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?
Robert Weiner
AUGUST 24, 2009
TechSoup , the nonprofit tech web site where I host a discussion forum, went live with a redesigned home page over the weekend. I love the new look, although it's only skin-deep. This is Phase 1 and only affects the home page--most links take you to pages on the old site, with a the old design and the old navigation. TechSoup's description of the project recognizes this issue: What you see today, Phase 1, offers several key improvements: An easier-to-use redesigned home page, An upgraded search
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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 ).
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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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.
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Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 18, 2009
I have a guest post up on John Haydon’s blog ! You can visit his blog to read the post and join the conversation there. The post is republished below. I’m always weary of posts that claim to pronounce the 10 Best Things You Can Ever Do, or 7 Steps to Success, or any other lofty achievement wrapped up in just a number of items. But, that doesn’t stop me from doing it myself!
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!
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
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.
Speaker: Joe Sharpe and James Carlson
Payroll optimization can be one of the most time-consuming and complex factors of small business management. Yet, organizations that crack the code on streamlining employee compensation often discover innovative avenues for growth. With the right strategies in place, outsourcing and streamlining payroll processes can result in substantial time and resource savings.
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.
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?
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!
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.
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand
Is your organization ready to build a recurring giving program that not only sustains but also propels your mission forward? 🚀 In this new webinar with industry visionary Tim Sarrantonio, we’ll guide you through the critical steps to establishing and scaling a successful recurring giving program. Whether you’re starting fresh or enhancing an existing program, this session will provide the strategies you need to deepen donor relationships and secure long-term support!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Amy Sample Ward
AUGUST 27, 2009
So, I’ve been feeling this coming for a while now and have either put off saying something or just changed the subject. I think we need to talk about our relationship. And no, I’m not breaking up with you! :) Instead, I want to take this relationship to the next level! Here’s what I’m thinking: 1. I love comments on this blog.
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 ).
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