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These days you can’t roam far in our non-profit world without hearing the buzz about “social networking” or “social media”.  Wherever you go, you can’t help but overhear people talking about Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools.

These services provide organizations a great way to connect with supporters and provide new channels for fund raising, but how can you best integrate these tools into your Web site for the maximum impact?  What are the best practices in tying your social networking strategy with your Web site communications strategy?

We’ll answer these question and more at the next Soapbox Salon!

PICnet’s Soapbox Salon
Social Networking 101: Successful Strategies Connecting Soapbox with Twitter and Facebook

When: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm ET
Where: PICnet’s DC Office – 1605 Connecticut Ave. 3rd Floor, Washington, DC (across the street from the Dupont Circle Metro station’s north exit)
What:  You bring your questions, ideas, and lunch, and we’ll bring answers and refreshments.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, March 17 by clicking the link below and registering for the event.

Questions?  Contact Julie Dennis at julie@picnet.net or by calling (202) 585-0273.

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Registration — http://bit.ly/acgTlR
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What: Webinar – Get Started on Facebook
When: March 11, 1pm EST/10am Pacific
Sign up!

Many nonprofits and libraries are using Facebook to interact with their constituencies and reach out to new audiences – but what’s the best way to get your organization started on this hugely popular social networking site?

In this webinar, Kami Griffiths will interview social media consultant John Haydon, who will walk through the essential steps to establishing and managing a successful Facebook presence for a nonprofit or library.

We will also hear from Gabe O’Neill of Kids Are Heroes, who will share lessons learned from developing their own Facebook page.  Get practical how-to information, learn best practices, ask questions, and leave with action items that will help you create an engaging Facebook presence for your organization.

This webinar is for people who are beginning to explore Facebook and have questions on how to get started.

Sign up now.

Just in time to celebrate the birth of some our most famous U.S. presidents, PICnet launched a new Soapbox website for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC). CSPC was looking to improve their site architecture so their constituents and followers could more easily locate the valuable publications the organization produces. They also wanted to sharpen up their outdated image.  Through their new Soapbox site, they can even receive online donations through PayPal!

Emily Shaftel was my point-of-contact at CSPC and she was an amazing coordinator for their side.  I always received a quick turnaround, clear and detailed questions and she was very technically savvy with an eye for pushing the website to its limits.  She actually departed CSPC on the day of the launch to go and volunteer for a year in Thailand! Emily definitely made an impact before her departure.

An important feature to CSPC’s website is their blog. Originally the contract didn’t have enough design time to template the Wordpress Blog with the new design by, however, when I impressed up on the importance of maintaining the history of the blog, CSPC decided it was worth a contract addendum. Otherwise, the client would have had to manually transfer all of the content on the blog to Joomla!  I think this was an excellent decision on their part.

CSPC is also one of the first clients to employ our new Soapbox Slide Show (rotating feature on homepage) — Emily set this up herself!

About CSPC
The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress is a unique nonpartisan, nonprofit policy and education organization that applies strategic thinking and the leadership lessons of history to critical national challenges and opportunities.

Founded in 1965, the Center is the only organization that systematically examines past successes and failures of the Presidency and relates its findings to present challenges and opportunities. Today, both the Executive and Legislative Branches are highly compartmentalized, which is the enemy of strategic thinking, action, and the best use of resources. In addition, the nation is polarized, even though public opinion polls show a desire to break down barriers and face our nation’s real public policy issues. Lessons learned from past American experiences offer insights on how to deal with these challenges.

Along with full-time staff and interns, the Center utilizes an esteemed Board of Trustees, a National Council of Advisors drawn from a wide variety of professions and political ideologies, and a range of other Advisors and Fellows to contribute to the Center’s many programs and initiatives. In addition to these contributors, the Center functions as a highly successful convener of the best minds in government, trade, and academia to serve on its policy working groups and education programs.

A couple weeks ago, we launched a really great new site for a great and deserving organization – the Turtle Survival Alliance. Now this is a TSA I can get behind! The TSA has been transforming passion for turtles into effective conservation action since 2001. They are involved in some pretty amazing conservation efforts all over the world thanks to their wide network of supporters. For example, check out this incredible story on the rescue of the world’s only known wild Rafetus swinhoei (Yangtze giant softshell turtle) in Vietnam.

This project reinforced some valuable lessons for me:

1) Sometimes it’s the little things
One little thing we did on this site that made a big difference was using custom action buttons throughout for Buy Now, Donate Now and Join Now. What an easy small thing it is to replace the standard PayPal buttons to make a more compelling and custom-looking shop.

2) “By your powers combined” (thanks to Captain Planet for this valuable wisdom)
The TSA’s site combines the super-powers of some pretty cool third party tools that complement and extend Soapbox. These include PayPal for donations and the shop, Wufoo for membership applications and tracking, Constant Contact for e-newsletters, Embedr for the video gallery, and social media/sharing tools.

3) The power is yours! (thanks again Captain Planet!)
As a previous non-profit staffer who fell into the accidental techie role, I get really excited when I see clients exploring all Soapbox can do. TSA’s accidental techie discovered how to make rollover effects for images easily with the Image Manager. She smartly used this to show the front and back of T-shirts in their shop (hover over the image here to see). And just a couple days after launch, our client showed us this great new menu item that she setup on her own.

4) It’s all about results
Shortly after the launch, our client reported an increase in membership and product sales. That is the best news of all!

We wish the TSA all the best in their work. To learn more about them, check out their new site at http://www.turtlesurvival.org.

At PICnet, we aren’t just about creating snazzy new websites with sleek design and fancy features. We’re also here to help with your website’s basic needs, like in the case of Port Jobs. We recently worked with Port Jobs’ database contractor to automate Microsoft Access reporting to display current job postings in near-real time on their Airport Jobs site.

Port Jobs chose us after a competitive bid process in which they considered several firms.  Our functionality and a previous relationship with the business favored us in the selection process. But the database revamping is only Phase I – we will now be working on redeveloping Port Jobs in Soapbox, under the same template.

Although this is a rare example, the project was fairly smooth in part because I already understood how their old database was set up – because I had created it when I was an employee with Port Jobs. This made it a lot easier to understand the goal of the database integration, and the limitations and opportunities moving from the current ASP driven site to Soapbox.  In the end, this prior knowledge proved fruitful in a great solution for the client.

As we look toward Phase II, it’s important to note that a new design isn’t always necessary, or desired. We occasionally have situations where a new client wishes to reuse their existing design, but within the Soapbox platform.  A vendor should work with their client’s needs and goals, and sometimes maintaining a current design can be a cost-effective way for a client to gain the power and ease of use of Soapbox without the extra steps of a redesign.

About Port Jobs: Port Jobs is not-for-profit action tank that develops practical programs and supports public policies that increase access to living wage jobs, fostering a more vibrant and equitable economy for residents of and businesses in Seattle and King County. They make good jobs easier to get and good employees easier to find, primarily in the port-related economy.

About Airport Jobs: Airport Jobs is a program of Port Jobs and the primary recruiting tool for many airport and airport-related employers as well as the principal resource for people seeking employment there.

A couple days ago, You Tube and See3 Communications launched the 4th annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. One winner will be selected in each of following categories: Best Small Organization Video, Best Medium Organization Video, Best Large Organization Video and Best Innovation in Video.

Winners will be recognized at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC 2011) in Atlanta in April, and on YouTube, and each winning organization will receive a $2,500 grant from the Case Foundation and a custom Flip camera. To enter, organizations must be a member of YouTube Nonprofit Program.

The deadline is March 19. We know some of you out there have a video that should be submitted. Apply today!

We’ve been hard at work putting the finishing touches on Soapbox 2.0.10, the latest upgrade to your website management system.

What do those numbers and dots mean to you? Two things: powerful page titles and slick slideshows. Both available now.  And both part of the Soapbox service you’re already paying for.

Let’s dive into the details, shall we? Read the juicy details at our Help Desk. If you have any questions related to your version of Soapbox or on these particular features, give us a shout!

Our SnowmageddonCleanUp.com Web site has been an extremely useful way for greater DC area residents to post their snow-related problems and solutions.  Now it’s time to focus our energies!

If you’re from a school, church, or synagogue in the greater DC area, post any help you need this weekend for snow clean up, and we’ll crowdsource the community to help you in your efforts!

All you need to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Go to www.snowmageddoncleanup.com/reports/submit
2. Post your request for help using a title in this format:  “School:  Washington Elementary School” or “Church:  Episcopal Church of Washington”
3. Make sure to specify clearly what your needs are in the body of your report (example: “We’ve got snow covering all our walkways, we need snowblowers and shovels”) and include your location in your report and using the map function.  Also, clearly state when you need people to arrive for help this weekend (example: “we’re looking for 10 people from the neighborhood to come help at 10am on Saturday”).
4. After your report is approved by our team, you can use the link to your report to spread the word.  We’ll do the same on Twitter (using the #72scu hashtag) and on our Facebook Fan page.
5. Keep checking the comments in your report, and encourage others to post their attendance in the comments of your report.

We’ll take these reports and highlight them on Twitter, Facebook, and the Web site!  Let’s clean up our schools, churches, and synagogues one snow shovel at a time!

It seems we’ve caught lighting in a bottle here at PICnet. During the course of the past two days, we’ve been honored to have our SnowmageddonCleanUp.com Web site covered in a diverse and wide array of media outlets. We’re hoping that this outreach will help the DC residents learn about this site and extend a helping hand to their neighbors.

Here’s a few of our favorite hits thus far.

• Washington Post partners with us on their special Snowmageddon Cleanup Web site.
• NPR affiliate (WAMU 88.5 FM) in Washington DC, Kojo Nnamdi Show: I was pleased to have House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as my lead into Kojo’s interview with me (skip to 10:40).
• Wired Magazine:  Snowmageddon Site Crowdsources Blizzard Cleanup
• NOS Journaal op 3, the Dutch national television news broadcaster: Video interview at about 7:00 in this clip.
• FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate on Twitter

Snowmageddon Site Crowdsources Blizzard Cleanup

After our launch of the Snowmageddon Clean Up Web site on late Tuesday night, we’ve been picking up a lot of great reaction from the community.  Our biggest hit so far:  the Washington Post has partnered with PICnet to heavily extend the exposure of our efforts.

Check out our site embedded on the Washington Post!

Wow.  Thursday was a whirlwind.  We worked closely with the Washington Post’s digital media team to make editorial and graphical changes to the site in order to prep for the wave of traffic from their online circulation.  Additionally, the great logo that Christopher Doorley made for the site needed to have a little update: announcing the partnership between the Washington Post and PICnet.  Thanks to Ross Nover for his stellar design skills to help update the site’s header and additional illustrations.

It’s been wonderful working alongside the Washington Post team to help spread the word far and wide.  We’re excited to see the continued efforts of the Greater DC community to help each other out of this snow mess.

What started out as a test site for an open source software package I was playing around with at PICnet has now become a rallying point for DC residents to help each other dig out of Snowmageddon 2010.  Call it the crowdsourcing of shovels.

Since the site, www.snowmageddoncleanup.com was flipped live on Tuesday night, more than 7,000 visitors have come to learn how they can lend a hand in the DC clean up process. Now, with a Facebook fan page and the 72 Hour Snowmageddon Clean Up Challenge, the site has begun to pick up a lot of traction.

The site’s goal is simple: connect those in need with those that have resources.  Got a car that needs to be dug out?  Post it. Got a pair of strong arms that needs a workout after three days of sitting on the couch (most of DC was closed)?  Post it.

Powered by Ushahidi, we’re excited to see how this site, launched with two hours of work, can be used as a model for other emergency or crisis situations that can be utilized by government agencies and NGOs.

While we don’t have enough hands at PICnet DC to clean up the city ourselves, a little bit of crowdsourcing, applied in the right way, just might help us dig out of this mess faster…because snow is only fun when it doesn’t get in the way of trying to get food.

Recently, we helped migrate a newly designed Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to the Soapbox platform, after they were seeing diminishing service and support from their old system. The organization wanted an option to have support 24 hours a day and to build a relationship with their platform provider.

And boy, did we build a relationship! As project manager, I spoke with Ladd Everitt from CSGV almost every day – as their PR/media person, he had a great personal investment in the website, and he was very involved with the decision-making and details from the start of the project.

We originally were going  to use the eblast system Vertical Response, tied into the Salesforce CRM to manage CSGV’s contacts.  However, upon understanding the small staff they had and the technical literacy which these two systems required, I decided to look into Network for Good’s My Emma Email Now! This turned out to be both a simpler and more affordable solution for the client. Now CSGV has petitions, contact forms and surveys running through the form creation on Email Now, and they are also able to send out well-designed html email blasts through this very simple and easy to use system. I also want to give a quick shout out to Kate Purcell, the designer of the site.

The relationship PICnet built with Ladd for this site was great for overall communications and for the momentum of the project.  He was a great example of a smooth client-vendor partnership – always delivering on time and was available at all hours during the holidays for launch.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence seeks to secure freedom from gun violence through research, strategic engagement and effective policy advocacy. Learn more here.

We recently launched another great Soapbox site, this time for Mercy Investment Services,  an asset management program for the collective investment and professional management of the endowment, operating, and other funds of the Sisters of Mercy and the eligible sponsored and co-sponsored ministries that choose to participate, all of which are tax-exempt organizations engaged in religious and charitable activities.

The idea behind the program is that, by combining their assets, participants may obtain lower costs for the investment of their funds and access to better performing investment managers than each would otherwise have.

Here are some of our favorite, and notable features for the new site:

• Flash maps that display where the reach of their socially responsible investing in the United States and around the world
  
• Use of a taxonomy product PICnet built to classify the socially responsible investments not just by geographical area but by Type of Investment, making the information more accessible to site visitors while not increasing administrative overhead on staff to upkeep the site

Mercy Investment Services is connected to the Sisters of Mercy Communities,  for whom we’ve built several community sites. You can read more about those here and here.

We’ve been newly minted as a grade A, bona fide B Corporation and we couldn’t be happier with the certification. As described by the B Corporation website, “B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” That’s PICnet, in a nutshell, and we’re happy to join the growing community of 250+ B Corporations dedicating themselves to more than just the bottom line. That’s exactly the kind of folks we want to be associated with and we’re proud of the company we’ll be keeping

If you want to learn more about our fellow B Corporation friends and details of what it means to be certified, check out http://www.bcorporation.net.

Last week, I attended a beginner Joomla! training. As someone who doesn’t deal with Joomla! or Soapbox or much of the other projects that my colleagues do on a daily basis, this was a new experience for me.

I learned how to add articles online, connect websites (such as Google and YouTube) to the training website using Joomla’s wrapper feature, and was even able to start the design of my own site online!

I may not be a Joomla! wizard just yet, but I thought it was a great introduction to some of the cool stuff our PICnet team works on, and the information is invaluable to me better understanding Joomla and Soapbox.

Thanks to PICnet and the NOVA JUG for making this happen!

For fifteen years, KIPP NYC, a non-profit network of public charter schools in New York City, has disproven the ordinary about urban schools in the United States. Their goal has been to “graduate students with the strength of character and academic abilities needed to succeed in life.” They have 1,300 students and 700 alumni, with 80% of them from low-income families and 98% are African-American or Latino.

KIPP NYC is an organization focused on results and results it has shown. Over its lifetime, it can consistently grown to educate more students from low-income families and give them a true opportunity to seek higher education. Their programs have extended from kindergarten to college prep, all supported by a dedicated staff of dynamic teachers. These programs have helped 95% of students score at or higher than the state average in math, 93% of students to finish high school, and 86% of graduates go to college.

In December, PICnet launched a brand new website for the organization, encasing information on various programs, a professional design, and multimedia on staff and students.  It consolidated information from several websites on different programs onto one universal and streamlined site.

Some key components of the project:

• A lot of content needed to be migrated
• Information architecture had to be designed for pulling content from multiple sites onto one universal site
• We set up a simple-viewer photo gallery
• Plenty of videos for staffers/alumni/families/family testimonials

KIPP NYC is on track to having 50% of their graduates finish college in 6 years in the next two years. The organization’s goal is to strengthen and expand their programs so that 75% of their graduates complete their college degree, compared to national average of 10% for low-income communities.  If you would like to learn more or support these students and teachers in their endeavor, please visit them on the web at http://www.kippnyc.org/.

You can also watch video testimonials from:

• Teachers/Staff
• Students
• Alumni
• Families

More about KIPP NYC
KIPP NYC is a non-profit network of free, public charter schools that prepare students for success in college and life. In 1995 we started our first middle school, KIPP Academy, in the Bronx. Our goal was to graduate students with the strength of character and academic abilities needed to succeed in life – and in so doing, to prove what is possible in urban schools. We promised to do whatever was necessary to help our students succeed, and we asked them, and their parents, to make similarly rigorous commitments.

Fifteen years later, KIPP NYC is still making – and keeping – the same promises. KIPP NYC has grown to serve more than 1,300 students and 700 alumni; 80% come from low-income families, 98% are African American or Latino and all are selected by lottery.

Start the New Year off right by attending the next Soapbox Salon at PICnet.  You bring your Joomla! or Non-Profit Soapbox questions, ideas, and lunch, and we’ll bring answers and refreshments.

At this month’s session, join members of the PICnet team as we discuss cool tips to help your Web site rise in the Google rankings, without the snake oil or magic potion.

When: Thursday, January 28, 2010
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm ET
PICnet’s DC Office – 1605 Connecticut Ave. 3rd Floor, Washington, DC (across the street from the Dupont Circle Metro station’s north exit)

Please RSVP by Wed, January 27 by clicking the link below and registering for the event.

Questions?  Contact Julie Dennis at julie@picnet.net or by calling (202) 585-0273

Register here: http://bit.ly/57K0C2

We hope to see you there!

You have a very large video file, pdf or document… or you have a large number of smaller files.  These can become too large to store on your web server, and they can quickly push your beyond your bandwidth allowance. So, what do you do?

One solution worth considering is Amazon’s S3 cloud storage solution.  S3 allows you to store large amounts of data at a surprisingly low cost.  Additionally, the cost structure is scalable, so you will only ever pay for what you use.

What is Amazon S3?
S3 stands for Simple Storage Service.  Simply put in Amazon’s own words, “Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It’s a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly-scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs.”

All that means is that it is a service that allows you to store data in the “cloud” in a way that is fast, cheap and reliable.

How much does it cost?
The cost of hosting files on S3 is almost negilgible.  They charge about $.15/gig a month and transfer costs are about the same.  So, even with a large number of files and a decent amount of traffic, you are usually looking at single-digit dollars a month.

You can calculate the costs yourself, but a brief example would be a large 500M video file, viewed 100 times over a month.  That would be $.07 for storing it, and transfer costs would add up to less than $8.50. So, less than $9.00 total for storing and serving a very large file.

How does it work?
It’s actually pretty easy.  You can use one of several “clients” to create your S3 account and upload and manage your data (a “client” is a piece of software that allows you to access a remote server), then link to it directly from your website.

For uploading and managing, we recommend the S3 client called CloudBerry S3 Explorer.  It’s easy to use and makes your experience with S3 simple and enjoyable.  It’s not free though – it costs $40 after a 30 day free trial period. But in our experience it is worth the $40 as it has features and ease-of-use that make it preferable to the few free solutions that are out there.

Let’s go through the steps of setting CloudBerry up and connecting to Amazon S3:

• Download and install CloudBerry S3 Explorer.  You can get it here: http://cloudberrylab.com/?page=s3-explorer-pro
• Install it the same as you would any other new application.

Once you have done that, it’s time to set up your S3 account.

Once you have completed the registration process, Amazon will send you a confirmation email.  Check your inbox and open it up.  You will see the following message in the email:

You need Access Identifiers to make valid web service requests. Please visit the Access Identifiers section of your account to obtain your identifier and to learn more: http://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/account/index.html?action=access-key

Click through that link, then scroll down to the “Access Credentials” section, and look under the “Access Keys” tab.  You are looking for you “Access ID Key” and “Secret Access Key” (It will say “show.”  Click “show” to see the key.)

Connecting CloudBerry S3 Explorer
Open CloudBerry S3 Explorer. It should open as a two-panel explorer. The left panel should show your local drive and the right panel will be for you S3 account.

At the top of the right panel, you will see “Source:” and a drop-down menu.  Select “New Amazon S3 Account.”

You will be asked for “Display name” (put in whatever you want this account to be referred to,) and the Access Key and Secret Key that you got earlier from your S3 account.  Enter the name and those keys and click “OK.”

Creating your first “Bucket.”
S3 organizes files into “buckets.”  These are sort of like folders on your desktop.  You have to have a bucket before you can upload anything to your S3 storage.

On the S3 (right) half of CloudBerry, look for and click a blue cube.  This is the “create a new  bucket” icon.  You will link to these buckets with a URL, so the bucket name should have something to do with what you will be storing there.  In other words, if you will be putting videos from a conference there, you could call it videosConf2009.  Note that bucket names have to be unique across the entirety of Amazon S3.

Bucket permissions
One thing you have to make sure of… that your bucket’s permissions will allow public access.  The default settings set access to “private,” so you will probably have to change them.  To assure this, right-click your bucket and select “ACL Settings.”  Set each user type to “Read,” and Owner should have all of the boxes checked.

Uploading a file
Once you have your bucket set up, it’s time to upload your first file.  This is really simple to do.  In the left-hand side of CloudBerry, navigate your local computer’s C drive to find the file to upload.  Then, simply drag it to your new bucket.  It will upload, and you are done!

Linking to your file
Ok, now you want to know how to link to your file from the web, don’t you?  This is the nice part.  To link to your files, use a url that looks like this: http://s3.amazonaws.com/BucketName/FileName

It’s that easy.  Continuing our example from above, we might have a url that looks like this: http://s3.amazonaws.com/videosConf2009/vid001.mp3

Then of course, with HTML, to link to your file it would look like: <a href=”http://s3.amazonaws.com/BucketName/FileName”>Link Name</a>

And that’s it!

By leveraging Amazon S3, you should be able to store and serve very large files, and/or large numbers of files easily and inexpensively.  You can also tell people that your data is stored “In the cloud,” which is an impressive buzzword these days – it will identify you as being on the edge of online technology!

After working through this tutorial, you should now be able to:

• Understand what Amazon S3 is, and why it’s a good choice for large file storage
• Download and install a client that will allow you to manage your account
• Create an S3 Account
• Create buckets, and properly set their permissions
• Upload files from your local drive to your S3 Account
• Link to the uploaded files via your website.

I hope this has been helpful… have fun and happy S3ing!

We recently helped The New York City Charter School Center launch a new Soapbox website in partnership with design firm Big Duck. The organization helps new charter schools get started, supports existing schools,  builds community support, and trains new leaders so that highly effective services can flourish.

The new site is informative and engaging, with aggressive integration through Democracy In Action for events, campaigns, and eNewsletter sign-up and templates. It also includes liberal use of WuFoo custom forms for robust online grant and fellowship applications.

One final cool feature is a Google Map integration displaying more than 100 charter schools in New York that links to more details and content within the site and to the individual schools’ websites.

Learn more about the New York City Charter School Center.

As the newest PICnetter, I am so grateful to be finishing this year working at a company that helps promote non-profits through technology. I have truly enjoyed working with everyone thus far and seeing how our team work really paid off.

However, one of the things I’m most looking forward to next year is actually meeting the other PICnetters! Because we have two branches (one in DC and one in San Francisco) as well as employees in Rhode Island and Chicago, I  have spoken many times with my fellow co-workers and seen pictures of them, but I have yet to meet them in person.

Our annual retreat, to be held sometime next spring, should take care of this problem! Each year, our team gets together from our various cross-country destinations to discuss goals within PICnet, chat about life, and have some sightseeing fun in DC. I’m looking forward to helping plan and attend next year’s retreat to learn more about these PICnetters I’ve only heard via the phone or written via email. Perhaps that sounds dorky, but what can I say? I just love meeting people – especially people I feel I already know so well:)