I'm in Texas for a conference, where it's gray and rainy and we're expected to go from 72 this morning to 42 by this evening. Fortunately I'm inside all day. Anyway, conference time means more sporadic, shorter posts. Which isn't always a bad thing. In no particular order and on completely unrelated tangents. . . Via Guy, a nice Beginner's Guide to Digg is online. If you check out our... Read more →
Creating Passionate Users, one of my all-time favorite resources, is devoted to the idea that we need to meet learners where they're at. This, of course, means that we must first understand where they're at and then be able to do something about it. Lately, I've been trying to put myself in my customer's shoes, something I'm forever advising them to do. Here are some things that I know for... Read more →
Jayne Cravens of Coyote Communications has written a provocative commentary on the growing digital divide among nonprofits. She asks a powerful question: "I'm on dozens of online communities, most of which relate to nonprofit organizations and civil society in some way. I also attend onsite conferences each year relating to the same sector. Through these online and face-to-face gatherings over the recent years, I'm seeing a disturbing trend: a gap... Read more →
Rallyfan at Random Thoughts on Life and Work has an interesting post on how Samaritan's Purse is monitoring blogs to respond to both positive and negative postings. As Rallyfan notes, the organization did an excellent job of both reinforcing an already excited fan and doing damage control about negative messages spreading through the blogosphere. This got me thinking about whether or not we're doing a good job of tracking what... Read more →
Yesterday we talked about the three types of people necessary to move an idea from "that's interesting," to "I must HAVE it!" as it relates to helping nonprofits adopt new technologies. Today, I want to explore one more area from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point that's relevant to this conversation--the concept of "sticky ideas." While we need the right kinds of people in an early adopter group engaged in "selling"... Read more →
We've been talking here lately about helping nonprofits to see the value in blogs. Fortunately, CK has come to the rescue with the results of her recent reader poll asking "What is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging?" This fabulous collage is a montage of the answers she received. (You can get a PDF of her full report here.) Very visual and striking--captures a lot of... Read more →
Via TechSoup, I'm reading an interesting study, Online Technology for Social Change: From Struggle to Strategy, prepared by dotOrganize, a project organized to define best practices and provide strategic direction and information to support social change organizations in their use of technology. The report "compiles insights from more than 400 social change organizations" and I think adds some things to consider, given our previous discussions about the Second Wave. According... Read more →
Beth is guest-blogging at Katya's place about raising funds using the ChipIn! widget and is going to be sharing the results of her experiment as she goes along. As you can see, she's raising money for a project near and dear to her heart: When we adopted our beautiful children, we also adopted their birth country. We have embraced Khmer culture and we also feel a responsibility to give something... Read more →
A new resource to share with constituents-- Daily Strength boasts over 500 individual communities organized to support one another around a variety of issues ranging from physical health (diabetes, cancer, heart disease) to mental health and relationship issues like depression, parenting, bereavement and sexuality. Membership is free and the site offers a wealth of information on treatment options and medications. They also provide you with linkages to others who are... Read more →
Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention is hosting this week's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: This traveling Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants brings you the best blog postings on nonprofit issues. For this week's event, I asked bloggers to advise on how already over-taxed nonprofit communicators can handle the ever-expanding menu of communications channels, especially social networking tools, and what social media have the greatest potential for nonprofits. I received so many useful... Read more →