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News for February 2006
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 24 February 2006 |
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| The Effective Emailer |
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I'm looking at more of Guy Kawasaki's recent work, because he is speaking at the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference. I want to share with you his twelve tips for being an Effective Emailer: (1) Craft your subject line. (2) Limit your recipients. (3) Don't write in ALL CAPS. (4) Keep it short. (5) Quote back. (6) Use plain text. (7) Control your URLs. (8) Don't FUQ (Fabricate Unanswerable Questions). (9) Don't FUQ, II. (10) Attach files infrequently. (11) Ask permission. (12) Chill out.
Posted: 2/24/06; 5:26:27 PM # |
| Interview: Guy Kawasaki |
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This is a short interview with Guy Kawasaki, the keynote speaker for the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference. He touches on a few key lessons that I'm sure he'll develop in his speech, and offers links to some key background work of his, including: How to Be a Demo God, The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs, The Effective Emailer, and The Art of Creating a Community.
Posted: 2/24/06; 5:26:20 PM # |
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23 February 2006 |
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| February 2006 Edition of Nonprofit Online News Journal |
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The February 2006 Edition of the Journal is out, with two knowledge management articles, email design guidelines, blogging policies, a perspective on nonprofit journalism, and an exploration of the growing movement of progressive, spiritually motivated activists. Our quicksheet this month starts to develop a model for understanding weblog marketing. We have short reviews of three outstanding books and our usual news items, with a sad emphasis on the growing threat to U.S civil society in the forms of censorship and spying.
Posted: 2/23/06; 7:37:18 PM # |
| Corporate Citizenship Glossary |
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Maplecroft is a consulting firm that focuses on "Corporate Social Responsibility". Although I personally believe that genuine responsibility is probably not possible within the framework of global corporate law and economics, I respect some of the work of this firm. I particularly like their Corporate Citizenship Glossary. It is a set of topical maps and indexed terms covering major global issues. It is perhaps damning them with faint praise to applaud them for their straightforward handling of the global warming issue, but in this era of the big lie, we'll take what we can get. There is some good work here, which I'm pleased to see them make available beyond their corporate clientele. I particularly enjoyed the maps, of course.
Posted: 2/23/06; 6:12:37 PM # |
| A Quick Survey of the Blog Manifestos |
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I've always enjoyed Kathryn Cramer's analytical mind (rich in insight, irony, and systems thinking), so when she sets herself to the task of understanding her blogging methodology, I pay attention. She starts out with A Quick Survey of the Blog Manifestos. She collects a number of seminal documents from 2002 and 2003 and annotates them with wit and reason.
Posted: 2/23/06; 5:53:57 PM # |
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22 February 2006 |
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| Frictionless Fundraising: Workshop Facts |
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Our popular series of essential online fundraising seminars, Frictionless Fundraising, returns in the first week of April and we have an early registration promotion in effect until March 13. Session 1 is on How to Save Money and Make Money by Converting your Donors to Email. Session 2 looks at Ten Ways to Improve Cultivation and Stewardship of Donors. And Session 3 is one of our best, on the subject of Effective Email Newsletters. We plan on integrating some of the latest information: research on permission done in the Nonprofit Email Studies, the latest usability guidelines for email content, and a preview of some upcoming challenges to affordable email delivery.
Posted: 2/22/06; 7:02:57 PM # |
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20 February 2006 |
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| Technologist Manifesto or Things Everyone in IT Should Know |
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In a challenge to technology advocates everywhere, a self styled IT Hit Man offers a Technologist Manifesto. His rules include: (1) Bad Technology is Your Fault. (2) Users aren't Born Stupid, You Train Them to be That Way. (3) You want to make your system easier to use than to not use. (4) If the Solution Seems Too Simple, Use It. (5) Eliminate Jobs - Everywhere. (6) Make People Better. (7) Understand the Good of "Good Enough". Read this.
Posted: 2/20/06; 11:53:25 PM # |
| eNonprofit Benchmarks Study |
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I was pleased to see the release this last week of a benchmarks study sponsored by a number of major commercial technology providers to the sector, supported by two foundations, and administered by a couple of very respectable organizations. I'm giving this one a careful review, but at first glance I would say it is an important milestone. Some of its conclusions are a little obvious, such as if you spend more money on technology you tend to produce more results. Others are speculative, such as when the authors try to guess what is causing declining open rates. But if you want to know many of the key numbers for some of the largest nonprofit online efforts, you have to read this study.
Posted: 2/20/06; 11:43:48 PM # |
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16 February 2006 |
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| The Permeable Organization |
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The boundaries of traditional nonprofit organizations are under relentless assault by new patterns of communication and association that are stronger than the corporate model of governance and stronger than nonprofit brands. The pressures and ideas converging on nonprofits include: collaboration and mergers, ASPs, Web 2.0, network centric advocacy, blogging, social bookmarking, and many other forms of social software and networks. Although our mainstream commentators are not on this yet, this convergence foretells a radical restructuring of the nonprofit sector. Read The Permeable Organization for the big picture and consider our upcoming online seminar that will dive into the immediate and useful implications for nonprofits today.
Posted: 2/16/06; 11:50:07 PM # |
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15 February 2006 |
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| Guide to Proposal Writing |
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The fourth edition of The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing has been on my shelf since shortly after it came out. Based on interviews with grantmakers, it offers reliable, realistic, and respectful advice on all the key aspects of writing grant proposals, including the steps that come before and after. Most of the mistakes in proposal writing seem to come from either sloppy thinking or a lack of understanding of the day to day realities of the program officer receiving the grant. Because proposal writing is a form of thinking out loud, it can help solidify ideas and logic models. And this book can fill in many of the gaps in knowledge about the folks who will be reading your proposals.
Posted: 2/15/06; 7:15:57 PM # |
| Guide to Winning Proposals |
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The Foundation Center's Guide to Winning Proposals has twenty four proposals and query letters organized into ten categories. It's full of gems, including one of the strongest and clearest opening paragraphs of any proposal I've read, from a proposal by Compumentor: "We respectfully submit a request for $50,000 to help fund our Bay Area Services Initiative, which will assist 20 small nonprofits in San Mateo and Northern Santa Clara Counties in planning and implementing information technology systems that will enhance their capacity to serve their clients and to report on outcomes." Like all the other proposals in this book, the request was successful.
Posted: 2/15/06; 7:15:52 PM # |
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9 February 2006 |
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| Nonprofit Technology Conference 2006 |
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The annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, put on by the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, will be held here in Seattle on March 23-24, 2006. Through February 27, N-TEN has agreed to give their member rate to every subscriber of Nonprofit Online News, which amounts to a $100 discount off the non-member rate. The online registration process is rather complex. It involves signing on to the N-TEN website and then selecting "Gilbert Center Promotion" as the Source Code when you get to the registration form. If you get bogged down at all, are more comfortable on the phone, or want to register more than one person, it might be simpler to just call N-TEN at 1.415.397.9000. This conference has an amazing pedigree. It has the distinction of the annual meeting of the premier international professional association for noncommercial technology workers. But it also traces its lineage to the down and dirty peer groups of the Circuit Rider Roundups. As a result, it offers a combination of education and networking that is hard to find anywhere else. I hope to see you there.
Posted: 2/9/06; 4:41:06 PM # |
| The Art of the Start |
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Guy Kawasaki's book The Art of the Start lives up to its subtitle: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. It embraces a kind of empowering, even liberating realism that I have always loved myself and which Kawasaki simply oozes. If you're going to be unrealistic in your goals (and in a way, all of us who want to make the world better are "unrealistic"), then you better face the truth head on in every aspect of your implementation. This book has chapters devoted to each of those aspects: Positioning, Pitching, Planning, Bootstrapping, Recruiting, Fundraising, Partnering, Branding, and Rainmaking. It concludes with a chapter on the Art of Being a Mensch. What a delightful and practical book! I should also mention that Guy Kawasaki will be keynoting the Nonprofit Technology Conference, coming up in Seattle on March 23-24, 2006.
Posted: 2/9/06; 4:38:54 PM # |
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6 February 2006 |
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| The Guide to Nonprofit Email |
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The Gilbert Center is known for its work on email and we have probably made as much of a difference to the nonprofit sector in the area of email as anyone can hope to make. But until today, we had a single relatively thin volume of advice to offer our readers. Today, with the publication of our most ambitious work to date, that changes. The Guide to Nonprofit Email is a 118 page manual that is densely packed with insights both large and small. There are thirteen articles on strategy, permission, and implementation, and 111 annotated resources in seventeen categories directly related to the nonprofit use of email. We recommend this publication to consultants, communication managers, vendors, and especially those leaders who shape the budget and direction of their organization's communication practices.
Posted: 2/6/06; 1:39:06 PM # |
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4 February 2006 |
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| AOL to Implement Email Certification Program |
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All I know right now is in this article, but if this is all there is too it, nonprofit email newsletters and noncommercial mailers in general are in a lot of trouble. Seems that to assure that your email gets through to AOL subscribers intact, mailers will have to
pay a certification company for every email sent. They are basically threatening to disable the links in email that doesn't pay the fee. Since Nonprofit Online News is all about links, we will basically become useless to AOL members. And it looks like Yahoo is going to follow suit. If you are a major nonprofit mailer and you know more please write to me. If you subscribe to Nonprofit Online News and you use AOL, please complain to AOL and CC us here.
Posted: 2/4/06; 11:13:39 PM # |
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3 February 2006 |
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| Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart |
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I have been working on a series of in-depth articles for our journal on the subject of nonprofit knowledge management. In the course of that writing, I have gone back and reviewed some of my favorite books on the subject. Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart, by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day, is one such book. I appreciate their efforts to get people to focus on "know-why" before they focus on "know-how". If you look at the agendas of the conferences in our field, you can understand their concern: We tend to brush over such issues as measurable objectives and requirements development, let alone developing our understanding of our communication contexts. This book emphasizes systems thinking and strategic questions. I particularly recommend the chapters on Framing Conversations about Technology, Nurturing Home Grown Expertise, and How to Evolve Information Ecologies.
Posted: 2/3/06; 1:05:27 PM # |
| Videocue |
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Vara Software is the developer of the remarkable and powerful Wirecast webcasting application that has found its way into my regular workflow and has been the subject of several reviews, including the centerpiece of my Everyday Software article on how we webcast our online workshops. Unlike Wirecast, Videocue (Mac only) is not an every day tool for me. Videocue is a slick combination of recording software and a desktop teleprompter. This would be an ideal system for anyone who likes to work from a script, whose workflow is so tight for time that they have to, or has other people write material for them to deliver. Your face (or other images, slides, or video that you can weave in) appears in a window right next to the slowly scrolling text of your speech. You have control over size and pacing of the prompt, as well as a wide range of video and audio settings. Plus, it has an utterly intuitive transition and titles management system. I only wish I used scripts more often, that's how much I like this software. It would be perfect for video podcasting.
Posted: 2/3/06; 12:48:42 PM # |
| The R Project for Statistical Computing |
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Every now and then, I need to do some serious statistical analysis or some complex modeling prior to development of a new tool. In those cases, I often turn to The R Project for Statistical Computing (cross platform). This is by no means a point and click application. Rather, it is a sophisticated environment for implementing statistical techniques. It has the added benefits of being open source and massively extensible. The range of free add-on packages available has proven very useful to me, since it includes versions of Bayesian tools and genetic algorithms that have interested me recently.
Posted: 2/3/06; 12:01:25 PM # |
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2 February 2006 |
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| Community Tool Box |
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The Community Tool Box at the University of Kansas is a collection of over 6000 pages on skill building in over 250 topic areas. The focus is community health and development and the materials are highly practical in nature, including step by step instructions, checklists, and resources. I'm going to be digging around in this one for some time to come.
Posted: 2/2/06; 7:46:39 PM # |
| Protecting Your Data |
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Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems has a sweet and simple set of recommendations for Protecting Your Data. His four rules are: Don’t use proprietary file formats. Don’t erase anything. Store everything twice. Do occasional ad-hoc and regular full backups. This closely matches our in-house policy and the only time we have lost data was when we violated one of these rules.
Posted: 2/2/06; 7:34:38 PM # |
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