Group items tagged

These topic seem are important on how its educated us about what technology does to the nonprofit or government. some of the things they Author point out were impactful, innovation, and tranformative all these words were used for the change a technolgy could do to the alter the nonprofit or government programs. i think that it useful to have these technology that support our ideas about negative impact that could damage nonprofit work in some ways.

I did some volunteering with this organization this past weekend. A group of about 50 students from Grand Valley went and disassembled over 230 computers. CompRenew Environmental recycles old electronics (tvs, computers, microwaves….basically anything with a plug) and keeps them from going into landfills. They then refurbish the electronics and sell them, or they disassemble them and sell the parts, or just recycle them. All of the money they get from the recycled electronics goes to education in over 44 countries. CompRenew is a really neat company. Hopefully their idea will spread and more cities will be able to recycle old electronics.

Goodwill and MacMedia both have related recycling / refurbishing interests around the state: http://www.goodwillwm.org/donate/computer-recycling--reuse and http://www.macmedia.org/care.html, respectively.

Responsibly recycle your electronics.

Article giving 7 tips on how non profits can use mobile phones to their advantage and gain donations. A good follow-up on class discussion of bar code scanning...

This article covers a major issue in net neutrality, an argument that will ultimately come down to the courts deciding whether the government can legitimately intervene in private business. The appeal from Verizon that challenges the recent adoption of net neutrality by the FCC was certainly expected. Either private businesses will win their appeal for less government regulation or our government will really begin to regulate service providers.

An intriguing article about how an online game is actually making a huge contribution financially for children in the hospital

A survey about mobile text messaging found that 86% of donors said they would donate again in the future, either through text messages or some other form of online giving. Most people had a positive experience with donating through a mobile phone and would like to recieve notices about the charity they were donating to. Future predictions say mobile phone donating is going to continue to grow in popularity.

With so many organizations out there competing for attention and money, having a solid social media strategy is going to be paramount to success in the future. This Webinar looks pretty interesting, and should help to sort out some of those issues for NPOs of any size. I would be really interested to hear Brooke McMillan talk about managing the Livestrong presence online, and how they look at Social Media as a fundraising tool.

My subject of discussion on posterous this week was about Grand Rapids trying to pass a millage for the Rapid this May. Improved public transit has proven to spur economic growth in "dying" cities (or areas of cities). Better transportation means better employment, incentives to build businesses, and saving money on gas!

Some helpful tips for if/when you have to register a domain name for your nonprofit's website, and it's already taken. Creative names are worth money, and people are happy to squat on them for as long as possible. These are just a few ways to help get around it.

This article articulates the reasons why custom databases are not the best option.... The author didn't leave much space to endorse the other side

A list of possible databases to choose for your nonprofit or business.... someone had too much spare time.... absurd!

Most nonprofit websites are still at the "before" stage of a makeover says this lover of make over shows. "It is therefore with great excitement that I get to unveil a highly successful makeover from Project Hope. They took their website from dull to dynamic, meeting all the important requirements of a great site."

How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Up? This was the opening question Jocelyn Harmon (Director of Nonprofit Services for Care2.com) and I posed during our presentation on "The Art and Science of Fundraising Online" for the Association Foundation Group. If your organization's average online gift is lower than you would like or your organization has not developed a well thought out year-end online fundraising campaign in the past, then you need to make changes to your online fundraising program ASAP. > see our Seven Online Fundraising Strategies You Can Do Right Now.

In today's world, we live our lives on the internet. We communicate, learn, find loved ones, get our news and buy products all online. But, 90% of volunteering happens offline.  Traditional offline volunteering has a lot of hoops to jump through.

This article focuses on the pitfalls of poor selection practices. Many of these are similar to poor management practices in general. A link to a list of potential vendors is also included....

Reports expenditures of the $787 billion dollars of the Recovery Act funds. Citizens can use to identify fraud, waste, and abuse of those funds.  Zip code map to find how funds being used in your area. Social Media feeds of all types.