Blogs for Online Learning and Training

Rosetta has a great post about blogs for online learning. This reminded me that I learned at the online learning session at NTC that blogs are a form of learning.

Right now, I mainly see these types of posts from bloggers who write about technology, communications, and fundraising in the nonprofit sector.

Here are some blogs that illustrate this:

• Beth's Blog


• Getting Attention


• Nonprofit Communications


• Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog


• Wild Apricot Blog


• Donor Power Blog

There are also some technology companies who work with nonprofits who write entries about how to use their product(s).

I haven't heard of any organizations using blogs for training, but I hope to see this in the future.

Nonprofit Related Facebook Applications

The use of facebook in the nonprofit sector has recently been one of the top topics in nonprofit blogs. I wrote about the potential facebook has for nonprofits in November in my entry titled How Nonprofits Can Use Facebook. Since then, Facebook started something new called Facebook Applications.

Bl'ong has a great entry about this titled Top 12 Nonprofit Facebook Applications.


What other Facebook Applications are nonprofit related?

Bald Eagle Recovery

I recently had a very exciting experience in my temporary website position at Defenders of Wildlife. I got to post news to webpages about the bald eagle being removed from the endangered species list.

For more information about this news, check out the following links:

• Nation Celebrates Bald Eagle Recovery
  
• Division of Migratory Bird Management - Bald Eagle
  
• Help Save Our Endangered Species

Social Media Club, Social Networking, and Nonprofits

I attended the May DC Social Media Club meeting on social networking. It was very interesting and I was so excited when nonprofits were mentioned as examples.

Social networking sites mentioned in the meeting were Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, and a few others.

One of the first examples mentioned was about The Humane Society using MySpace. They get about 100 new friend requests a day. They have a profile for the organization as well as a profile for a seal named Sammy the Seal. The seal has a blog and has more friends than the profile for the organization. I have noticed in my research of social networking for nonprofits that people are more likely be friends (or join a group) with a specific issue/campaign and not be friends with an organization.

Examples from Second Life include ISTE and American Cancer Society. One thing that was mentioned about ISTE is that their presence is for their members and they actually show powerpoint slides at their virtual meeting. You can read more about how they use Second Life at ISTE Second Life. The American Cancer Society holds a virtual relay for life in Second Life. I've written about this topic briefly here. You can read more at Second Life Relay For Life.


Another nonprofit example that was shared was a campaign by Greenpeace called Green My Apple.


Things I learned:

• Organizations want to do more with web 2.0, but members may not want to use these tools.
  
• You can measure the success of social networks not by the number of friends but by the number of new friends a day and who is clicking on links to the network pages
• People are noticing how nonprofits are using social networking and other web 2.0 tools

NetSquared Projects

I looked through the 21 projects and came up with 6 of them that I liked. There are more of them that I did like, but I felt alot of them did not meet the definition of what I think NetSquared is.

Here are the ones I thought were the most interesting:

1. An Anti-Genocide Community: Building the Political Will to End Genocide
2. Kabissa 2.0: Strengthening the Social Web in Africa
3. Stop Family Violence
4. WiserEarth
5. Social Web Tools for Developing Countries: Yankana.org
6. YouthAssets - Connecting the World's Most Vulnerable Youth