My Best of the Nonprofit Social Web in 2007

This month's Net2 Think Tank question was "Who is the Best of the Nonprofit Social Web for 2007?"

Here are my thoughts-


Best Social Web Tools: Fundraising Widgets

In 2007, fundraising widgets have become popular on websites and blogs for nonprofits. Supporters of organizations can also add a widget to their website or blog. There are a few fundraising widgets that are used, but SixDegrees and ChipIn seem to be used the most.


Best Facebook Application for Nonprofits: Causes

The Causes Application is the best application for nonprofits because it allows nonprofits to fundraise and see how many people support their cause.


Best Nonprofit for Raising Awareness Through Facebook:
Susan G Komen for the Cure

Susan G. Komen for the Cure created a Pink Ribbon application for Facebook which allows members to add a pink ribbon to their profile and recruit other members. This was started for Breast Cancer Awareness month in October. They set a goal to reach 2,000,000 members and they accomplished this goal.

The pink ribbon application is still being added to profiles each day.

Some statistics:

9/20/07 360 users with Pink Ribbons
10/20/07 1,080,814 users with Pink Ribbons
10/31/07 1,861,911 users with Pink Ribbons
11/04/07 2,015,652 users with Pink Ribbons (reached their goal)
11/30/07 2,796,000 users with Pink Ribbons
12/27/07 2,972,709 users with Pink Ribbons

Nonprofits Use Blogs and Social Media More Than Businesses

According to the WebProNews.com article, Nonprofits Outpacing Businesses on Social Media -

"Charities are often more savvy than businesses when it comes to using social media – especially blogging. The Center for Marketing Research looked at the top 200 largest US charities as defined by Forbes Magazine. They found that seventy-five percent of the charities are using some form of social media."

Why are nonprofits using the social web?

• for branding
• to increase awareness of their missions
• to connect with their constituencies

Nonprofits are blogging at a higher rate than businesses.

The full report can be found at Blogging for the Hearts of Donors.

*Social media includes blogging, podcasting, using message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis

Using the Social Web to Promote Fundraisers During the Giving Season

Network for Good recently released a study titled "The Wired Fundraiser: How technology is making fundraising ‘good to go’”.

Here are the four key findings of this study:

1. When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen: Wired Fundraisers are regular people with a cause and a keyboard, and they are proving highly effective at fundraising for their favorite charity in an ever-widening personal sphere of influence online. That’s because today, the messenger matters even more than the message. People trust messengers they know, like friends and family. These messengers naturally communicate in the most effective ways – through personal means, in a conversational tone, and with great stories. A promotion from a charity can’t compete with that level of intimacy, authority or authenticity.

2. Not Every Wired Fundraiser Is a Champion: The successful Wired Fundraiser has a relatively rare combination of true passion and a means to lend a sense of urgency to their cause. Not every Six Degrees fundraiser or Facebook Cause is a winner, but a proud few – the superactivists - are very effective, raising $9,000 on average and reaching 150 people.

3. Technology Gives the Wired Fundraiser Special Power: Widgets and social networks make personal fundraisers more effective for four reasons. Widgets – bits of code that enable you to generate and place content anywhere online, including on Facebook pages or blogs – make it possible for personal fundraisers to take their message anywhere they communicate online, including social networks where messages spread very efficiently. They make it possible for the fundraiser to evangelize in their own way, in their own words. Because they make fundraising so easy, widgets attract a new group of fundraisers. Importantly, widgets also make it easy and convenient for friends and family to give instantly, when they feel an impulse to give. That means more donations to more causes.

4. Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser: Technology enables anyone to be a fundraiser, anywhere online. The control over the message is in the hands of the Wired Fundraiser. Wise charities see this as something to embrace rather than something to fear. They tap into the opportunity to spread their message further, by new means, via new messengers.


This month's net2thinktank topic is how nonprofits can use the social web to raise money during the giving season. I think some of these findings apply to this question.

I think the most important finding is #4 which is Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser. Through technology nonprofits can spread the word about their fundraisers in many different ways.

How can nonprofits spread the word using the social web?

• Write a blog entry on the organization's blog and/or MySpace blog.
• Post a message on your group on Facebook.
• Write a bulletin on MySpace.
• Write a note or share a link on Facebook.
• Include a video on the webpage for the fundraiser.
• Come up with keywords/tags to describe your fundraiser. Tag it on del.icio.us and other social bookmarking sites.
• Encourage members/supporters to spread the word about the fundraiser by posting a blog entry, sharing the link on Facebook, writing a bulletin on MySpace, or sending an e-mail to their contacts. (this also applies to #1 - When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen)

Summary of Free Tools For Nonprofits

On Monday I attended a discussion on Free Tools For Nonprofits, which was an event of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. There were four speakers and a question/answers part afterwards. Each speaker mentioned different tools.


Speaker #1 - Jake of Idealist

Google Analytics was the first tool mentioned. Through Google Analytics you can find out who is coming to your site, how many people are coming, and what they are doing. Map overlap is an interesting feature where you can find out the location of your website visitors.

Beth's Screencast of Google Analytics is a great resource.

Google Calendar is useful to use if your organization has offices in different locations (or in one location) to schedule meetings.

YouTube- Broadcast Your Cause - Have a page with your videos and a donate button


Speaker # 2- Annie of Center for American Progress

Google Maps and other mapping tools make it easy to make simple maps. You don't need to know Flash or have technology skills to create a map. It takes a few hours to create a map.

Examples: State of the Minimum Wage, Education Report Card

Timelines are a good tool to add to websites. The Center of American Progress added a timeline and it was the most popular feature on the site.

Tool to create timelines - xtimeline

Another type of tool is one to create charts and graphs. One tool that allows you to do this is called amCharts.


Speaker #3 - Barry of AARP

AARP used online videos for a campaign and embedded it on the AARP site and the site for the campaign.

AARP also used Facebook for a campaign and targeted college students, which was a different demographic then they were used to. They created group for this campaign and had 1200 people.

They learned that Facebook has a rule that once you reach 1000 members in a group you can't communicate with the members. One thing you can do is to create subgroups and link the groups pages to the main group.

Another tool mentioned was iConcur, which is a facebook application for petitions.

AARP will soon be launching a web 2.0 community.

Speaker #4 - Jeff of Google

Through Google Grants you can increase awareness about your organization.

Google Maps

Google Earth

iGoogle Gadgets

Google Applications - Google Docs, Calendar, GMail, GoogleTalk

Google Documents is an easy was to share updated versions of documents without sending documents back and forth by e-mail. You can edit press releases and presentations.

Questions/Answers and Other Free Tools Shared

Where to learn about free tools:

• Mashable
• Lifehacker
• Techcrunch
• techPresident

Free Tools:

• InstantAtlas
• Picnik
• Twitter
• Idealware
• Techsoup

What I learned

There are many free tools out there that nonprofits can use to help their mission besides social networking, blogs, sharing videos, sharing bookmarks, and sharing photos. It was very interesting to learn about the free tools to make graphs, charts, and timelines. These tools help with content on websites to make the content more interesting for visitors. Using graphs, charts, timelines, photos, videos, and maps, allow website visitors to visualize the information.

Environmental Organizations Using Web 2.0

Today is Blog Action Day where bloggers are writing about the environment. While coming up with an idea of how the environment relates to my blog, I decided to research environmental organizations that have web 2.0 content on their website.

Here are a few organizations that I wanted to share -

Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) - This organization has a blog and lecture videos. They also started a podcast project called World on Fire Podcast.

American Rivers - This organization has a blog and RSS feeds related to river conservation.

Casey Trees - This organization has a map were you can find out what trees are in locations in DC. You can find out the species, size and condition, and other information based on location.

Ways Nonprofits Are Using the Social Web and Measuring Success

Lots of nonprofit organizations are using the social web to spread the word about their organization, connect with their members better, fundraise on the internet, and communicate news about their issues and events.

An article was recently written on Fundraising Success about nonprofits using social networking tools.

According to the article and observing how nonprofits are using the social web, these are some ways nonprofits are currently using the social web:

• Creating a page on MySpace with information about the organization, a form to signup for their e-newsletter, and links to their website
• Adding friends on MySpace
• Posting information on MySpace about events, campaigns, and volunteer opportunities on their page, blog, and bulletins
• Creating groups for their organization and issues on MySpace and Facebook
• Using Flickr to post photos
• Having a group or using a tag on Flickr to allow people to share photos from events they have attended for the organization
• Using a fundraising widget
• Using Technorati and del.icio.us to find what people are saying about the organization and issues
• Commenting on blogs to promote the organization

With all these examples, how do you measure success? Before starting to use a new tool, an organization should have a goal and try to reach it. If you have achieved your goal, then it is worth the efforts. Some goals you might have are to increase the number of friends you have each week or to fundraise a certain amount of money with a widget.

Here are some examples of what you can track to measure success:

• number of friends
• number of friend requests each day
• number of visitors that visit your profile
• number of members in a group
• seeing if people in your group are discussing your organization and issues with others
• amount of money raised online

In my opinion, the best way to track success is to look at your referring links in your web statistics. You can see what websites visitors have come from. This is great because you can see if users came from MySpace, del.icio.us., a blog, or other site with a hyperlink. If you have gained lots of new visitors and hits from these tools, then I think it is worth using the social web.

Learning About Sea Otters

This week is Sea Otter Awareness Week (SOAW) , an event sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife. When I worked at Defenders, I helped post information about events and other information about SOAW.

Since alot of my readers are in nonprofit or education, I thought I would post information with links about sea otters. Some of these sites have lesson plans that teachers can use in the classroom.

• The Otter Project


• Monterey Bay Aquarium: Sea Otters Exhibit


• Shedd Aquarium - Sea Otters


• California Sea Otter Research


• Oregon Coast Aquarium - Sea Otters


• Oregon Zoo Animals: Sea Otter


• Vancouver Aquarium - AquaFacts - Sea Otters


• Defenders of Wildlife - Sea Otter Fact Sheet


• Kids Planet - Sea Otter Unit (teacher's manual)

Notes from DC NetSquared Meetup - Tech and Innovation in Africa

Last week I attended the DC NetSquared Meetup, which had the theme of technology and innovation in Africa.

One of the speakers was from Kabissa, an organization based in DC that helps nonprofits in Africa with technology. Here is some of the information that was shared:

• The founder of Kabissa went to Africa to help organizations have access to e-mail. He found that that these organizations also were interested in having a website. He realized that once he left, there would be no one to help these organizations with technology.
• The organization first started out as hosting websites for organizations in Africa.
• 60% of the organizations they work with in Africa work out of computer centers or cybercafes.
• They work with over 1,000 organizations in Africa.
• Organizations found out that posting pdf files of books on the web reaches more people.
• Web 2.0 was defined as the user is the center of the experience.
• With Web 2.0, Kabissa has helped their members with blogs and have started using a wiki for their training.

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

NTC Session - Web 2.0 for Communities

One of the sessions I attended at NTC was Web 2.0 for Communities, which is a topic I am very interested in.

The American Cancer Society was used as an example of a nonprofit that used Web 2.0 technologies. Here is more information about their experience:

• They defined their community. This consisted of anyone affected by cancer, events, volunteers & donors, and location
• They researched the blogosphere and went to where people were. They started using tools like MySpace and Second Life.
• They recently launched an online community at RelayForLife.org. It has an rss feed which is from the ACS website. Their most popular feature is the gallery which allows users to share photos. Volunteers helped spread the word about this new community.
• Relay for Life started on Second Life because a volunteer asked for this. They raised $5,000 their first year and $41,000 their second year.

Things to Do:

• Find out what online communities people use
• Find out what donors and volunteers do on these websites
• Find people who are talking about the topic/issue on the Internet and connect with them
• Use Technorati to find blogs about the topics/issue
• Comment on blogs and provide a link to the organization

NTC Session - Branding Through Websites: Building Your Brand From the First Click

One of the most useful sessions for me was the session titled "Branding Through Websites: Building Your Brand From the First Click". Websites can be branded by statements, information & functionality, priorization, and graphic design.

Here are some of the things I learned:

• A tagline should be a brief phrase to associate with a logo.
• Taglines should not change often.
• A website with alot of information and resources shows that they are experts.
• Searchable databases shows the depth of knowledge an organization has.
• Emphasize some things and not others in navigation bar.
• Choose only a few things to highlight on homepage
• The navigation summarizes the site and the priorities of the organization.

NTC Session - Classrooms Without Walls: Methods for Online Learning

The first session I attended at the Nonprofit Technology Conference was Classrooms Without Walls: Methods for Online Learning. I wanted to attend this session since my goal in the future is to develop e-learning and online training. I was curious to learn the different ways nonprofits were implementing online learning.

Most of this session was a review for me since I studied Instructional Systems Technology in college.

Here is some background information:

• Online learning can be asynchronous or synchronous
• Online courses can be full courses or by modules
• Online learning can be in lecture format
• Games can be used to learn more about a topic
• Blogs can be a form of online learning
• The learning/training can be individualized
• People have different styles of learning and different learning styles can be used in online learning

Resources Shared:

• Wildlife University - National Wildlife Federation
• WebJunction
• Reports: E-Learning in Nonprofits and Associations
• ReadyTalk
• 834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction

Thoughts about NTC 2007

What did I think about my first NTC?

Well, it was great meeting people in person who I have been communicating with on the internet. But I did not get a chance to meet everyone who I wanted to meet and wished I had more time to talk to the people I did end up meeting in person. For me, my goal as far as meeting people, was to meet people who I already knew of. This probably was a bad thing since I didn't make that much effort to meet others (I did end up meeting a few others though) . The people who I did finally get a chance to meet are the ones that I e-mailed when I tried to figure out how to break into nonprofit technology. I felt accomplished by meeting these people. I hope now that we have met face to face that our conversations will continue.

One thing I was the most looking forward to were the discussion tables, where some tables were different topics. But I did not get a chance to take part in this because by the time I got to lunch after the session that ended at noon, the tables were already filled. Plus, when I did get in the room, I had no clue where to look for them until it was announced. I did end up finding a seat at a regular table and that ended up fine. However, I was disappointed that I could not take part in these discussions.

Another thing I was looking forward to were the backchannel chats, mainly the unmoderated one. However, it seemed like no one was using these. (maybe it was because of the internet connection at the hotel?) It seems like the only thing that worked with the backchannel was the group/e-mail list that was created. In the last session on Friday, the one I wanted to go to didn't happen. My backup one was filled up, which was the one that was in the moderated chat. I even ended up going to where the computers were and went to the chat. Nobody was in there. This bothered me because if people who were not at NTC wanted to check these out, they could not. Maybe there should have been a note added to the page that said "due to the internet connection problems at the hotel, these moderated chats might not happen" or something similiar to that.

Here are the sessions I attended:

• Classrooms Without Walls: Methods for online learning
• Managing your Nonprofit IT Career
• Building Better Online Fundraising Campaigns: Practical Tactics for Raising More Money via Email
• Branding Through Websites: Building Your Brand From the First Click
• Web 2.0 for Communities

I also attended part of the Flickr affinity group meeting.

One complaint about the sessions/meetings is that the attendees were all at different levels. Some were very new to the topics, and others were already familiar. Alot of us are familiar with many topics and would like to learn more. I would have liked to have seen two sessions for some topics where one is for beginners and learning about the topic and the other for ones already familiar with the topic and want to expand their knowledge. I honestly don't know if this idea could work, but it could be worth a try in the future.

I see these sessions and the introductions as a way to continue the conversations either in an e-mail list, blog, or somewhere else.

NTC - Day 1

I spent the afternoon at NTC. I was able to meet lots of people and place faces with names of people I have been e-mailing. That was the most exciting part about today. There are still more I would like to meet and hope I'll be able to meet them.

I was at the Flickr group meeting for the first hour. I heard about what everyone wanted to learn about Flickr and other related issues.

Nonprofits want to learn more about using Flickr......

• to organize photos with tags
• for conferences
• for photo contests
• to use a tag to let members/participants share photos easier with the organization
• to use the maps/geography feature to organize photos
• to build community

Tags: 07ntc

Tips for Blogs for Nonprofit Organizations

Do you have a blog for your organization?

Be sure you mention what organization the blog is for and provide a link to the website for the organization. Also, make sure there is a link to the blog on your organization's website.

Nonprofit Blogtipping - March 2007

I decided to try this new idea with blogtipping as suggested by Kivi. I am a little late in posting, but I still wanted to post my entry for this month.

1. ASPCA Blog

What I like:

• Lots of interesting facts about animals
• Mentions new content/news in the blog
• Use of labels/categories

Tip: For news alert entries - link to the webpage and not hyperlink articles. It makes these entries confusing. Keep the format the same though, but without the links. If you do end up keeping the links to the articles, make sure they work.

2. SOS News and Views

What I like:

• Writeup of events/programs
• Pictures on entries
• Advertisement of events/programs

Tip: Remove the pictures on the top to avoid scrolling to read the blog. If the pictures are kept, limit it to 3 or make them smaller so it only takes up one row.

3. First Book Blog

What I like:

• Mention books connected to holidays and timely events
• Different staff members write blog entries
• Use of images for blog posts

Tip: Try to come up with posts that will encourage readers to post comments. For example, ask questions.

SixDegrees.org and Online Fundraising - Recap of DC Net Tuesday

Last week I attended my first DC Net2 meetup. There were about 40 people who came to the meetup.

Katya Andersen of Network for Good gave a presentation about SixDegrees.org and online fundraising.

SixDegrees.org

Kevin Bacon purchased SixDegrees.org. He wanted to do something charitable with the website and he contacted Network for Good.

In January 2007, SixDegrees.org was launched. People can setup charity badges through SixDegrees.org to fundraise for causes/organizations they care about. There can be up to 5 charities listed on a badge and the organizations chosen must be listed in Guidestar.

Right now there is a contest on SixDegrees.org, which is being held through March 31st. The six badges with the most number of donations will receive a matching grant of up to $10,000.

Facts

• 15% gave to charities because of celebrities, 76% gave to charities because they were influenced by friends and family
• People stop giving to organizations because of how they were treated by the nonprofit
• 3,000 people have sixdegrees badges, 12% of badges have at least 1 donation
• 20% donate through Network for Good because they can be anonymous
  

Lessons Learned

• what attracts is celebrities, what motivates is personal
• contests are good
• give people tools to fundraise where they are online
• social networks are complex, one widget does not serve all

Other Information

• Chipin is a good fundraising widget because the destination is a thermometer and you don't have to be a nonprofit to use this
• Network for Good recently held a pilot version of the badges. Beth Kanter won that competition. Her campaign was a success and it showed that you needed to do something offline to help with online fundraising.
• It was suggested at the meetup that there should be mentors to help others with charity badges and serve as a resource.

Want more Information?

Check out Katya's blog at Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog.

Two others who attended the meetup wrote blog entries. Usha of Beaconfire Consulting wrote a great entry at sixdegrees.org at Net Tuesday meetup. Matt of EchoDitto wrote an entry at Useful Widgets.

Tagging in the Nonprofit Sector

After reading the recent entries on tagging on Beth's Blog , I started thinking more about nptech and tags being used in the nonprofit sector.

The nptech tag is by far the most popular tag being used in the nonprofit sector. It has grown so much over the 2 years. Another popular nonprofit related tag is net2, which is for NetSquared.

In addition to nptech and net2, there are other nonprofit related tags used.

The following tags I started using and others have began using as well:

• npblog
• npflickr
• npsl (nonprofit second life)
• npblogexchange
• nptag (nonprofit tagging)
• npyoutube
• npmashup
  

The tags below are used by a few people and suggested in the NPTagvocates Affinity Group:

• NPEnviro
• NPWorkDev
• NPSocialJustice
• NPol
• NPArts
• NPHealth
• NPYouth
• NPEdu
• NPDisasterRelief
• NPlegal
  

About a year ago, Jillaine began using tags. Her tags include the following:

• nonprofit_communications
• nonprofit_publication
• nonprofit_management
• npo_consultants
• nptech_advocacy

Heather of Aspiration has recently started using tags. She wrote an entry about the tags she uses at Tagging for Nonprofit Operations at her tags are found here. Listed below are tags she uses:

• npoaccounting
• npoboards
• npocommunications
• npoeducation
• npofinance
• npofundraising
• npohr
• npoleadership
• npolegal
• npooperations
• nporesearch
• nporiskmanagement
• npostartup
• npotraining

Pam of Nonprofit Eye recently wrote about the tags she is using at TAG YOU'RE IT: NON-PROFIT TAG SYSTEMS . Listed below are some of the tags she uses:

• NonProfit2.0
• NonprofitCompensation
• NonProfitCompliance
• NonProfitEthics
• NonProfitManagement
• NonProfitResearch
• NonProfitResources
• NonprofitSalary
• NonprofitStartup
• NPAccounting
• NPBlog
• NPBranding
• NPFinancialManagement
• NPLegislation
• NPMarketing
• NPResearch
• NPResource
  

Trends I am seeing:

• Tags are starting with either np, nonprofit, npo, or nonprofit_
• nptech is the most popular tag being used
• Common topics for tags include education, communications, legal, research, accounting

Since there are no rules for tagging, I suggest using whatever tags you want to organize your information. If you want your tags (or items being tagged) to be seen in the nonprofit sector, use nptech.

What other tags are being used across the nonprofit sector? Have I missed anything?

Thoughts about nptech tag - January 2007

I've written a few entries before about my thoughts about the nptech tag and how I use it. However, it has been awhile since I have posted this information.

The nptech tag started as an experiment around January 2005, which is when I began using the tag and began writing this blog.

Here is a list of the blog entries I wrote about the nptech tag in the first 6 months:

• nptech tag (Jan 2005)
• nptech tag experiment (Feb 2005)
• What I realized this week about the nptech tag experiment (Feb 2005)
• Participating in the nptech tag experiment (July 2005)

Looking back at my earlier postings, I see the nptech tag as a way I became involved in nonprofit technology and learning more about the field. Through my participation in the nptech tag, my involvement in nonprofit technology grew and led to new things.

What are my thoughts about the nptech tag in early 2007?

Since NetSquared started and the tag Net2 is used, I have been trying to figure out what the difference is between the two tags. Everything tagged net2 could easily be tagged nptech. However, not everything nptech could be tagged net2.

Alot has changed over the two years. The goal was to figure out what other tags people were using besides nptech. Eventually this was going to be a taxonomy. This is what I thought -

"I can see this experiment lead to a virtual library about nonprofit technology. Imagine a place where you can find news resources, pictures, and other media about nonprofit technology. That is what I hope to see. "

However, I don't think this is the direction the nptech tag is going in, which is fine since this was started as an experiment. I also don't think people are using other tags when tagging items with nptech. I know when I first started I went tag crazy and came up with maybe 10 tags for each bookmark. Now I just want to share the bookmark as fast as I can and just tag it with nptech.

I imagine others are doing this too. You find a resource to share with others in nonprofit technology/nonprofit sector and you tag it with nptech since many users use the tag.

I still think nptech needs to be promoted more, especially at nonprofits. I also wish there could be a way to find out who the users are.

Answers to Questions (from Beth's Blog)

1) How are you using the NpTech Tag?
I currently tag my bookmarks on del.icio.us using nptech.

2) Do you subscribe to the feed to find resources?
I used to, but unsubscribed because I decided I wasn't interested in the links. However, this might change in the near future and I might subscribe again.

3) Do you read the summaries?
I read them and sometimes click on the links.

4) Do you tag items with the NpTech as a form of promotion or outreach?
not really, I used nptech when I first started the nonprofit blog exchange to promote it

Predictions for 2007

Here are my predictions for 2007 related to technology and nonprofit technology:

• Nonprofits will spread the word about fundraising widgets to support their organization. This will result in more individuals adding fundraising widgets to their websites and blogs.
• More nonprofits and companies will be using Second Life.
• More nonprofits and other places will be posting videos either on YouTube or other websites.
• Nonprofits will begin to see results on social networking sites.

What are your predictions?