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Owning Your Own Power
A busy Friday it has been -- server installed, webinar completed, Intern taught mail merge -- and now we're looking forward to next Tuesday when we will co-host a Teleseminar with Women Who Tech and Susan Mernit on Owning Your Own Power. This talk with Susan Mernit, who's created content, developed products and run businesses and non-profit endeavors -- in a wide variety of settings, from companies as large as AOL to her own small startup -- draws on her 15+ years of experience working in tech and media, and on conversations with dozens of entrepreneurial women. Susan is the co-founder ...
Online Donations and Your Nonprofit
Last week, we published Getting the Best Prices for Processing Credit Cards as a companion piece to A Few Good Methods for Processing Credit Cards. If you're looking into accepting credit cards for purchases and donations at your nonprofit, I'd highly recommend reading both articles. We've gotten some interesting responses to the piece, both by email and in the community. Both articles focus on merchant accounts — the same services stores use to process sales — but as a number of you have pointed out, these services are overkill for some nonprofits. If all you're looking ...
Free Idealware Webinar: Online Communications on a Shoestring
I've always found Idealware's webinars to be high-quality and informative. They're offering a free one on October 29 that they describe as follows:
Wednesday, Oct 29th, 1:00 - 2:30 EST
Web sites, email blasting, and social media can provide a small organization with big benefits without a huge investment. In this special FREE online seminar, we'll talk through the best practices and the low cost tools that can help you take advantage of the Internet to better serve your mission — without breaking your budget.
Free, interesting, and good: what's not to like?
We Are Media Toolbox: Commenting
We're going to close out this week's round of We Are Media Toolbox fun with commenting. Have you ever commented on a blog, a picture, or a video? In many online communities, comments are more than just, well, comments -- they're part of a conversation. Comments, and then comments on the comments, often create some of the best discussion on the web. Chris Brogan knows this. Sometimes, he lets his community do his blogging for him, in the comments section. But comments can also be the Nobu of the online world: where you go to see and be seen. Adding value to a post on a highly ...
Early Bird Gets the Worm (and the Best NTC Sponsorships!)
A HUGE Thank You goes to our all NTC sponsors and exhibitors to date! We are super-geeked about the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference (and not just because we're geeks). We're putting many of your ideas into action this year and we already have a crew of super folks on our side to make the NTC the best place to connect, learn, and change around the technology issues relevant to you. Check out this amazing list of sponsors! (Don't worry, you aren't too late, learn more and sponsor the NTC!) Diamond Gold Program Book / Name Tag Sponsor Social ...
More Tips and Tricks
A TechSoup discussion last December compiled a list of time-saving computer tips and tricks. David Pogue from The New York Times asked his readers to help with a similar list, and the results are on the Times' Web site. Some that were new to me:
We Are Media Toolbox: Social Bookmarking
Another day, another We Are Media Toolbox challenge! Today's topic is social bookmarking. When I first heard that phrase, it conjured up images of women reading their favorite passages from Nicholas Sparks novels aloud to one another while drinking white wine. How wrong was I? Social bookmarking is now part of my everyday online experience. I use Delicious -- thanks for getting rid of all those goofy periods Yahoo! -- to keep track of articles and blog posts I may want to come back to. I search Delicious to find information about topics I'm interested in. I keep track of what ...
Redesigns and Rewrites
It must be Free Design Month in the nonprofit world. Last week, Amy at NetSquared reported that Idealist.org has launched a Pro Bono Design program. Today, a colleague alerted me that Good Ink and Not Dead Yet Studios are cosponsoring a contest to provide one nonprofit with a comprehensive marketing package. You can even submit a proposal on behalf of your favorite nonprofit, if you know someone who needs design help but won't ask for it.
It's About the Future, Not the Past
Flickr Photo: paurianMuseums get a bad rap as purveyors of the past. I'd guess most of us, when we think about museums at all, think about dusty old things. But the very best museums tie all that old stuff to the world we live in today, and the future we're creating. It's a lot like our roles as non-museum nonprofits: we sift through all the information and data out there to find what matters for our communities -- and make it relevant. Part of that is the selection process, choosing what we'll showcase. The other part is how we design our display, or communicate what we're ...
Knight News Challenge Social Media Contest = Money for Your Organization?
We'd all like more money for our mission-driven organizations, right? Well, the Knight News Challenge might be there to provide it. Here's the jist from their Web site: We’re giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs. If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with ...
Computers, Internet, and Training for California Low-Income Families
The TechSoup Global GreenTech program has just posted new Web pages listing low-cost refurbished computers, Internet, and computer training For California low-income families, as part of our California Emerging Technology Fund sponsored work to supply digital inclusion resources to underserved people in our home state.
Why is this on GreenTech?
NTEN Office Hours
Our indispensable friends at NTEN have been offering an office hours service. Experts in various technological fields spend an hour in NTEN's chat room fielding questions from nonprofits. You don't even need to be an NTEN member; just show up!
This is an excellent service to the nonprofit community. Webinars (like tomorrow's excellent webinar on donor management software) are a great educational opportunity, but sometimes you just want to run in get some quick one-on-one assistance. That's where office hours are great.
If You Listen, a T-Shirt Will Come
Congratulations to Ashley Messick! Yesterday, we kicked off our month-long We Are Media Festival of Tools with a conversation about how to monitor the conversation. Many of you added your favorite tools for eavesdropping on the interwebs to learn more about what people are saying about your organization and your issues. We're also hoping to learn why you use those tools, and how you use them. Ashley Messick shared her two cents yesterday, and now she's the proud owner of a We Are Media T-Shirt (designed by our own Brett Meyer). Share your thoughts on monitoring the ...
Fundraising, Online Marketing, Tracking Your Impact: Tools You Can Use at Your Nonprofit
Flickr Credit: I Are Rowell You probably think about fundraising year-round, but let's face it: there's something about this time of year that revs up the intensity around organizational fundraising and impact. Whether you're looking at your annual budget compared to the actuals, planning for the programs you'd like to add next year, tracking your success, or putting together a report of how donations helped your impact, you're probably crunching numbers and planning campaigns right now. This month's Show & Tell session might give you some ideas and options for making the campaigns, ...
We Are Media Toolbox: RSS Readers
Welcome to Day 2 of the We Are Media Toolbox extravaganza! Today's topic: RSS readers. There's so much more information out there than we can competently digest, one of the skills we need to master in this new age is information management. Enter RSS readers. One of the first people I remember hearing talk about RSS and readers in the nonprofit space was Marnie Webb. I'm glad I heard her, because I would be lost without my reader! I use Netvibes, and I've learned a lot of nifty tricks to customize it from MarshallK (to whom I still owe a lunch). You can see most of my Netvibes ...
Around the TechSoup Blogosphere, September 29 - October 6
In case you missed it, here's this week's latest news from TechSoup's project blogs.
- Amy reports that Idealist.org has launched a Pro Bono Design program to get nonprofits in touch with volunteer designers.
- James reviews Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.
- Amy lets us know that the ever-growing We Are Media project is now offering prizes to participants.
We Are Media Toolbox: How Do You Monitor the Conversations?
It's We Are Media toolbox time! Most of the time, when we talk about social media, we have to be careful to temper our enthusiasm. Social media has to have context. You have to have a plan-- and an awareness that it's not for eveyone or every situation. But sometimes, dontcha just wanna talk about how much fun it is? Now's your chance. All month long, we're going to "fondle the hammer"! Yep, we'll be talking about social media tools just for the sake of how cool they are. You can get started today, by sharing your favorite tools for monitoring conversations. ...
Free TechSoup Talks Webinar: Donor Management Software Wednesday, 11 am Pacific
To get the biggest bang for your fundraising buck, you need to be organized. Participate in this free online seminar and learn more about GiftWorks and how your nonprofit can benefit from the many tools it offers. Besides helping you with the basics — tracking donations, building lists of donors, and sending mailings — GiftWorks 2008 Standard includes many new features to take the fundraising of your small or medium-sized organization to the next level. Space is limited, so click here to sign up!
Know Before You click!
I was getting ready to head out the door today for a run with my brother Frank. We’d chatted about if we needed new shoes or not, so I fired up my trusty running log, and checked a couple of things. I started with total mileage - I wanted to see how many miles I’ve run this year compared to last year. At first glance - it looked about right - a lot more than last year. Thing is - Frank and I had also trained for a marathon, so warning bells didn’t go off in my head. But when I checked my shoe mileage - WOW! The report said I’d almost 600 miles on my shoes, and I KNEW ...
Meet the Author, Read the Book, Mobilize Generation 2.0
Another Meet the Author session is right around the corner! On October 23rd, we'll have the pleasure of hosting Ben Rigby, author of Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize, and Engage Youth for a phone call and online chat. We'll talk about this incredible guide for nonprofits, political campaigns, and other organizers who want to use new media tools effectively. > Sign up for Meet the Author: Ben Rigby Check out what a few folks have been saying about the book: Nothing will ever replace the importance of face to ...
