Nonprofit Tech for Good

JULY 28, 2010

Social networking communities are migrant communities. They move with you to The Next Big Thing i.e., from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to Foursquare. Social media skeptics often say that it’s a waste of time to utilize social networking sites because they are here today, and then gone tomorrow. While it is definitely true these sites could be here today, and gone tomorrow, your supporters will indeed migrate with you on to The Next Big Thing.

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Social Network Community Network Myspace 192

Robert Weiner

JULY 25, 2010

I get a lot of emails like the following from small nonprofits: We desperately need to get a new donor database and most of them are totally unaffordable!! Looking at the Idealware Low Cost Database report , I find that there are so many considerations that it is quite complicated to make a choice. I am tending towards (system x) because it would seem to match what we need right away, and we could afford it.

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Database Donor System Test 180

Amy Sample Ward

JULY 28, 2010

Last month, I moderated the June #4Change chat with the topic of “community building&#. There were some excellent ideas and tips, and generally great conversation. The problem for me with the chat was twofold: 1. Twitter fail. It has become a regular occurrence for our monthly #4change chats to find Twitter not even working. This has meant some chats haven’t happened, some have stopped early or operated on a very slow conversation, and others (like last month’s chat) have moved

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Build Community Twitter Conversation 161

NetWits

JULY 28, 2010

On May 18th, 2007 at 5:18pm I tweeted for the first time, saying "@Ruby. I vote teleporting." I was at the 2007 Personal Democracy Forum , and if memory serves correctly, I was replying to a general question another attendee, Ruby Sinreich, was asking of other attendees. Twitter was a backchannel for conversation throughout the day's activities, and I met many new colleagues and friends via this channel.

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Learning Channel Conversation Twitter 130

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

Wild Apricot

JULY 30, 2010

Ready for a bit of professional development, before Labor Day brings the start of another busy fall season? August is a great time for online learning – in fact, this month we’ve rounded up more free online seminars than ever before! There’s something for everyone from board members and administrators, to fundraisers and volunteer coordinators, to active members of all interests and levels.( read more ).

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Free Profit Social Media Volunteer 120

VisionLink

JULY 30, 2010

'When disaster strikes, trying to find out how your friends and family are doing can be agonizing. Not knowing is an awful feeling. To meet this need, the American Red Cross offers Safe & Well. Those who are hit by a disaster large or small can register on the Safe & Well site, and then their friends and family can search the database and receive information about a loved one''s most recent status.

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National United States Disaster Homeless 100

NetWits

JULY 29, 2010

It's hard to keep a really good thing a secret, but today I finally get to tell you about BlackbaudTV. The new website launches today with close to 40 videos from across the nonprofit sector. As you might have guessed, the website is at www.blackbaud.tv. The site features videos and interviews with Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook, Social media expert Chris Brogan , Twitpic founder Noah Everett , Holly Ross from NTEN, and NetSquared's Amy Sample Ward.

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Netsquared Sample Blackbaud Interview 100

Wild Apricot

JULY 25, 2010

Facebook has just added 3 new features to the ‘Like’ button that hold a promise of greater connectivity and better analytics. Not unusual for Facebook, the release came on a weekend, so no real chance yet to thoroughly explore the bells and whistles – and the implications. And there’s a lot to take in! ‘Like’ acts more like ‘Share’; Facebook analytics are beefed up; and Facebook Pages get to pipe their content right into the newsfeeds of all who ‘Like’ them.

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Analytics Profit Facebook Nptech 115

VisionLink

JULY 30, 2010

'VisionLink has completed another review of our compliance with the Alliance for Information and Referral Systems (AIRS) standards, version 6.0. We are pleased to report that we are just so slightly shy of the 100% benchmark. We''ll have the last bit taken care of very soon. We strongly endorse operational, technical, and data exchange standards as each increases the efficacy with which information and referral organizations can connect needs and assets across communities and states.

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Taxonomy Benchmark Test Review 100

Amy Sample Ward

JULY 30, 2010

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine ‘s book, The Networked Nonprofit , is now out and starting lots of conversations. But what’s everyone talking about? Below I’ve shared some excerpts and resources to get you started and ready to join in! Getting Started. Let’s start at the beginning: what is a “networked nonprofit&# anyway? As Beth and Allison explain: Networked Nonprofits are simple and transparent organizations.

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Network Slides Review Nonprofit 123

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 27, 2010

Photo by Geoff Livingston. I’m on vacation this week and next! We’re visiting family at the Jersey Shore, but stopping in DC to take the kids to the Smithsonian and other DC highlights. You might see a few blog posts or tweets but don’t expect a fast reply via email. Playing tourist in DC, it is interesting to see how much your online digital life impacts your offline life.

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DC Asia Offline Participatory 91

Wild Apricot

JULY 27, 2010

Blog posts and articles on Fundraising, Leadership, and Membership topped the active topics at AssociationJam.org this month, in terms of the numbers of submissions, views and reader votes, while the Volunteers, Technology, and Social Media came in almost as strong. Best of all, you’ll find a number of brand new faces here, among the excellent content submitted to and voted up in “AJam” through July 2010: Membership It's That Time Again: NFP Pulse on Member/Donor Recruitment & Retention has

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Associations Profit Retention Nptech 100

VisionLink

JULY 29, 2010

'We are very pleased to announce another new customer among the VisionLink network, Complete College America. Funded by Gates, Ford, Carnegie, Kellog and the Lumina Foundations, this is a nation wide initiative building voice and capacity to increase college completion rates, with a state by state strategy. The president of the National Governor''s Association has adopted this as a primary issue for the NGA, and in a very short time, this alliance has grown to more than 25 member states.

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America Denver National Rate 100

Amy Sample Ward

JULY 28, 2010

This morning I had the great pleasure and honor to present at Amplified Leicester about Community-Driven Social Impact, and run a short strategy-building workshop. Amplified Leicester is managed by the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University in partnership with the DMU Centre for Social Action and Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre.

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Impact Community Social Phoenix 123

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

Have Fun - Do Good

JULY 29, 2010

A big thanks to everyone who contributed a post to this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival! Below is a roundup of folks' answers to this month's topic, How to Create a Juicy Nonprofit Blog: • In her post, Creating a Juicy Blog for Nonprofits , Marion Conway suggests that your blog posts be about the overlapped area of what you know, and what readers want.

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Create Org Blogger Nonprofit 90

Get Fully Funded

JULY 25, 2010

Let’s face it: most nonprofit newsletters are boring. They’re full of jargon and insider news that leave donors feeling less than connected. To make your donors read your newsletter from start to finish, it must include info that donors find interesting. Put yourself in your donor’s shoes: what would they care about? What would make them take time from their busy life to pay attention to what you’ve put in print?

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Newsletter Ideas Donor Content 80

NTEN

JULY 28, 2010

Kivi Leroux Miller, EcoScribe Communications. Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging? We could get into a traditional marketing discussion about target audiences and personas, but let’s go at this challenge in a different way.

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Websites Content Create Newsletter 79

Amy Sample Ward

JULY 29, 2010

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of July 29th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying. To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

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Web Bookmarking Twitter Social Media 114

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

Tech Soup

JULY 29, 2010

This post was penned by guest blogger MeiMei Fox , who is a social media consultant, life coach, yoga instructor, and writer. She attended the San Francisco Online Community Report Meetup at TechSoup's offices last night where we featured Ben Rigby and his crowdsourced volunteering organization, The Extraordinaries. You can follow her on Twitter. Here's what she had to say about the event and getting people to volunteer.

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Volunteer People San Francisco Phone 67

Get Fully Funded

JULY 30, 2010

If you’re trying to raise money from donors, you must communicate with them. Donors are people with interests and feelings – not ATM machines or wallets. And to build relationships, we must communicate. Have you ever had a friend who only called you when they wanted something? Not much of a friendship, is it? You might fell taken advantage of or used.

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Newsletter Info Donor Gift 63

NTEN

JULY 28, 2010

Jeff Patrick, Common Knowledge. A whopping 86% of nonprofits say they have a presence on Facebook or another social media site according to the 2010 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. . That’s astounding really, but equally astounding, if a whole lot less obvious: your site visitors are increasingly getting to your site from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites.

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Social Media Site Media Social 67

Care2

JULY 26, 2010

Like crime, procrastination doesn’t pay. Literally. For many organizations nearly half of online fundraising revenue comes in during the month of December. But in actuality it takes months of preparation – building and stewarding an online community, inspiring donors, cultivating them, testing in advance of year-end and analyzing your metrics -- to really make the most of your year-end fundraising opportunities.

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Guide Fundraising Metrics Gift 68

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

Tech Soup

JULY 28, 2010

The recently published Nonprofit Guide to Going Green is a robust handbook on greening all aspects of a nonprofit organization's program. It covers everything from greening your office and building to green management, fundraising, information technology, purchasing, travel, organizing events in an environmental way, saving water, saving electricity, recycling, and obtaining green certification.

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Green Guide Review Case Study 61

Forum One

JULY 26, 2010

This is the fourth in a series of posts dedicated to the topic of online collaboration for grantmakers. In part one, we look at determing the value of creating an online collaborative community. The second part explores challenges in facilitating collaboration. The third post showcases the importance of knowing your community.This post focuses on timing and its role in the success of an online community.

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Collaboration Time Synchronous Influence 47

NTEN

JULY 28, 2010

Cindy Leonard, Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University. “Web accessibility” means creating websites that can be fully used by people with disabilities. Wikipedia provides a good formal definition : “Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality…When sites are correctly built and

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Accessibility Web Social Wikipedia 59

Care2

JULY 29, 2010

Ever wanted to find out where your donors and activists are hanging out on social networks so you can continue deepening your relationsips with your supporters and foster more two-way conversations? Thanks to Care2's new Social Network Tracker that allows you to match your email lists across major social networks it's now super easy to do. The Care2 Social Network Tracker tells you which of your donors and activists are on social networks, what social networks they are on and how many friends th

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Social Network Network Stumbleupon Social 51

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

Tech Soup

JULY 27, 2010

MyFax, which Protus makes available to nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup, lets users send and receive faxes through email and eliminates the expense and paper waste of a fax machine, fax server, and dedicated fax line. With MyFax, your faxing capabilities are always on-line — your phone line is never busy, and your fax is never out of paper.

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Business Free Green Files 60

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops. Art spaces masquerading as laundromats and letterpresses. I'm fascinated by these places because of their ability to attract diverse audiences to idiosyncratic experiences, and I'm curious how they stay afloat.

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

NTEN

JULY 28, 2010

Jed Alpert, Mobile Commons. Thirty-eight percent of American mobile phone users -- 120 million people -- access the web via their mobile device; fewer than 30 million are iPhones or Android phones. (Mobile Access 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project). This percentage increases dramatically among the under-served 30% of the population without reliable non-mobile Internet access (Pew).

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Mobile Web Blackberry Phone 56

Care2

JULY 27, 2010

The CitizenGulf project was just unfolded last week. A national event on August 25 with would-be meet-ups throughout the country designed to create awareness for the Citizen Effect project, seeks to raise funds and awareness for fishing families. The effort also fits the nonprofit's citizen empowering philanthropy philosophy, which is identifying actionable problems and solutions amongst major problems, such as this one -- the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

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Social Media Strategy Media Mexico 50

Advertisement

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.

Associations