N-TEN
The latest dispatches from your nonprofit tech community
Updated: 1 hour 36 min ago
NTEN Member Buzz Round-Up: July 30 2010
(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing their nptech awesome. Members are in bold. Tag your own news with "nten member" or "nptech" to help us find your awesome online, or contact Annaliese with your updates.) Even on vacation, Beth Kanter manages help nonprofits become more tech-savvy! How does she do it? Why, by inviting guests to blog! Some of us here at NTEN are pretty interested in geo-tagging and geo-locating tools and their potential for nonprofit application, so we are thankful for this guest post on Beth's Blog about 10 Ways ...
Things We Like (July 2010)
A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog. If you haven't seen the "Double Rainbow" spin-offs, you should check them out right now. (You don't know about "Double Rainbow"? We'll just pretend you didn't admit that. Why? Because it reflects poorly on our productivity vis-a-vis yours, smarty pants.) The Kermit mash-up at the bottom of the page is the best. IOHO. You should probably know, however, that human beings have spent 15 years in aggregate watching "Surprised Kitty" -- longer than it took to land a man on the moon. Fortunately, the article ...
Does Your Email Campaign Rock? Enter the Paperless Choice Contest!
Flickr photo: kcolwellWe know that you, my fellow NTEN community members, are rock stars. You can write fundraising email copy in your sleep and hand code your e-appeal while making breakfast and watering your plants. You track metrics while you're on the treadmill (without falling off). You are fundraising email campaign ninjas! Like all good ninjas, you don't do it for the glory, you do it because it's right. But we want to shine a spotlight on your selflessness and showcase your amazing work.Enter the Paperless Choice Challenge.If you've been using email, websites, videos, and other ...
Can Facebook Questions Bridge the Blue/Red Divide?
On Wednesday, Facebook began rolling out a new feature: Questions. The idea is simple. You ask a question and the Facebook community can answer. Yes, the ENTIRE Facebook community, not just your friends. Of course, we've seen something like this before. But Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web thinks that this is something entirely different: Scale, social software smarts and real identities have the potential to add up to something really magical. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg, wrong as he is about many things like privacy, has said that his goal with Facebook is to build ...
Optimizing Your Site for Social Media Visitors
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. Why is this important? This socially-sourced crowd spends upwards of 15 minutes per day, every day, on social media sites, 3 to 7 times more than on any other major web ...
The PREP Method of Design: Start with the Right Questions to Appeal to the Right Audience
Christy Van Heugten, Event360, Inc. Two houses stand side-by-side. One has a nice, tidy entry way, the other, a boring, paint-peeling façade. If someone is shopping for a home to invest in, they're more likely to enter the home with the nicer entry first, right? When someone visits your website, the first impression they'll likely get is still your homepage. The homepage of your website is key to engaging your visitors by getting them the information they want and sharing your important message. “What audience am I building for?” is commonly the first question people encounter ...
Creating Website Content: What Do Your Visitors Really Want?
Kivi Leroux Miller, Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com 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. Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time. To keep it simple, let’s group your website visitors into three categories: Strangers: ...
The Mobile Web: Consider the User
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). The growth of the mobile web will continue to be very rapid in the coming years -- and will have substantially more reach than iPhone or Android applications. According to a research report by Morgan ...
Evolving Project Management for Evolving Website Technologies
Steve Backman, Database Designs Websites have changed a lot over the past few years. Content management systems (CMS) have transformed standard expectations -- about posting news and updates without web design skills, managing donors and other constituents, opening up sections of your site to your community, tracking results, and more. And open source systems such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone have brought these features within reach of organizations with limited budgets and staffing. Yet, when it comes to organizing the redesign or replacement of an older-style site, ...
Is Web Accessibility a Social Responsibility?
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 maintained, all of these users can be accommodated while not impacting on the usability ...
The Analysis Exchange
Eric Peterson, Web Analytics Demystified The Analysis Exchange is a first-of-its-kind effort to freely provide analytical insights to nonprofits and non-governmental organizations. Founded by three of the most respected web analytics professionals in the world, Analysis Exchange creates value for nonprofits by connecting them directly with experienced web analysts willing to donate their time to help efforts identify opportunities to increase online donations, engagement, interaction, and list distribution. Even better, nonprofits are giving back to the web analytics community because ...
Nature vs. Nuture, or Why You Should Follow Your Gut on the Social Web
Photo: johncabrerea@att.net I've been crafting the "official" NTEN Social Media Strategy. (What makes it official? It has its own Google Doc.) The majority of the time I spent thinking, I can't believe it's taken me this long to watch our own webinars and listen to our own advice! I scoured the internet for resources. Turns out, there were plenty in our own backyard. I read and read and quickly became overwhelmed. I took a break from reading. I watched. I listened. I shut off my computer all weekend and didn't even look at Facebook. I sat down and wrote our plan. What ...
Help Test the New NTEN Member Directory
Flickr: Lutz-R. Frank
NTEN is in the final stages of updating our Member Directory, but we need a handful of volunteers to help us test it out before it goes live. If you have an half hour to spare next week (7/26 - 7/30), send a quick email to karl@nten.org to sign up for a user testing slot. (If you need more of a reason to help, we'll also be offering an NTEN Prize Pack, filled with books and other NTEN goodies, to all our volunteers.)
For the rest of you, this is a good time to go make sure your NTEN Profile is up to date so that other NTEN Members will be able to find you.
You CAN Teach an Old Spice New Tricks!
"I'm on a horse."Those are the words that turned the once-stale Old Spice brand into something refreshing and new. The folks at Proctor and Gamble, who make Old Spice, took it a step further last week when they launched an Old Spice Guy response campaign, creating dozens of personalized responses to the tweets, emails and Facebook posts from his many fans, including George Stephanopolous (presidential abs!) and Alyssa Milano.Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb did a bang up job giving us a behind the scenes look at how the campaign worked. At this point, I have to confess ...
It's Only Been 22 Days...
Flicker Photo: Ben_Smith _UK Have you been living under a rock recently? Probably not, so you've surely heard of -- and probably even gotten sick of -- the hub-bub over "Antenna-gate". For those of you who haven't been caught up in the story (lucky you!), it's actually quite familiar, and the nonprofit sector can certainly find a few key takeaways. Here's what happened: June 24 - Apple releases the iPhone 4 into the world in its most successful product launch to date. June 26 - Complaints about antennae problems start to pour in. July 2 - Apple blames the ...
NTEN Member Buzz Round-Up: July 16 2010
Flickr: cambodia4kidsorg(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharingtheir nptech awesome. Members are in bold. Tag your own news with "nten member" or "nptech" to help us find your awesome online, or contact Annaliese with your updates.) Sean Powell, of PMGDirect, wrote up a great how-to, with United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) as an example: how to customize your Facebook page to convert your fans to your email list. Step-by-step read! Kira Marchenese received lots of kudos on the ProgressiveExchange email list this week from fellow ...
Taming the Data Monster
Flickr: Craving CreativityWe're entering uncharted territory as a species, particularly in the United States. Americans consume 3.6 zettabytes of information every day. It's an unfathomably huge number (especially to those of us who remember playing Ultima IV on a 64 kilobyte computer). One billion trillion bytes worth of television and radio broadcasts, YouTube videos, e-mails, tweets, Facebook updates, and yes, even print. Every day.I'm (pretty) sure you'd agree that your work is more important than the average episode of Jersey Shore or Desperate Housewives. But how can you collect the ...
Rebranding the Accidental Techie
Flickr photo: BrigitteLet me start by saying that I love the phrase "accidental techie." It's fun to say -- and, in the early part of this century, it was the only way we could describe the growing legion of people who suddenly found themselves mastering a new vocabulary of acronyms: LAN, ISP, RAM, CPU, CRM. My great colleague Sue Bennett even wrote a book called "The Accidental Techie." Yet, like certain organizations, I think it's time for a rebrandng. You have to admit, it's not very nice to call anyone an accidental anything. What's really gotten under my skin ...
You're Invited to the Tech Leadership Academy
You, dear NTEN community, know the importance of technology in meeting your missions. For us, technology is more than e-mail servers or software installations. Sure, we need those things to do our work well, but we know the real impact lies elsewhere: using handheld devices to collect data in the field, crowdsourcing maps to help under-resourced communities get the services they need, putting the power of your mission right into the hands of your stakeholders with mobile apps. We're glad you get it, because we need you to help us meet OUR mission of ensuring that every nonprofit can use ...
Connect with Other NTEN Members (On Your Own Schedule)
We’ve added a new element to the ongoing saga of NTEN’s adventures in Facebookland, this time of the choose-your-own variety. You know the type: turn to page 45 if you want Alice to go down the rabbit hole, turn to page 63 if you don’t. We’re profiling NTEN members, posting our brief introductory interview (5 questions each) and then turning the reigns over to all of you. The member in question has promised to hang around our Facebook page to share their vast wealth of knowledge and answer your questions as they come in. That’s right, you don’t have to be there at 11:00 am ...
