Nonprofit Tech for Good

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

With over 45 million active users worldwide, LinkedIn is a social networking site that is becoming much more than just a place to have a Web 2.0 resume. Recently they have added many new tools and will likely be adding more in the coming year. Here are three simple, but powerful ways that nonprofits can use LinkedIn: 1) Create a Group : Make sure you create the group under the “Nonprofit&# category and select “Yes&# to both being listed in the “Groups Directory&# and that your

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NetWits

SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

With over 300 million users and over fifty percent of those users logging in daily Facebook is a platform that’s proven to be effective. It doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon either. Millions of people use the tool to stay connected with family and friends – sharing photos, videos, links, resources and personal day to day information. Some nonprofits are even figuring out how to connect with their supporters, donors, volunteers and advocates in new and unique ways.

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Amy Sample Ward

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

Today is OneWebDay ! A day of on and offline events spanning the globe celebrating the Web. This year’s theme is One Web. For All. bringing attention to issues and work on digital inclusion. One Web. For All. OneWebDay opens up techie conversations to everyone. The theme this year of digital inclusion is especially important now as the speed of iteration and advancement is faster than ever and yet there are huge numbers of people without access at all.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Beth Kanter tweeted about an article by Gale Berkowitz relating to evaluation, which I found really fascinating – it is a must read. In this article, Gale points to an interesting shift within her organization (the Packard Foundation): “Over the past four years we have been shifting from evaluation for proof or accountability (“Did the program work?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

A Guest Beneblog by Viji Dilip, This summer I visited the International Institute of Social Entrepreneurship (IISE). Situated on the banks of the Vellayani fresh water lake, on the outskirts on Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, India , IISE is a testimony to social enterprise at its very best. This is another venture of Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg who founded Braille without Borders in Lhasa, Tibet.

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Nonprofit Tech for Good

SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

Please Note: All nonprofits in the United States that have an entry in GuideStar.org are also on Change.org. You can access your nonprofit’s profile and the Change.org tool set by signing up for a Nonprofit Admin account. Now on to the best practices: 1. Brand your organization’s profile on Change.org. Nonprofits can easily design their profile on change.org to match their website and other social networking sites.

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NetWits

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

I’ve been reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. What’s it about you ask? “Using the web to build influence, improve reputation, and earn trust”. It’s written with a focus on business relationships, but everything is applicable to the nonprofit space. Corporations and nonprofits will benefit. The core message is all about building trust on the social web and it’s filled with practical ideas and tactics that nonprofits should be thinking about based on where the internet is headed

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Amy Sample Ward

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

The DonorsChoose.org Social Media Challenge is back again! The challenge runs throughout October, with hundreds of bloggers and Twitterers rallying to support classroom requests on DonorsChoose.org. During last year’s challenge , more than 165 bloggers participated, including Fred Wilson , TechCrunch , Kara Swisher , Ars Technica , and Julia Allison.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Beth Kanter tweeted about an article by Gale Berkowitz relating to evaluation, which I found really fascinating – it is a must read. In this article, Gale points to an interesting shift within her organization (the Packard Foundation): “Over the past four years we have been shifting from evaluation for proof or accountability (“Did the program work?

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Evaluation Learning Organization Lesson 157

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.

Foundation

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

Last night I was able to meet Vivek Kundra, the new Chief Information Officer of the federal government, at an event organized by Full Circle Fund and the Craigslist Foundation hosted by IBM at their offices on Market Street in San Francisco. For me, it's an amazing change. In the last month, I've been able to meet Obama's CIO, the new CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation, Sonal Shah, all in small group settings where every attendee got to speak.

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Judi Sohn

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

Like Christmas decorations before Halloween, Winter comes early to Salesforce customers. Winter ‘10 release is coming in early October. The release notes are out (PDF). Note: I get deep in Salesforce weeds again. Campaigns: In my opinion, the best upgrades in Winter ‘10 are in campaigns. Up until a few months ago, a person either responded to a campaign message or they didn’t.

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Robert Weiner

SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

The Nonprofit Times recently published an article called Is It Donor Management Software Or Business Intelligence. It discusses what Laura Quinn calls the "movement from merely tracking data to an emphasis on using it strategically to make business decisions." This vision of donor management software is nothing new. I've heard countless organizations describe their donor databases as "roach motels" or "data vaults" -- the data goes in but it doesn't come out.

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NetWits

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Your brand is much more than a logo or symbol used on a website or stationery, it is the representation of your entire organization to the public…how you are representing yourself. This two part series is designed to help you evaluate and analyze your brand (following) as well as help you determine the best way to control your brand using multiple mediums, including managing the impact of social media on your organization’s image.

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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!

Giving

Amy Sample Ward

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

There are so may stats, reports, assumptions and speculations every day about who is using Twitter, let alone how and why. I recently read a reflection on Twitter called How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People. And it got me thinking, not necessarily about how I filter through the stream and so forth, but how others who are filtering through their streams, find me!

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Not so long ago, nonprofit organizations had software tools, that dealt with specific parts of their organizational process. They had fundraising tools, client management tools, volunteer management tools, HR tools, accounting tools, etc. And the data in these varied tools were siloed – there was no way for one tool to talk to another without: painstaking manual entry. painstaking export/import processes. tools written by the same vendor designed to talk to each other (which meant that the

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Inside naked light bulbs reveal bare cinder-block walls, stained concrete floors, desks and filing cabinets. Above all there is the musty odor of decaying paper. No, this is not a description of Benetech’s Palo Alto, California headquarters. Rather, this is a hot-off-the-presses Smithsonian Magazine article about our Human Rights Data Analysis Group’s work in Guatamala.

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NCE Social Media

SEPTEMBER 18, 2009

For this week’s Video Friday’s installment I’m going to share a video from World Vision that explains how to use Causes on Facebook. Specifically, it explains how to create an affiliated cause using Causes. If you already have a cuase set up, ACHIEVA does , please let us know what you think. Tags: Facebook Tools causes facebook Video.

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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

Robert Weiner

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Steve MacLaughlin at Blackbaud has written an analysis of the CASE Online Fundraising Survey. No surprise -- he focuses on the high number of responses that said they "don't know" or "don't measure" and cites the maxim "If you can't measure it, then you can't manage it." His analysis is at [link]. Tags: Fundraising Online Fundraising.

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NetWits

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world ( Mashable ). We’ve talked about Why Twitter Matters a bit, but there’s so much more that we can learn from what nonprofits are doing. Over the past year nonprofit organizations have begun to see the potential in using Twitter for fundraising, outbound communication, community building, marketing, sales, and more.

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Amy Sample Ward

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

India Social Entrepreneurship Journey, February 2010 Contest - Please support me! Journeys for Change is offering the chance to win a fully-paid nine-day tour of leading Social Entrepreneurs in India. The winner will join a select group of senior leaders from some of the world’s top private, public and civil society organisations, and will get first-hand lessons in innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership from some of Bangalore and Mumbai’s leading social entrepreneurs.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Some great tech and nonprofit tech stuff I’ve come across lately: There’s a great new feature available for nonprofits on YouTube: annotations to external sites. Some great ideas and advice on content strategy. The CiviCRM 3.0 beta process is well underway. Yay! Lots of great improvements in there. Idealware did a great article on HIPAA compliant software.

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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

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Guest blog by Pavi Mehta, Volunteer Coordinator Open source champion Mozilla.org kicked off seven days of service earlier this month: September 14-21st thousands of people donated over 6000 hours of their time to good causes in their communities as part of Mozilla Service Week. Through one of our engineering volunteers, Aravind Gottipatti, Benetech/Bookshare received an invitation to help them kick-off the week.

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VisionLink

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

'Okay, so we sent out CommunityOS Handbooks to everyone a little while back. Are yours worn out yet? Need more copies? Seriously, that little handbook is an excellent tool with which you can communicate with your advisers, board members, and decision makers--not to mention prospective partners. CommunityOS is a rather comprehensive system--and the handbooks attempts to tell the story of the possible.

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NCE Social Media

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

coComment is a social media tool that allows you to track and seek comments through many different social networks. This is a tool I haven’t used yet but find intriguing. The video explains how coComment is used. If you’ve used this already, please let us know your experiences. Tags: Tools cocomment comments social media tags.

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NetWits

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

We are proud to announce that our esteemed clients, New England Province of Jesuits have won the award for securing the highest ratings for Faith-based Standard of Excellence by the Web Marketing Association. The winning entry can be found here: [link].

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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