Nonprofit Tech for Good

JULY 11, 2017

With the release the 2017 Global NGO Technology Survey on August 1, the release of the first edition of the 2017 Global Trends in Giving Report on September 4, and a packed schedule of webinars and in-person trainings this fall that need to be prepared for, for the first time in six years of blogging – I need to take a blog break to catch up on work. 2017 is the final year of webinars, so in 2018 I’ll have more time to blog and maybe even accept guest bloggers for the first time.

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Wild Apricot

JULY 12, 2017

I was on a thread recently where folks listed some of the craziest suggestions they’ve received from well-meaning know-it-alls. I thought I’d share 15 of the most utterly insane ones. And to make up for it, at the end of this post I share three simple, yet highly effective strategies from some of the best fundraisers I’ve come across.

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Byte Technology

JULY 25, 2017

The dreaded maintenance page: it is, as they say, a necessary evil. After all, nobody likes having to put one up, as it sends a signal to both loyal and new visitors that something may be wrong with your site, which can discourage returning users and give the impression of untrustworthiness that you’ve spent lots of time trying to avoid. But alas, there are times when it’s, well, just absolutely necessary.

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EveryAction

JULY 12, 2017

Change doesn’t just happen in Washington, DC. Across the country, state and local governments make meaningful policy decisions that affect nearly every issue - from preventing gun violence, to protecting the environment, or safeguarding LGBTQ rights. That’s why we expanded EveryAction’s industry-leading advocacy tools to include Local Advocacy. EveryAction clients have already used advocacy forms to send hundreds of thousands of messages to federal elected officials.

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Speaker: Andrew Olsen, CFRE - EVP, Fundraising Solutions at DickersonBakker | Kat Landa, CFRE, CSD - SVP, Talent Solutions at DickersonBakker

Across the nonprofit sector, organizations invest heavily in donor retention efforts, yet the struggle of cultivating lasting relationships remains. While attracting new donors is crucial, the lack of repeat donors poses significant financial risks. Through a comprehensive analysis of industry data, experts argue that there is a direct correlation between donor burnout, donor retention, and the talent retention crisis.

Donor

VisionLink

JULY 8, 2017

Visionlink is proud to announce its newest customer, Michigan 2-1-1. This is a network of professional centers across the state working to provide the most complete and up to date resources for individuals, households, state agencies, health care providers and many others. Working in concert, they increase the accuracy of their information, while limited costs.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 28, 2017

Working as a nonprofit consultant can sometimes feel isolating. That’s why it important to have networking opportunities to connect with professional colleagues face-to-face beyond online groups. I try to make an effort to do this regularly. This past week, I met up with nonprofit consultant Carrie Rice. We met in a nonprofit conference space of another colleague, Corey Newhouse, executive director of PublicProfit.

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Wild Apricot

JULY 5, 2017

If you want to spend more time building local businesses up and less time managing the administrative work of your Chamber, Chamber of Commerce software may be for you — here's everything you need to know about Chamber of Commerce software, along with 9 options and how to evaluate between them.

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Byte Technology

JULY 18, 2017

Ask yourself this question: what’s one consistent element of every outstanding and beautifully designed WordPress site you’ve ever seen? Most likely it’s—in a word—typography. Indeed, having the perfect fonts can mean so much to the readability of a site, and using typefaces that meld perfectly with other design elements can really make a huge impact on the user experience.

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ASU Lodestar Center

JULY 5, 2017

posted by Brenna Paes Graduate Alumna. Many nonprofit organizations rely on individual giving as a primary source of income to carry out their missions. People have been giving to charity through time, money, or in kind gifts for centuries and beyond. The act of charitable giving is here to stay, but the nature of giving is constantly evolving with generations.

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NonProfit Hub

JULY 31, 2017

We live in a world super-saturated with brands, logos, slogans and sponsors. It’s impossible to walk down the street or surf the web without experiencing commercial overload. Each and every day more brands are being introduced to the world, and, consequently, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. Most of these brands are offering tangible products and services like sneakers or home security systems or internet service.

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Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio

The average nonprofit uses five or more different software platforms to create their donor’s journey, making the experience clunky and disjointed. If you want to design a magical online giving experience for donors, making their journey as seamless as possible is key. In this webinar with expert Tim Sarrantonio, you’ll learn the fundamental steps to create an immersive and personalized online giving experience for your donors.

Donor

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 18, 2017

Flickr Photo by Gavin St. Ours. Last week, I was honored to do several workshops hosted by the Fund for Santa Barbara on how nonprofits can link a culture of well being to outcomes based on my book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout. The workshop includes a facilitated process based on the “ World Cafe ” method where participants work in small groups to discuss the challenges in the workplace and how to address them.

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Tech Soup

JULY 26, 2017

Websites, blog posts, social media, online news — all of these are part of your community's history, but all are ephemeral in nature. Now, the Internet Archive, an expert in preserving online content, is beginning a program to train librarians in web archiving. This program is offered in partnership with WebJunction and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

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Wild Apricot

JULY 20, 2017

Are you worried your association is dying off? Member engagement expert Sarah Sladek gives you a formula that will predict your organization's life expectancy, and shows you how to ensure your association continues to thrive.

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Byte Technology

JULY 11, 2017

In Part 1 of this column we learned that, thanks to the vast and incredibly helpful community of WordPress users, there are countless hacks, tricks and tips to make designing, building, editing and administering a WordPress site a lot easier and, often, a lot more fun. Here’s Part 2, with another seven highly effective tools, shortcuts and work-arounds that can you save you time and aggravation as you welcome new and repeat visitors and users.

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Advertiser: Digital Ocean

Effectively managing cloud technology is getting more complex. From cybersecurity concerns, vendor lock-in, cost increases, or lack of transparency on costs, it can quickly get out of control. Knowing what you can control and finding a platform that’s built with nonprofits in mind is key.

Nonprofit

Achieve

JULY 27, 2017

This blog originally appeared in. Philanthropy News Digest. "Movements are built by and for the people. The people generate the movement, spread the rallying cry of the message, and depend on one another to meet the collective’s goals in addressing the social issue at hand. The people, though, are bound by a common vision and a common narrative — to change the course of an issue that has affected so many people.

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Global Giving

JULY 25, 2017

Jessamine Chin Director, VMWare Foundation Who She Is: As Director of the VMware Foundation, Jessamine Chin leads engagement for VMware's 20,000+ employees and heads their worldwide, social impact programs. In 2017, Great Places to Work and Fortune magazine recognized VMware as one of the Best Workplaces for Giving Back. Jessa holds an MBA from the University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business and was recognized as the Beyond Yourself Fellow.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 11, 2017

I’ve always benefited from learning from colleagues who do nonprofit technology training and capacity but often we come from the same perspective. I’ve always dreamed of accessing a diverse network of people who do nonprofit capacity across different disciplines or what Nancy White has described as “ learning from adjacent practices.” This would be a network or community of practice that freely shares and learns from one another about training and capacity building th

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Tech Soup

JULY 19, 2017

For the Professional Social Media class I teach at Sonoma State University , I created an exercise designed to help folks practice both content creation and looking at metrics. Nonprofits can use this at a staff meeting or other gathering to help people improve their content creation skills as well as their skills with looking at social media data. The equipment is mostly analog: the index cards and colored dots pictured below, plus a place to record the results.

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Advertiser: Syncrony

Looking for cost reductions for your nonprofit? Why not consider modernizing with a digital board management system that's designed to work with remote meetings, with immediate cost reductions if you still distribute paper packets to members? Get going in less than an hour on a fully hosted cloud solution built on the latest technology that runs on any device - from desktops to tablets and smartphones - without any installation.

Nonprofit

Wild Apricot

JULY 20, 2017

It’s with great pleasure that Software Advice, one of the top software review sites, just awarded us their Top Five spot for Ease of Use when it comes to membership management software.

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Byte Technology

JULY 4, 2017

It’s no great secret that one of the elements that makes WordPress so incredibly popular is the fact that it thrives on a sense of community. Indeed, message boards teem with useful information that WordPress users, designers and administrators at every level of knowledge and skill share and disseminate. Of course, given that the platform itself is based on open source code, it would absolutely make sense that some of the best tips, trips, hacks and tools come not necessarily from those people t

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Donor Search

JULY 24, 2017

Most people in the fundraising or nonprofit space are aware of the importance of major gifts. While these are not always the easiest to identify and secure, major gifts can be some of the most impactful donations to your organization each year.

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Global Giving

JULY 25, 2017

Overview. Download “Transforming Technology Pro Bono: A Practical Approach to Engaging Technology Talent for Nonprofit Capacity Building” from VMware Foundation and Taproot Foundation to learn best practices in structuring a corporate pro bono technology project or program with a nonprofit partner. Did you know the median technology budget for nonprofits is less than 2% of each organization’s total operating budget, and nonprofits aren’t confident they have enough skilled

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Advertiser: DonorDock

Are your donors your biggest fans, or are you lacking donor loyalty? The truth is, your donors have expectations of what their relationship with your organization should look like. This ebook will help you learn how to live up to those expectations!

Donor

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 12, 2017

In my book with Aliza Sherman, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact Without Burnout , we offer a framework for practicing self-care and creating a culture of well-being in the nonprofit workplace. The book looks at our relationships with ourselves, other people, careers and money, our environment, and technology—and shows how our relationships with people in our workplaces heavily influence our well-being.

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Tech Soup

JULY 31, 2017

In a recent blog post , in which our nonprofit, TechSoup, advocated for Net Neutrality, there were several responses that have an interestingly identical structure: (a) Government should stay out of the Internet; (b) There are technical issues involved that TechSoup does not understand; and. (c) TechSoup should stick to its knitting of being an opinion-free provider of donated and low-cost software and hardware and not offer opinions on social and political issues.

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Wild Apricot

JULY 31, 2017

How much time do you think it takes to set up a new website for your nonprofit? With Wild Apricot, it takes about 20 hours. This may seem long, but in just a few afternoons new customers are able to have their entire website set up all by themselves. Here's how.

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Eric Jacobsen Blog

JULY 30, 2017

The book, Step Up , shows readers how to step up to the plate during six critical leadership moments. Readers learn how to: Use anger intelligently in the workplace. Recognize and deal with terminal politeness. Make decisions when no one else is making them. Take ownership when others are externalizing a problem. Identify and leverage pessimism. Inspire others to take action.

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Advertisement

Organizations like yours are increasingly realizing that technology adoption is only as good as the technology you choose. Statistics from a 2014 NTEN study show that seriously investing resources in training for your staff corresponds to higher adoption and ultimately technology effectiveness. In this report, we’ll give you a high-level overview of how to get your organization in shape for technology adoption and best practices for facilitating this critical process.

Nonprofit

NonProfit Hub

JULY 14, 2017

It’s no secret that working in the nonprofit sector is challenging. You juggle budget issues, limited resources and always wanting to do more, all while keeping a smile brimming. It’s common to arrive at a place where you’re not sure the work is paying off. Most of us in the nonprofit sector aren’t here because we couldn’t make it anywhere else, but because we want to be here.

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Global Giving

JULY 11, 2017

Overview. Is your nonprofit struggling to create a high-functioning website with web pages that are well-organized and user-focused? Good news! You don’t have to be a web developer or designer to create awesome web pages for your nonprofit’s website. This worksheet will help you plan a new page on your website or improve an existing web page.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 26, 2017

Note from Beth: One of the things that I enjoyed most about IFCAsia was the networking opportunities to connect with other people in the region who share interests. One of them was Vincent Law who is doing interesting work with teaching young children about giving and philanthropy. When he told me the name of his program, I got excited because I had done a lot of research and writing about “ PhilanthroKids ” and he mentioned he was inspired in part by that post.

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Tech Soup

JULY 5, 2017

Earlier this year, we told you about all the resources available at TechSoup for learning to use technology. But what if you need more? Finding Quick Technology Answers Beyond TechSoup. Because we know that TechSoup may not be able to answer all of your really specific technology questions, here are some of our favorite sites. Plus, we've got some techniques we recommend that are useful for targeted searches.

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Association executives—and hopefully their boards—know that they are facing perilous times. Driven by the pace of cultural and technological change, they are experiencing major disruptions in the traditional business models that used to guide organizational growth strategies.orgSource offers a straightforward approach to navigating these changes and readying your organization for growth.

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