In conjunction with launching Critical Issues 3: Untangling the Web and Wednesday Webinars, this post initiates a series on nonprofit use of the Web. Because the possibilities are evolving so rapidly, we kept the Critical Issues piece at the conceptual level, reserving more specific comment for this blog.
In this post we’ll draw on several of the best bloggers on nonprofit Web topics to introduce the issues, and then touch on specific Web 2.0 functions that can advance nonprofit strategy.
First of all, if you have any doubts about the need to dive into social media, take a look at one of the many versions of the YouTube video, Social Media Revolution based on Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics. Once this has focused your attention, review some blog posts on how to approach social media:
- Deborah Long’s Five Easy Steps to Engage in Social Media for Public Affairs
- Heather Mansfield’s excellent blog, Nonprofits 2.0 at Change.org, especially her recent post 10 Insights Gained from Spending 7,280 Hours on Social Media Websites
- Elaine Gantz Wright’s No More Waiting in the Weeds: Make Time to Grow Your Social Media Garden and some of her related posts. While it’s easy to get carried away with prescriptions about, for instance exactly how often to Tweet (see the comment exchange following a generally excellent post about Twitter by Ms. Mansfield), Ms. Wright’s recommendations are very solid.
- Beth Kanter’s thoughts about preparing your people to make the transition to social media: Becoming A Social Media Savvy Nonprofit, Nurturing A Social Culture Through Personal Use, posted on her highly respected Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media.
Resources on the Web
Beyond the blogs mentioned above, here are some Web resources that can be enormously useful for nonprofits, in four categories:
Learn
If you are looking for specific tools for nonprofit governance and management, there are excellent resources at the Foundation Center’s Catalog of Nonprofit Literature, the Nonprofit Resource Center, BoardSource, Free Management Library, and Idealist.
For technology information, try TechSoup, Idealware, or ReadWriteWeb.
Two new knowledge resources for nonprofits:
- IdeaEncore Network, “an online marketplace for the sharing of ready-to-use tools, presentations, course outlines, templates, and project plans within and between nonprofit organizations.” (Disclosure: as a beta tester, Synthesis Partnership played a minor, uncompensated advisory role in the implementation of IdeaEncore)
- Nonprofit Webinars, a clearinghouse for webinars on issues of interest to nonprofits. (Another disclosure: Nonprofit Webinars is hosting my new series of webinars on nonprofit strategy, planning and organizational development, Wednesday Webinars).
One of the best ways to keep current on helpful blogs, webinars, and other media, as well as asking questions of and discussing timely issues with nonprofit colleagues, is LinkedIn. There you’ll find groups such as Nonprofit Professionals, Nonprofit Professionals Forum, Web 2.0 for Nonprofit Organizations, Strategic Planning for Nonprofits, and Start-Up Non-Profits. The daily or weekly digest e-mail of postings to these groups is a good way to manage the flow of information.
Work
The omnipresent Google showcases its tools for operations and fundraising, along with ideas on how to use them effectively, at Google for Nonprofits.
Web 2.0 offers a growing number tools for collaboration, from scheduling meetings (Doodle) or registering events (Eventbrite) to holding them online (Tinychat, reviewed on readwriteweb: Tinychat Relaunches as Easy to Use Video Chat and Recording Platform).
Other free collaboration options include easy-to-use, feature-rich sites that go far enough beyond their origins as blog (Tumblr) and wiki (Wiggio) to provide overlapping opportunities to assemble virtual workspaces that fit various kinds of needs.
Share
Sharing starts with the capabilities you decide to embed in your website, blog, Twitter feed and/or Facebook page. (This might be a good place for me to acknowledge how much I’ve learned over the past few months from another seeker of social media communication truths, Lorrie Jackson, who has lots of helpful thoughts for nonprofits, especially schools, on her blog).
From Flikr to Tinypic, photo sharing sites have a variety of useful features to offer in conjunction with blogging and microblogging.
For webinars dimdim seems a good free or low-cost choice, especially for low-volume use. For a how-to introduction, look at Gayle Thorsen's Webinars for Nonprofits: Getting Started.
Do you have an e-mail newsletter? You should. Here is a brief compilation of e-newsletter tips and advice from a blog called Have Fun Do Good: 10 Nonprofit e-newsletter Resources. There are many providers of newsletter software, with various collections of features. For easy setup, a good feature set, and a cost-effective start for smaller-scale users—no monthly fee, and very low fees per address—take a look at Campaign Monitor.
Find
Some very useful search shortcuts and power boosters:
- Get notified automatically when you or your issues and interests mentioned on the web: Google alerts or on Twitter: tweetscan.
- Find out how many people are looking at your web pages from day to day, and who they are: Clicky and Google Analytics
- For several interesting thoughts about YouTube, including how people are finding your YouTube videos, see Frogloop’s 9 YouTube Features You May Not Know About.
- For more broad-based search and filtering of information Interactive Insights offers: How-To: Search the Social Web - Ultimate Toolkit.
The bottom line
While one very natural reaction to this flood of possibilities is that it’s way too much information, the fact remains that the means of effective learning, working and communicating are changing radically, and the way to survive natural selection is to evolve. We all need to learn enough about the new environment to be able to work differently and prioritize effectively.
More to follow