NGO tools » non-profit

Why Google Apps are right for Non-Profits and NGO’s

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:07:24 +0000

Subsequent having been webhost for many NGO‘s and non-profits I am know very well the struggle with members and their emails accounts. It just seems to be the never ending story. No matter how good instructions you make for the users there are consistently few of them that either do not follow or read the instructions and you end up spending your time trying to solve their quandaries.

Why Google Apps are right for Non-Profits and NGO’s

Ten Nonprofit Funding Models

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:38:40 +0000

Money is a constant topic of conversation among non- profit leaders: How much do we need? Where can we find it? Why isn’t there more of it? In tough economic times, these types of questions become more frequent and pressing. Unfortunately, the answers are not readily available. That’s because nonprofit leaders are much more sophis- ticated about creating programs than they are about funding their organizations, and philanthropists often struggle to understand the impact (and limitations) of their donations. There are consequences to this financial fuzziness. When nonprofits and funding sources are not well matched, money doesn’t flow to the areas where it will
do the greatest good.

Here is a very interesting article about the topic (pdf)

Recession Hits Non-profit Environmental Groups

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:36:28 +0000

Non-profits of every stripe have been suffering from the economic downturn. In a recent survey of 800 U.S.-based non-profits, 75 percent reported feeling the effects of the downturn, with more than half already experiencing significant cuts in funding from both government and private foundation sources.

According to a recently released report from Civic Enterprises and the Democratic Leadership Council entitled “Quiet Crisis: The Impact of the Economic Downturn on the Nonprofit Sector,” few of these groups have strong reserves to weather the downturn—more than half have less than three months of operating funds on hand, while three-quarters cannot make it six months on existing cash reserves.

via politicalaffairs.net

Non-profits lead the way in social media

admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:30:41 +0000

New study shows that non-profits organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media.

Conducted By: Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Eric Mattson CEO, Financial Insite

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently completed one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the usage of social media by United States charities.

The new study compares organizational adoption of social media in 2007 and 2008 by the 200 largest charities in the United States as compiled annually by Forbes Magazine. For complete details on Forbes Magazine’s list of the largest charities, please visit their website at Forbes.com.

In 2007 (using the 2006 Forbes list), the first study of this group’s use of social media was released. It revealed that these large non-profits were leading both corporations and universities (see our previous research) in their familiarity with, usage of, monitoring of and attitude towards social media.

This new research shows that charitable organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media. In the latest study (2008) a remarkable eighty-nine percent of charitable organizations are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis. A majority (57%) of the organizations are blogging. Forty-five percent of those studied report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy. While these organizations are best known for their non-profit status and their fundraising campaigns, they demonstrate an acute, and still growing, awareness of the importance of Web 2.0 strategies in meeting their objectives.

via umassd.edu

Grants For Non- Profit Organisations

admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:25:51 +0000

There is no doubt about the fact that businesses are for gaining profit to distribute the same to the owners and stockholders but there are businesses broadening their horizon towards the expansion without profit motive.

Not for profit or nonprofit businesses fall under the category trade associations, charitable organizations, social clubs, government, as well as political groups etc.

People who share common goals or common businesses or follow the same social ventures form these organizations or groups whatsoever.

Any organization or group showing their initiative for non-profitable ventures like development purpose or which are involved in social or religious activities for the upliftment of minorities, disabled, mentally challenged citizens or even women have always been given due priority by the Government of America with the special provision of grants for them.

via articlesnatch.com

Working for Non-profit

admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:23:24 +0000

Recently Seth Godin and I were interviewed for an article posted on Monster.com. The question was, “In one of the worst job markets in decades, many (particularly young people) are turning to nonprofits to find work, but is devoting a year or two to the greater good — and putting off any serious earning — a wise career move??”

via http://ricksmith.me

Make your NGO – Non-profit site more sociable

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:52:17 +0000

Working with wordpress makes it very easy to make your website more sociable. Here is list with the best sociable plugins availible today for wordpress.

Digg This – Digg this wordpress plugin is a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story.When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the site’s admin and the button appears on the site.
ShareThis – Is very known sharing service with its green ShareThis icon put to your blog. People can quickly submit your articles to the most popular social sites or just email them to their friends.
Sociable– Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites. You can design the css, images and decide wich social networks you link to.
LifeStream –Lifestream is a plugin built on top of the WordPress platform. It allows you to effortlessly integrate your social network activity across the web with your blog. Out of the box, Lifestream is just streams in RSS/Atom feeds and prettying them up, but deep down it’s a very flexible platform allowing developers to integrate any kind of activity they desire..
Meet Your Commenters – When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This wordpress plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. You will be able to know the profiles of your visitors in social networks like flickr, twitter, facebook,….
SocialBoaster – fun little script that’ll aggregate your Digg, Twitter and Del.icio.us activity and post it to your WordPress blog. It uses the WordPress cron system and can be configured to search for updates by the hour or on a daily basis. SocialBoaster works by grabbing the contents of your Twitter Tweets, and Digg/Del.icio.us bookmarks and creating posts for them on your blog. SocialBoaster is designed to be unobstrusive. As such, each post SocialBoaster makes will be given a metadata value in order to make SocialBoaster posts easily distinguishable from regular blog posts.
DandyID Services – DandyID is a free service that enables you to connect, manage, and share all of your online identities from a single location. With approximately 330 social networks supported, the DandyID Services plugin is one of the most extensive available.
TweetMe is a simple WordPress Plugin that posts a tweet to Twitter when you publish a blog post. You decide what actually gets posted to your Twitter feed. The link to the post is shortened to around 18 characters using the bit.ly service.
Twittertools – A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.

5 Essential Tips for Promoting Your Charity Using Social Media

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:00:27 +0000

For non-profit organizations and other charities, social media is potentially an incredibly powerful tool to get the word out, connect with constituents, rally support, and even raise money.

But, like for any business, social media will only pay dividends for charities if they utilize it properly. You can’t just sign up for a Twitter account, create a Facebook Fan Page and then watch the donations roll in. It unfortunately just doesn’t happen that way.

Getting the most out of social media is hard work and requires patient diligence. But the eventual rewards are potentially enormous. Here are five essential tips for charities to get the most out of social media when promoting their cause.

via mashable.com

Social Media Provide Untapped Opportunity to Engage High Dollar Non-profit Donors

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:22:19 +0000

The social web offers a welcome place for individual philanthropic activity. New research funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrates that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, Society for New Communications Research Fellow Geoff Livingston, and Qui Diaz of CRT/tanaka.

The Community Philanthropy 2.0 research study examined the use of social media by non-profits and causes, as well as existing donors and Internet “savvy” users’ traditional and social media usage patterns. The research was designed to determine if and how social media can be used to engage and cultivate high dollar donors. Objectives of the research included.

via newcommreview.com

Free eBook on Storylistening Through Social Media

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:19:23 +0000

I like ANYTHING about social media that puts the emphasis on listening. Because that’s often the web’s greatest value to nonprofit marketers – a way to listen to our community, a way to learn what they want and need, and a way to deepen our level of engagement by using that knowledge to build relationships.

It’s not about your mouth, it’s about your ears.

A nice person named Genna today pointed me to a free eBook on the topic.

via nonprofitmarketingblog.com