Help Rebuild New Orleans' Libraries

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:11:00 PST

this week about the New Orleans' Public Library's call for for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages. Trigs, Public Relations New Orleans Public Library 219 Loyola Avenue New Orleans, LA 70112 According to the NYFA ( New York Foundation for the Arts) site, If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate. new orleans katrina library donatio So You Wanna Be a Domestic Goddess passed on info. The

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Social Capitalist Awards

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 12:29:00 PST

Big thanks to my dad for sending me a New York Times article about social enterprise that mentions Fast Company's 2006 Social Capitalist Awards . First Book Grameen Foundation USA Heifer International Housing Partnership Network Jumpstart Kickstart New Community Corp. New Leaders for New Schools PATH Pioneer Human Services Raising a Reader Rare Room to Read Rubicon Programs Inc. Here are the 25 winners (I was going to include links to all the orgs, but something is wonky with Blogger today and it was taking FOREVER to create the links. If you click on the

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Welcome to the Blogosphere: Julia Fabris McBride

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:35:06 PST

A few years ago when I was working for the Online Arts Leadership project with the New York State Alliance for Arts Organizations and Cornell University, I met Julia Fabris McBride. I have not heard from her in a while, but she just sent an email telling me aobut her new blog . At the time, she was deputy director for programming at the Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation (IAAF). She has since started her own consultanting company, Community Collaborations .

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This and That

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 15:29:00 PST

This week I discovered the blog of Ken Stein (no relation), a teacher in New York city. As if you don't get enough of my holding forth here, Marshall Kirkpatrick interviewed me the other day for Techsoup's Netsquared project, and posted it here . We talked about the work of my company Members Only Software, and how I see emerging Internet technologies impacting the non-profit arena.

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4x4 Joistke Tagged Me

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:12:00 PST

General Manager of the Pro Art Chamber Orchestra Management/Capacity Assessment Evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge Grants Day of Service Consultant for N-TEN Community Builder/Network Coordinator for Artswire, an online network for artists and project of the New York Foundation for the Arts Joistke tagged me with the 4x4 game activity. And, no, Joistke, I haven't done this before.

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Mentoring Young Women Bloggers

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 12:41:00 PST

Its all about a ballroom dancing program in the New York City public schools and it makes a terrific case for the importance of arts education. Beth Kanter posted information about an interesting youth mentoring opportunity on the www.netsquared.org blog recently. They are looking for bloggers from around the world to be blogging mentors for 1 week as part of the Young Caucasus Women project, a group blog for young women from the Caucasus region (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia).

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Seven Favorite Books of 2005

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:08:00 PST

The New York Times named his newest book, Kafka on the Shore , which I have not read, as one of their 10 Best Books of 2005. Whenever someone asks me if I've read a good book lately, I can never remember what I've read, so this year, I wrote down titles as I read them. Of the 31 books I read this year, here were my 7 favorites: #1 Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall My Dad brought this book for me when he and my mom came to visit in November and I just finished it today.

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Jim does Tunis

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:40:00 PST

My new friends. By this time he has a pad of paper on which he's written every price so far, crossed it out and done a new price. $80, The same was true at Le Diwan, down the street, which was the number two restaurant by the same family (reminded me of some of the New Orleans restaurant affiliations). It wouldn't have been that much in New York ! Jim's adventures in Tunis I had to write these experiences down. They are not Benetech-relevant, but I circulated them inside Benetech and was encouraged to post them in the Beneblog.

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Y so few Ys in the blogosphere?

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:03:00 PDT

The 92nd Street Y in New York (not a YMCA but the old YMHA - New York's Jewish Y) has an extremely active blog focusing on Jewish Culture - and doesn't hesitate to jump into contraversial theological discussions . Of all the various kinds of non-profits we work with, I've thought that the YMCA's might profit most from the community-building benefits of a blog. But when I scan the net for YMCA blogs, I don't see a lot going on out there.

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Vlogging to Cambodia: Eath Chhnon

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 21:16:18 PDT

Two years ago, at age 20, she came to New York City. I can communicate with new people who share an interest in my country. Eath Chhnon (otherwise known as " Village Girl ") is a Cambodian ???video video blogger??? or vlogger .

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Arts Tourism Vlog

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:28:55 PDT

The [link] explores artists and artist resources in New York's Hudson River Valley. Check out the interview with the Dutchess Arts Council ! Interesting use of the mediu

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My personal Blogher To Do List and Reflections

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:42:31 PDT

Eath is in New York and I'm definitely going to try to connect with her face-to-face. I'm still dancing on the edges between action and reflection, but wanted to get down some of my evolving next action steps and questions for reflection. It is hard, but if I don't do it now, I'm afraid I'll loose forever. These are in

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Remix Moma - Part 2

Sat, 28 May 2005 13:48:38 PDT

One other example of museum podcasting: A New York art Web site, woostercollective.com , recently made a sound-seeing tour of the Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum , which the Web site's creators made in hushed tones while wandering through the show, sometimes quoting from the museum's official audio guide, which they listened to as they chatted. Last week I posted about Dave Gilbert's experiment with podcasting "unnofficial audio guides" at Moma, a project called "Apologia: We love MoMA. Hackers hack a platform out of respect for it."

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That's Art Mobs, Not Art Snobs ...

Tue, 17 May 2005 13:02:05 PDT

But, found this interesting example of using this new technology to make art more accessible ... Makes me wish we lived in New York or that it could be done for MFA in Boston. ??? sOrganizational Communication course at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. I decided to join the Thursday evening blogger list and hope to make it to the meetings. Art Mobs ???

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Arts Darwinism

Wed, 07 May 2003 16:16:57 PDT

Cuts in funding have forced the Dance Theatre of Harlem, in New York , to lay off 19 of its 27 staff members and reduce its budget by $3-million, reports The The Ballet Tech company, in New York , has canceled its upcoming season to avoid a projected $665,000 budget shortfall, reports The The New York Time HARLEM DANCE THEATER Cuts The Washington Post. The

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Arts Policy Reports

Thu, 01 May 2003 12:29:26 PDT

Paul, New York , Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle. strategies that may include advocating for a dedicated revenue stream or tax, encouraging new foundations to support the cultural sector, promoting increased corporate philanthropy, developing additional mechanisms to build and renovate cultural facilities, assisting smaller groups to access individual giving through united fundraising and consolidate certain functions, and helping all agencies optimize their earned income potentia Solid policy research into the nonprofit arts and culture sector, once rare and anecdotal, is now accumulating.

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