The Googlization of Nonprofit Transparency
What's Hot in NpTech
The America's Giving Challenge launched this week. There was much media buzz, including articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. Also lots of buzz in NpTech circles including NTEN, TechSoup, and David Collin. Britt Bravo has a how-to get started post over at NetSquared. Ruby Sinreich gets interviewed on NPR's marketplace.
Sean Stannard-Stockton is discovers Google's Nonprofit Portal and blogger ask "What if Google made play at Guidestar?" Sean asks, "I think this is a game changer. If these Google pages resided at the top of the search results when people look up nonprofits, than these pages will become de facto home pages, but with blog posts, new stories and discussions that are both positive and negative." There's quite a bit of discussion in the comments. The Red Cross was mentioned in the post and Red Cross staffer Wendy Harmon responds on her personal blog.
Cold winter days are great for catching up with your reading. Looks like 1cent thoughs on NpTech blog has been enjoying the Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. Favorite quote: "Sacrificing managerial efficiency on the altar of inspiration."
Speaking about Great Nonprofits, Perla Ni, former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, has launched a new site intended as the Zagat Guide for Nonprofits. Read more about from NTEN as well as a profile in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
NTEN released its CRM Satisfaction Survey last week. Michelle Murrain blogged her thoughts and an interesting discussion followed.
If you're really procrastinating about your year-end campaign, better read this quick.
Social Media
Here's the collective wisdom from NpTechers on outreaching to bloggers.
This week, Britt Bravo wrote a fantastic piece titled Ten Tips for Asking Bloggers To Write About Your Cause. One of her tips is to start reading the blogs (here's a good beginner's guide to RSS) She points to additional resources including Reaching Bloggers on Spare Change and a cute little video Blogger Outreach 101 on the Common Craft blog as well as an example from 10,000 Villages who contacted bloggers and asked them if they would like to join their blog press list.
Two weeks ago, Jo Le asked a question on the progressives exchange listserv about how to reach out to bloggers. There was lots of advice plus pointers to blogger relations guide, like this one from e-politics and a word of a soon-to-be-released guide from free range studios. Other resources noted included RIP pitch is dead by Brian Solis and everything you need to know about Social Media Releases, a leading expert in PR 2.0 advice and writes a great blog too.
Social Media Strategy Notes
The Free Press Action Network has a campaign called "Stop Big Media" that is asking people to email their Senators to urge support for The Media Ownership Act of 2007 and take a stand for better media. If you
want an entertaining way to learn more about why this issue is important, check out the online game "Whack a Murdoch." The campaign is offers an example of a social media integrated advocacy campaign. Check out the blog, photo petition, YouTube Channel, and MySpace.
If you are planning a social media integrated campaign, one NpTech tagger suggests this useful article (just substitute the word corporation with nonprofit.) If you're considering Facebook, you must go read Rich Reader's post over at Netsquared.
Meaghan Lamarre over at echoditto has an epiphany about twitter and its usefulness. Do you agree that "shared being" is valuable? For further analysis, you must read Twitter: Why we should love muck and feces
AFP Blog points to a post called "What the Creative in Creative Commons Really Means" from PC Magazine. It lets creators understand that copyright is not one right, but a bundle of rights. And that if you create a work, you have the ability to let the world use it in useful ways. Meanwhile someone tagged this useful article in the NpTech tag stream.
Stay Away from Spock
I wish had I seen this post from Nancy White a week ago when I stupidly responded to several requests from people in my network to join them on Spock. I should not have allowed it to scan my address book to send out invites to people who probably don't need or want this service. (apologies to everyone) Nancy White points to good posts about the problem, "It May Be the Evil Spock" and "Initial Response to Spock" by Jim Benson who suggests that we should join Spock because it has crawled the web and created an identity for us - which needs to be cleaned up. In the comments, Chris Messina against signing up to clean up your profile because Spock is worse than a yellow pages listing. The bottom line, we have to think more and more about the social effects of technology. Beware nptech colleagues, don't use this service.
Social Media Marketing Playbook: Excellent Resource
Marnie Webb tagged an excellent post titled "12 Ways To Make Your Website Ready for Social Media Creators." The post describes ways that you can make your web site content re-usable for social media creators like bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers. This post is just a small taste from the book "Getting to Firstbase, A Social Media Marketing Book" by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo. As a blogger, I got a review copy and while I haven't completely finished reading it, it is definitely a must-read.
Digital Story Telling, Photo Sharing, and Other Ways To Use Photos
Alan Levine, developed a workshop resource called "Fifty Ways To Tell A Story" where he experimented with online digital storytelling by telling the same story on 50 different sites. The resource has links to the tools with reflections on techniques.
If you just want to focus on how to tell you stories in photos, check out this post from Wild Apricot called "Ten Best Photo Sharing Sites." I have never really made past flickr because of the wonderful community there, and the continual improvement in features like the recent addition of analytics and stats. Marnie Webb tags Laughing Squids' take on flickr stats.
Jon Stahl found a nifty tool for mac and flickr lovers called Desklickr. Can you guess by the name what it does?
Meanwhile Gregory Heller tags an analog way to tell your story: moo cards.
Video
From the recent discussions on some list servs, lots of nonprofits who have applied to the YouTube Nonprofit Program are still waiting for approval. A more timely approval process is anticipated once they get through the backlog.
In the meantime, this post from Marc Sirkin sharing his YouTube Nonprofit Channel experience is worth reading as people contemplate a YouTube strategy. Marc's findings: Traffic increase, little donation follow through. You can find a collection how-to YouTube and Viral Video strategy resources here.
Blogging and Blogs
Issac is from Kenya and is working in Tanzania for children who are orphans because their parents died of aids. A great example of blogging the stories of your organization.
For some pointers on how to write a successful blog, see Digital Inspiration's Presentation on the topic.
The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology. Many individuals tag hundreds of resources each week. Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.
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Thanks for the mention, and glad you're enjoying the book!
Posted by: Darren | December 18, 2007 at 01:44 AM