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Digital Mapping helps many in relief work.

A blog a day keeps the lawyers away...

Enviromentally conscious orgs are creating the future, not reacting to it.

One very revealing panel (in a web-streamed Advocacy Live event in March) included Eric Jones, the top technology person for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who provided tips and advice about ways that online organizers might boost their campaigns' impact on members of Congress and their staffers. Recorded  video event posted by Blackbaud on this webpage.

substantive new report out from the Knight Foundation that is worth attention: Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril and Potential of Networks.  The report notes: *It's important to listen to and consult the crowd in our work *We should create environments where connections can naturally form, including between people with different perspectives *It's good practice to support collective action so grassroots efforts can grow So how can nonprofits embrace these practices? 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded $2.7 million to Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop military command and control systems. This system will help commanders on the field track other systems and strategize on the fly. This system will also monitor fighters and their communication and weapons.

A non-profit out of California has created software for human rights workers that is designed to secretly store data about human rights violation abuses in the country where they are located. There is talk about it already being used in the Middle-East recently. The software includes a 'panic button' that a human rights worker could use that would instantly delete all the files on the computer about government violations. The data is then stored in the cloud and accessable only with a password and secret 'key.' This is a great example of nonprofits working together to fight enormous challenges, with human rights being one of the most dangerous and exhaustive areas of work in the non-profit sector.

UNICEF is playing with the idea of using QR Codes to encouraging people to donate items on a 1X2 (buy one, give one) basis while shopping at the store. It is a pretty neat way to utilize the technology, and encourage people to donate.

This brief article includes some tips for nonprofit fundraising. Marketing concepts are an unavoidable reality of the process. You will need good marketing skills to generate income for a nonprofit organization.

The head of California's state office of technology sees social media as a "force multiplier" and is aggressively expanding the state's mobile presence this year, aiming to double the number of mobile apps offered in 2011. Adrian Farley, the acting director and chief technology officer of OTech, told OhMyGov.com in an exclusive interview that the state of California, one of the earliest adopters of social media in government, had been very fortunate in experiencing almost no cultural pushback in attempts to integrate social media into official public communications. 

With the recent news that more e-books were brought than paperbacks in February, its no surprise that Amazon is allowing the Kindle to borrow e-books from more than 11,000 libraries across the U.S. in working with OverDrive, a huge supplier of e-books for public schools and libraries. Students and non-profits will now have greater access to e-books, but the limit on checking out books is a concern with HaperCollins announcing a new policy that requires e-books to expire after being check out only 26 times.

The Michigan State Police have a handful of portable machines called "extraction devices" that have the potential to download personal information from motorists they pull over, and the ACLU would like to know more about them. "The problem, as the ACLU sees it, is that accessing a citizen's private phone information when there's 'no probable cause could create a violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment', which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures."

MSP Statement in response to news stories on April 20, 2011 The implication by the ACLU that the MSP uses these devices "quietly to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches" is untrue, and this divisive tactic unjustly harms police and community relations.

Forbes reports: "Someone has hijacked the tax identity of more than 2,300 tiny or defunct nonprofits, apparently taking advantage of a hole in a new electronic Internal Revenue Service filing system to list the same person as a charitable official at the same mail box drop in Las Vegas."