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News for February 2003

26 February 2003

Our Readers' Top Thirty Books from 2002
	Last month, we surveyed our readers with questions about books, news sources, and successful use of email. This short feature is the first result of that survey. When we asked our readers what book most influenced their work last year, we got hundreds of titles. But of those, these thirty received more than one vote. Posted: 2/26/03; 5:57:19 PM #

Online Volunteers Make a Difference at UNITeS
	Jayne Cravens takes a good look at how online volunteers are making a difference at the United Nations Information Technology Service. Posted: 2/26/03; 1:57:53 PM #

25 February 2003

Cohen editorial: Thinking ahead is critical
	In Thinking Ahead is Critical, Todd Cohen offers a few brief opinions on the growing importance of planned giving to nonprofits. Posted: 2/25/03; 12:10:26 PM #

23 February 2003

New Tools for Subscribers

We spent the last week launching three new tools for susbcribers of Nonprofit Online News, already described in detail in a recent announcement. The tools include: Daily URLS (links that bring up only a single day's worth of news), Daily Email Option (the ability to receive news on the day it is posted), and an RSS Feed (an XML version of the news suitable for modern aggregators and news readers). Posted: 2/23/03; 10:40:19 PM #

Put it in Writing: What Do You Need from a Provider?
	In Put it in Writing: What Do You Need from a Provider?, Marc Osten spells out some essential homework you have to do to put your organization in control of the vendor selection process. Posted: 2/23/03; 10:40:07 PM #

Nonprofit Quarterly on Leadership Transitions
	The Winter 2002 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly has a piece by Tom Adams on leadership transitions in nonprofit organizations. Posted: 2/23/03; 10:39:54 PM #

16 February 2003

Media Transparency Profile of Bradley Foundation

The descriptions that most of us have of the foundations that fund our programs are usually provided by the foundations themselves. That's why I was fascinated by the historical analysis of the right wing Bradley Foundation provided by Media Transparency. It was particularly chilling to read about the funding of the John Birch Society (and it's many contemporary successors who now hold power), because it was Bircher language that I found on the death threat I received after 9-11. Posted: 2/16/03; 12:05:39 PM #

Antiwar Marches Reveal Gulf Between Leaders and People
	I consider this headline in the New York Times to be a victory of both nonprofits and the internet: Antiwar Marches Reveal Gulf Between Leaders and People. Posted: 2/16/03; 12:05:30 PM #

13 February 2003

Free report if you attend NTEN conference

The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network's annual Roundup is the most important nonprofit technology conference of the year. It will be held on March 7 - 9 in Oakland. To show our support for the conference, we are offering a free copy of our forthcoming report, The Basics of Nonprofit Email to the first 25 people who respond to this offer. On March 1, that report will go on sale for $29. It will include core methods and practices for your own email strategy, an annotated guide to email related resources, basic dos and don'ts of nonprofit email, and numbers about Email Savvy organizations. Note: You must register using the form linked to above in order to qualify for the offer. Posted: 2/13/03; 5:06:34 AM #

12 February 2003

Year Three of the UCLA Internet Report
	The UCLA Internet report surveys thousands of internet users about their online habits. The most recent edition (PDF) is available. Posted: 2/12/03; 12:40:35 PM #

Social Networks Sturdier Than 'Net
	I'm an admirer of the work of the Santa Fe Institute. In their recent work they have discovered some important differences between computer networks and human networks. It's theoretical but there are thought provoking implications about the spread of both ideas and diseases. Posted: 2/12/03; 12:40:26 PM #

Virus triggers suit against Microsoft
	A Korean civic organization is planning on filing suit against Microsoft for the company's role in the recent virus related blackout of that country's internet networks. Posted: 2/12/03; 12:40:12 PM #

Museum Tests 5 Online and Email Marketing Tactics
	The Boston Museum of Science tested 5 online and email marketing tactics and has made those results available. One very interesting insight is how much the quality of the prospects being sent to your web site matters. Some sources of prospects are much better than others in terms of the ultimate results. Posted: 2/12/03; 12:39:57 PM #

Collaborative development of open content
	In Collaborative Development of Open Content, Derek Keats looks at how resource strapped African universities might use the models of development pioneered by open source software to create high quality content for teaching. The implications for equally resource strapped nonprofits of any kind are interesting. Posted: 2/12/03; 12:38:54 PM #

7 February 2003

Glitch Leaves .Org Registration in Limbo

The Internet Society, in the form of the nonprofit Public Interest Registry (PIR), has assumed responsibility for the .org domain registry, but the transition has apparantly left thousands of organizations with an impaired ability to manage their domains. Last week we were transfering a number of The Gilbert Center domains to a new registrar and all of the .org transfers failed. The issue surfaced publicly on the NTEN Circuit Rider's mailing list yesterday. What's happened is that the contact information for domains is no longer showing up in most of the databases. (These are called the WHOIS records.) You'll see an example of the incomplete information at the WHOIS database maintained by PIR itself. This means that a registrar cannot contact the owner of a domain in order to initiate transfers. They cannot confirm who controls the domain. There may be other impacts I haven't thought of yet. As one list member explained it, PIR is currently running a "thin" registry. This means that the only place you can look up complete information on a domain is with the registrar currently managing the particular domain. Unfortunately, it seems that many if not most of those registrars don't know this. Thanks to Adam Bernstein, Michelle Murrain, Dan Scharfman, Helen Seal, and Jim Skillington and the Circuit Riders list. I highly recommend them and this community. For background on the issue of the transfer of the .org registry, see The Power of Names. Posted: 2/7/03; 11:59:55 AM #

5 February 2003

Nonprofit Online News: The Best of 2002
	We have just published our first compilation: Nonprofit Online News: The Best of 2002. It contains 71 of the best resources of the year, organized into 27 categories, and released under a Creative Commons license. We have a small survey we ask you to complete for the free download. Posted: 2/5/03; 10:33:55 AM #

4 February 2003

Nonprofits, NTAPs and Information Technology

N-TEN has released the full text of their report, Nonprofits, NTAPs and Information Technology (PDF file), which looks at the attitudes of 70 nonprofits toward technology, nonprofit technology assistance projects (NTAPs), and their most recent technology projects. It's a small sample and I still can't decide if I like the methodology, but this is an important step toward developing our understanding of this field of work. Posted: 2/4/03; 9:49:52 AM #

3 February 2003

No silver bullet for web content
	Gerry McGovern weighs in on knowledge management in No Silver Bullet for Web Content. No software will make up for poorly conceived or badly organized content. Posted: 2/3/03; 11:35:35 AM #

Metrics for Knowledge Management and Content Management
	KM Column has a good piece on metrics for knowledge management and content management, divided into categories such as implementation metrics, cultural metrics, and so forth. Posted: 2/3/03; 11:35:27 AM #