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Sunday, December 24, 2006

Nonprofit Technology Items of 2006

Blog Entries/Articles

Websites/Online Communities

  • Affinity Groups at N-TEN - This new online community launched in May is a great place for people involved in nonprofit technology to connect with each other. As of now, there are over 1,000 members and 78 affinity groups you can join.
  • TechSoup's Office on Second Life - TechSoup has a virtual office on SecondLife. They hold meetings there and have an e-mail list discussing nonprofits in SecondLife. This is something that began this year.
  • NP Tagvocates - This is an affinity group on N-TEN that was formed after the NetSquared Conference. I think is a great resource because we are spreading the use of tags across the nonprofit sector.
  • Tech Glossary Wiki - TechSoup created this wiki and it became public during their online event on wikis in November. It is a glossary of technology terms as it relates to nonprofits. I think this is one of the best items because anyone can sign up to be a part of this collaborative project and add and edit terms and definitions. This also seems to be one of the first technology glossaries for the nonprofit sector.

Images

  • Logo Collage - I created this collage for the science fair at NTC last year, even though I did not attend. I had so much fun making this in PhotoShop and I was really impressed with how it turned out.
  • A Snapshot from the TechSoup Office on Second Life - A picture of some of us in SL wearing our TechSoup shirts.

Miscellaneous

  • NetSquared Conference - I think this was one of the best items of this year. I know I gained lots of new knowledge by participating remotely. This conference led to new things in the nonprofit technology world.
  • Idealware: Getting Started with Blogging Software - Are you new to blogging and interested in learning about different blogging tools? This report from Idealware has lots of information about blogging tools. The link above lets you download the report from Idealware. Techsoup also posted an article about the tools that were reviewed in the report at Seven Blogging Tools Reviewed.
  • The Young and the Generous - A report by Network for Good - This is a very informative study by Network for Good about the growing trend of online charitable giving. Not only was this interesting to read, but lots of bloggers wrote about this study. The link above is to the website to download the report. If you are interested in reading a summary, check out my post here.
  • Network for Good Charity Badges - These badges were just introduced in December. People can search for charities on Network for Good to support and raise money for them by placing the badge on their website or blog. This is a great new way for nonprofits to recieve donations.


nptech 
yearend

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Healthcare Blogosphere Survey

In July 2006, Envision Solutions and The Medical Blog Network launched the first global survey of healthcare bloggers. They launched the survey because the healthcare blogosphere is rapidly growing in size and importance.

The results of the survey are now available and you can view the full report at
http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/survey.html .

Here are the findings of the survey that I thought were interesting:

  • 3.3% of the respondents classified their blog as an advocacy org/nonprofit
  • When asked about the most important reason they started blogging, 19.2% of the respondents stated that they blog to educate others and 8.5% of the respondents blog to advocate for a cause
  • When asked about the second most important reason they started blogging, 24.9% of the respondents (the majority of the respondents) said they blog to educate others and 11.9% blog to advocate for a cause
  • 55.7% blog about health news, 60.9% blog about personal experiences, and 47.1% blog about disease information

Since not many of the bloggers that participated in this survey blog for a nonprofit, I started thinking about the blogs I have come across that are for health related organizations and the content health organizations could blog about.

What health organization blogs do you read? What do you think health related nonprofits should be blogging about?

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Cheetah Conservation Fund Videos

While searching the Internet for videos for nonprofit organizations, I came across a great one for the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF).

This video is more of like a commerical advertising the organization and points you to their website for more information.

You can find this video on two websites. The first website is on their
donation page on their website. I think this is a great idea to display a video on the donation page. The second website is on YouTube. Their video is titled Help Us Save The Wild Cheetah. People who come across this video on YouTube will learn what CFF is and can go to their website to find out more information.

It is also important to note that the organization has their own username at YouTube. As of now they have four videos on
their page. They have another commerical like video advertising the Run for the Cheetah event.

The founder of CFF and a cheetah made a presentation at an elementary school in Washington. The video of this presentation is found at Cheetah Tales: Ben Rush Meets Jalani.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Social Bookmarking for Nonprofits

I spend a lot of time researching how different places use social bookmarking and tags. One example I have found is Adobe, which I think is a great example of a company/organization using social bookmarking and tags. Their account is at http://del.icio.us/adobe and they also created a tutorial on what you can do with their resources on del.icio.us.


I started thinking, how could nonprofits use social bookmarking? What information could they share?

Here is what I came up with:
  • News
  • Press Releases
  • Donors / Donations
  • Fundraising
  • Volunteering
  • Sponsors
  • Research
  • Resources (related to the mission of their organization)
  • Campaigns

What other information could nonprofits share?