Group items tagged

"In an effort to crack down on child pornography, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the seizure of 10 domains as a part of a new initiative called "Operation Protect Our Children" but they also shut down 84,000 seemingly innocent sites in the process."   A clear example of how attempting to exercise government control over the Internet in the United States on a even a small scale can present problems that were not the intent of the US gov. officials & decision makers!!!!!

"Yesterday, we told you how someone was able to steal the tax identity of 2,300-plus small nonprofits due to a hole in a new electronic filing system implemented by the Internal Revenue Service. Every nonprofit in this group, most with religiously themed names, now lists as a principal officer one William Alexander and its address as the same mail-box drop on N. Rainbow Blvd. in Las Vegas. This happened due to a glitch that essentially allows a nonprofit's contact information to be changed online by anyone who registers on an IRS-designated site with a name-which is not verified-and an email address."

examples of wordpress webites that are simple and layed out nicely. wordpress sites would be great for small nonprofits.

The Apple iPad, one of apple's hottest sellers, is seeing frequent use by those in the government sector. With the seemingly endless amount of apps available for use with the iPad, many help government workers to become more efficient. The apps that are seeing the most use include twitter, quick office, evernote and flipboard. Twitter is helpful to disperse quick messages to others in the work place, and obviously has social networking benefits as well. Quick Office is seeing a lot of use as a microsoft office productivity tool. Evernote allows the user to take notes, record sound bytes, add pictures and video, and other helpful pieces of information into one "note" that is easily dispersed to others in one piece, together. Flipboard is presented almost as a "personal magazine", where feeds from social networking sites and other sites the user selects appear directly on the iPad's interface.

I enjoyed this journal, its a guide that most NPO's should follow when thinking about using social media sites for there organization.

Page 2 of this very long PDF has an extremely relevant list of 10 social media habits of successful NPO's.

This report indicates what trends dominate older users of social media. The main argument here is whether or not using social media to interact with NPO volunteeers and clients is worthwhile. The research indicates that it is a worthwhile endeavor. The important thing to bear in mind as far as older users are concerned, is making organizational web sites extremely accessible and user-friendly.

I think to a certain extent it is important to incorporate new social media into npo's its a easier way to reach out to volunteers and clients, its mostly about how you as a supervisor manage the usage from your employees.

This is site that non-profits can join and access different technologies that would help the organization reach its goals. TechSoup is the name of the organization that runs this and it has many partners that donate these different forms of technology. This technology is availiable to all nonprofits that qualify. check it out.

This site has at Top 10 list for paid social media monitoring services specifically designed for nonprofits. I found it to be very helpful because it had descriptions of each type of service along with costs, and what size nonprofit it would be most beneficial for. This could be useful for a nonprofit trying to organize contacts while also receiving feedback on how they are progressing through social media.

Great example of crowd-sourced question site to help answer a specific question about a CRM (client relationship management) solution for a small nonprofit.

article subtitle: Labor board says discussing work with others is a right.  Key issues highlighted with article quotes: "Schools and other employers should think twice before trying to restrict workers from talking about their jobs on Facebook or other social media." "The National Labor Relations Board sued the company last year, arguing the worker's negative comments were protected speech under federal labor laws."

Clover is a small business web design site that offer a website some money, very good news.

If a nonprofit dabbles in web design this is more specific to design choice for the web creator but it was worth the inquiry for myself. Drupal has been proven to better the better choice for a larger organization that wants more features. Wordpress has held an advantage for the smaller startups for ease of use. There is a convergence between the two that is occurring but Drupal still maintains a lead. The problem with the more complex applications in a site is that it will require more maintenance which a very small nonprofit or company would seek to avoid. I generally consider it very difficult to maintain a mobile web solution and keep a good selection of applications running without some expert support. The old standard of a simple website appears to be waning quickly. The choice now appears to be how much work you want to pay your website manager to do rather than determining if you need one.

Watson, the computer that has recently been competing on Jeopardy, could eventually hold a position in Government. Technology like the such that is used in Watson could eventually help government municipalities with garnering and analyzing data and information and regurgitating back to people who need it. For instance, a person looking to gain a building license could tell the computer what it is planning on building, and instead of having to sift through possibly thousands of pages of information, the computer could simply return a checklist to the person.

This site shows government technology solutions for local and state governments. I was particularly drawn in by the article of about Watson, the Jeopardy game show computer contestant, and how this type of technology could be beneficial to government programs.

A new report out from the Nonprofit Technology Network and M+R Strategic Services concludes that NP's have a lot of work to do when it comes to making a presence on social media sites. The 2011 'eNonprofit Benchmarks Study" found that NP's had only around 110 Facebook fans and 19 Twitter followers for every e-mail subscriber. Small organizations will need to be apart of social networking in the near future and there looks to be great potential for growth. Working with a small-consulting firm, I found that utilizing social media is a quick and easy way to inform clients on up-to-date news and activities.

Thanks to technology, email accounts, social networking sites, and cell phones are now prime marketing real estate. In order to strike the right balance between marketing to the masses and generating revenue, organizations should do two things right away. First, establish communication guidelines that reflect the organization's vision, mission, short and long-term objectives (collectively, the brand)-not what the business Joneses are doing. Second, ask constituents what matters to them.

This site explains steps non profits should follow to reshape their organizations.  It then goes in depth on how the use of technology will be helpful in the reshaping.

This is an example of one of the upcoming webinars that can help non-profits improve on using social media. For a low price, an entire non-profit staff could become educated on the best sites to choose, content to post, and time to be allotted. The woman who runs these webinars is a pioneer in using social media for non-profits.

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."