Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 6, 2009
My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog. You can read the full post and join the conversation on SSIR here. The post is copied below. My current job title includes the term “Community Builder” and I get asked nearly every day just what that means: how do you build community? where is the community you want to build?
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 30, 2009
I just got back from Foo Camp 2009, which was a blast as usual. I think this is my third or fourth Foo Camp, and the energy around public uses of technology was palpable. It's structured as an unconference, where the 300 or so folks showing up design the conference program of roughly 70 sessions in about an hour the first night. The picture above has the schedule for just one half of the rooms/tents on Saturday!
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Wild Apricot
AUGUST 5, 2009
Tight in the budget and short on staff, non-profits are always on the lookout for new ways to get things done — and the Internet is a real treasure trove of useful tools. Here are 100 different applications to help you out with a variety of tasks from project tracking and collaboration to donor and membership management, and from building your non-profit website to tracking its effectiveness.( read more ).
Robert Weiner
AUGUST 26, 2009
The good folks at Asipration have taken my list of donor databases and put it into the Social Source Commons wiki. What's more, they added descriptions, logos, and links to the vendors' sites. Very cool!
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.
NetWits
AUGUST 24, 2009
A friend recently told me a story that resonated with me. She and her husband inherited a bit of family money and immediately knew they wanted to donate it to a favorite local cause. They took some time to meet with the Executive Director, talked over ideas regarding the use of the money, and left feeling great about their decision to give.
VisionLink
AUGUST 28, 2009
'Building on the Form Builder (not sure my English teacher would like that intro), we are releasing an even easier tool to customize your own search screens. Even better--different Form Sets can have their own search screens to make sure that each group or partner, or each staff group using a particular Form Set can use the Search Screen that best meets their particular needs.
Nonprofit Technology brings together the best content for nonprofit technical enthusiasts from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 28, 2009
Sometimes you come across something cool and relevant to your work. I couldn't resist getting a couple of the new Louis Braille silver dollars. They have an image of Louis Braille (this is his bicentennial year) and actual raised dots (for the letters BRL which is the code for Braille) on the back of the coin. The National Federation of the Blind convinced the federal government to have the U.S.
Wild Apricot
AUGUST 20, 2009
For some time, Twitter users have been able to publish their Twitter updates automatically to Facebook. Now, Facebook is returning the favor. On August 20, Facebook announced a new feature allowing Facebook Pages to automatically feed status updates, photos, links, notes and events to Twitter. If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, link
NCE Social Media
AUGUST 28, 2009
Erik Qualman , Global Vice President of Online Marketing for EF Education , has written at great lengths and spoken to many groups about socialnomics. He is a leading international expert on social media. Video Fridays #10 blog post showed a video highlighting some of his ideas. Now here’s a video of him discussing his ideas in person. Do you feel that Social Media is a fad?
NetWits
AUGUST 19, 2009
The Social Networking tool Twitter has become a mainstay in my daily routine. In my line of work (nonprofit consulting) it’s important for me to stay up on industry news, trends, technology and people. Twitter helps me do this. It’s also important for me to connect with peers in the industry that can challenge my thinking and provide a sounding board to bounce off ideas.
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.
Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology
AUGUST 19, 2009
I’ve been a fan of user stories for several years now. User stories are a way to describe a set of functionalities of an application in a way that is focused on results – it’s easy to connect to mission. An example from an events management application: The organization should be able to create several different kinds of events, and determine for each kind of event which detailed information will be taken.
Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 7, 2009
NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, puts on a massive, be-there-or-be-square conference for nonprofit professionals every year (in 2009, we met in San Francisco). The next event is April 8-10, 2010, in Atlanta, GA. But, if you don’t want to wait until April to dive into the knowledge and expertise in the NTEN network, you don’t have to!
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 5, 2009
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.
Robert Weiner
AUGUST 19, 2009
The good folks at Aspiration have been working to put my list of donor databases into a wiki. Along the way the identified some that seem to have disappeared and weren't on my earlier list of defunct donor databases. Here are the new entries: Association Management System from Micro Solutions. Donation Management System from Cumulus 9. DonorAccess from DonorAccess.
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NCE Social Media
AUGUST 27, 2009
Did you ever wonder why your agency doesn’t pop to the top of search results when you use Google, Yahoo, Bing or Ask.com? Perhaps it is because you haven’t optimized your site for search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the term people use to describe the study and enhancement of websites to help them gain page rankings in search engines, i.e. so they appear at the top of the search results for each search engine.
NetWits
AUGUST 25, 2009
I attended the season finale of the Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco on Sunday and got to enjoy a typical (overcast) San Francisco day in a typical (eucalyptus trees) San Francisco outdoor venue with about 2500 typical (fun-loving) San Franciscans. “Why do I care?” You might ask… Well, I attended the event with fundraising best practices in mind, so as I was listening to the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and some incredible tenors and sopranos, I was thinking about how nonprofits are becomi
Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology
AUGUST 19, 2009
I’ve been a fan of user stories for several years now. User stories are a way to describe a set of functionalities of an application in a way that is focused on results – it’s easy to connect to mission. An example from an events management application: The organization should be able to create several different kinds of events, and determine for each kind of event which detailed information will be taken.
Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 11, 2009
The 2009 GreatNonprofits Youth Thrive Awards will recognize the top-rated youth-focused nonprofits. In the month of September, the small, medium, and large organizations with the most positive reviews will be featured on GreatNonprofits and Guidestar. The contest asks clients, donors, volunteers, and board members to write reviews of these nonprofits.
Advertiser: Syncrony
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 25, 2009
We had an all-company movie, The Reckoning during lunch this last week. One of the top issues that came out during our recent strategy meeting was the team's eagerness to hear about other projects. This was an opportunity to hear about human rights: The Reckoning is about the International Criminal Court. The movie is excellent: it does a good job of covering the issues around the establishment of the court and its early years including its earliest cases.
Robert Weiner
AUGUST 19, 2009
Idealware just published a new article of mine, on a subject that comes up whenever I teach workshops for small nonprofits: "Why not use Excel as my donor database?". The article, Back Away from that Spreadsheet: Why Excel Isn't a Donor Database is available now, and offers some good reasons to move your donor data to a more robust system and out of those old spreadsheets.
NCE Social Media
AUGUST 25, 2009
Okay, so this is a few days late. ACHIEVA had it’s golf outing yesterday so pall efforts had been placed into it. This video, pointed out by Arc of Monroe , pposes the question is social media just a fad or will it end up being one of the biggest disruptive forces since the industrial revolution? What do you think? As always, please feel free to share in the comments section.
NetWits
AUGUST 17, 2009
The first website went up 18 years ago this month. Websites have done a lot of growing up since those early days, but there are still a lot of common mistakes that nonprofits make online. I'll be covering several do's and don'ts at NetWits Summer Camp.
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!
Wild Apricot
AUGUST 19, 2009
When a friend mentioned the online system his employer has started using to schedule shift work, my first thought was how useful a similar tool could be for non-profit volunteer coordinators. Sure enough, there’s a version of the web-based software that's specially designed for scheduling volunteers — and it’s free for qualified charities.( read more ).
Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 28, 2009
“First, we’re strictly nonprofit.&# That’s how UniversalGiving begins when describing it’s work. But, what it should really say is, “we may be non-profit, but we are not non-impact.&# Or at least something like that! Why? UniversalGiving is making great impact on communities around the world, both in the work, funds or volunteer efforts contributed to individuals and groups via their platform, but also in effectively and passionately empowering donors and volu
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 21, 2009
I get great emails all the time, but this one needed to be posted right away! Jim From: Rick Costa Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 3:26 PM To: Bookshare Team Subject: A shining example of quality (and fast!) Volunteer work Hello Bookshare Team, "The Adventures Of Eddy And Teddy Too Teff" by Lorraine Wooding was given to Robin Seaman by the author was very eager to have it in our collection.
Robert Weiner
AUGUST 18, 2009
Idealware published a new article of mine today, on a subject that comes up whenever I teach workshops for small nonprofits: "Why not use Excel as my donor database?" The article is at [link]. Tags: Donor Databases.
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NCE Social Media
AUGUST 18, 2009
If you were at NCE in Nashville and saw Holly Ross , you will want to see her blog posts about her time with NCE. Entry 1. Entry 2. Here are her two PowerPoint presentations from it. Tags: Education and Training Tools holly nashville nce nten presentation ross slideshare.
NetWits
AUGUST 5, 2009
We recently talked about how to Set up Your Social Media Listening Dashboard with the goal of getting you to run some basic searches on various social media web sites and aggregate them into an iGoogle Dashboard. Doing this makes it simpler for you to monitor and take action on the things being said about you. It also helps you participate in the conversations going on around the web that you want to join.
Wild Apricot
AUGUST 14, 2009
Engage your audiences, help supporters of your non-profit keep up with any tagged topic on Twitter and Flickr, or publicize your event with a custom Twitterfountain , a nifty new mashup you can embed on your blog or website — Have you ever wanted to see what was happening at that one event you could not go to? Did the plain text-backchannels somehow left you feeling disappointed?
Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 24, 2009
The SXSW Panel Picker is now open for your thumbs up or down on the thousands of panels proposed for next year’s SXSWInteractive festival. What’s SXSWi ? SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.
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