Find out what kind of monkey you are for a good cause. The HSUS newest campaign is geared towards helping the 1,300 chimps still condemned to life in research labs across the country.
NpTech Conversations
Convio Opens Up API
Jason at DIA summarizes the posts and the bigs news in the nptech field this last week - Convio Releases An Open API. As bloggers and others give it closer scrutiny, we're hearing a debate about which Facebook App is better? Convio or Causes? See3 Blog writes about the advantages of the Convio Face App (integration with organization's Convio database) and the limitations (can only run one Facebook app at time). The Non-Profit Tech Blog drills down deeper on the limitations and suggests waiting before adopting. More from the Convio Summit this week.
NTEN's Call for NTC Sessions - Deadline October 24th. The NTC is the nonprofit technology's field largest gathering. Here's your chance to vote on sessions and suggest speakers..
Nonprofit Social Media ROI and Adoption Issues
The meme of the last week continues with a look at specific metrics like engagement. A short case study about the Nature Conservancy uses e-metrics. Stephen Downes describes the difficulty of measuring ROI of E-Learning with the best quote yet, "Measuring learning is still like measuring friendship. You can count
friends, or you can count on friends, but not, it seems, both." What do you think about measuring social media? Need to catch up last week's ROI conversations so you can jump in - start here.
In "The Social Web Ain't Rocket Science" Worldchanging blogger Jon Lebkowsky reminds us that blogs, wikis, and social networking sites may not be appropriate for all nonprofits and that hype and pressure shouldn't drive adoption decisions or they may not be successful. I wholeheartedly agree!
Which is worse, email overload or social networking fatigue. WSJ article "Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again?"
suggests that the answer to fixing a broken email, the most widely used web application, is to add social networking features. The article describes some mock ups and feature under consideration at Yahoo.
Michelle Martin rounds up some recent videos from Michael Wesch, the creator of The Machine is US/ing Us, including his newest "Information R/evolution," it is about how digital information is qualitatively
different from information on paper and how this changes the ways we think about how to store, use, access it. This one of the ideas that David Weinberger touches on in Everything Is Misc.
And if Web 2.0 pushes your buttons, why not push a few Web2.0 buttons. You'll find lots of them with this list of Web2.0 generators.
Technology in Arts Conference
The 2007 Technology in the Arts Conference is over but the conversations and resource sharing still continue on the conference wiki. Some more post conference write ups and live blog posts from smArts & Culture and Len Edgerly. To keep up with what the arts community is doing in technology and the social web, follow the blog.
Tools and Strategy
Google Earth for Green Activism
Kevin j points to a pretty amazing movie from the presentation at last week's Net Tuesday. Google has been reaching out to nonprofits for its Google Earth product over the last few months. Here's a set of best practices for Green Activism with Google Earth.
Social Networking
Fundraising Success article describing how different nonprofit organizations are using social networking sites to tap into a whole generation of new supporters. Jason at DIA tagged it with this note: "The most universal piece of advice about using social networks for fundraising and friendraising is to start small."
Last month I summarized multiple threads about how social networking sites like Facebook can be time wasters for both for-profit and nonprofits. Here's another article from Information Week to add to the list. Dave Winer describes in detail why Why Facebook Sucks. The parody sites are sprouting up like mushrooms. First there was Crackbook, then Hatebook and now comes Arsebook. Does this signal the beginning of movement underfoot called "No Social Networks!"
This post from a few months back from Search England Land titled "How To Win Friends and Influence People in Social News Networks" offers some tips for leveraging sites like Digg, and Stumbleupon. Ivan Boothe from the Genocide Network has a case study of how his organization used Reddit to drive calls to the Hotline. A few more good links about strategy for social news sites.
Blogging
Here's a Firefox Extension called "Post Wisdom" that acts as a blogging coach. It helps bloggers remember and use the best writing techniques.
JournaMarketing tells us why it isn't important to get every blogger's attention online.
This week was Blog Action Day for the Environment. Technovist tells us how to be a green blogger and Emily's World gives a great list of environmental blogs.
Video
Ruby shares her 10 Questions video. Here's how you can participate in 10 Questions.
Social Bookmarking
A terrific step-by-step guide guide called Social Bookmarking with del.icio.us from Tim Davies and Practical Participation.
Games for Change and Virtual Words
Nick Booth points to Free Rice, an online edugaming for good. Help with world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It's game based on how your vocabulary is. Every time you get a question right the advertisers donate 10 grains of rice. Museum2.0 blog thought it was cool too.
A screencapture from a recent weekly meeting for TechSoup's Nonprofit Commons project in Second Life. Want to get started in Second Life, check out.
Global NpTech
Inveneo is a non-profit social enterprise whose mission is to get the tools of ICT to those in remote and rural communities in the developing world, mostly in Africa. It's created a line of hardware (ultra
low-power computers) and open source software turnkey solutions and installation and support services.
Transparency and Digital Identity
Marnie Webb has a live blog post from the Online Community Summit from a session called "Holding Power Accountable: Transparency, Data, and Community" which was how a community can form and activate around the concept of data - raise awareness achieve social change. Think watchdog groups, corporate score cards, and corruption indexes. The notes suggest discussion around the appropriate tools to leverage transparency and how data in the social sphere is a public good.
Michelle Martin has some thoughts on digital identity.
New (To Me) Nonprofit Tech Blogs
Random Mutterings is by Shannon Turlington. Enjoy this post about nonprofit open source software.
Standford Social Innovation Review Blog you'll find some of the best nonprofit tech and philanthropy bloggers - like Sean Stannard-Stockton, Britt Bravo, and Lucy Bernholz.
The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology. Many individuals tag hundreds of resources each week. Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.
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