nptech.info

p emspan class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/368099531_949109ee72.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Flickr Photo: Caro Wallis" title="Flickr Photo: Caro Wallis" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="75" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongFlickr Photo: Caro Wallis/strong/span/span(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing their nptech awesome. Members are in bold. Tag your own news with quot;nten memberquot; or quot;nptechquot; to help us find your awesome online, or contact Annaliese with your updates.) /em /p p I didn't get a round-up posted last week, so I have an extra long one this week! Let's get started: /p p Thanks, strongNancy Scwhartz/strong, for taking the recent Russian spy saga and turning it into aa href="http://gettingattention.org/2010/08/russian-spy-strategy-improve-nonprofit-marketing.html?utm_source=feedburneramp;utm_medium=twitteramp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gettingattention+%28Nonprofit+Marketing%3A+Getting+Attention+Blog%29amp;utm_content=Twitter" nonprofit marketing lesson/a. /p p This article from strongMicrosoft/strong tries to tackle the IT quot;overheadquot; challenge nonprofits struggle. Hint: it's about organizational strategy, not operating costs, people! You can see the quot;a href="http://www.microsoftupblog.com/post/Demystifying-Nonprofit-IT-Adoption-and-Innovation.aspx"Nonprofit IT Pyramid/aquot; suggested for planning here -- and I'd love to hear your thoughts! /p p strongDeborah Elizabeth Finn/strong provides a partially-tongue-in-cheek a href="http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2010/8/11/4601566.html"reference for technology providers/a to consider before addressing a small nonprofit. /p p strongMaggie McGary/strong shares a href="http://www.mizzinformation.com/2010/07/think-your-lurkers-arent-engaged-think.html"this post and story/a about your social media efforts: your impact may be more than your re-tweets, likes, blog-comments, and video views suggest. (Tip: you may need a hanky to watch the video!) /p p Member organization strongAzavea/strong announced a new look for their website, and a href="http://www.azavea.com/a-brand-new-look"made this video/a to help introduce it. Nice example! /p p strongAmy Sample Ward/strong has a new article for the SSIR blog (a href="http://amysampleward.org/2010/08/12/new-on-ssir-community-building-in-a-big-backyard/"re-posted on Amy's blog/a). Along with fellow NTEN members strongDebra Askanase/strong and strongBonnie Koenig/strong, Amy discusses online a href="http://amysampleward.org/2010/08/12/new-on-ssir-community-building-in-a-big-backyard/"community builing in a cross-platform social web/a. /p p Nice: stronggivezooks!/strong gets a a href="http://www.noozhawk.com/schools/article/081010_givezooks/"nice write-up/a about a recent online fundraising campaign they helped implement for a nonprofit that found itself suddenly needing to replace a historic weathervane, but had no way to collect donations online. /p p strongKerri Karvetski/strong gave a a href="http://twitter.com/karvetski/statuses/20797952674"nice heads-up/a about a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC3H0sxg4tYamp;playnext=1amp;videos=Sd9QodKe-cc"this great use of video to tell the story/a about a specific education project highlighted by strongEdutopia.org/strong (strongThe George Lucas Educational Foundation/strong). /p p strongAspiration/strong announced the a href="http://twitter.com/aspirationtech/status/20415059386"2010 Nonprofit Software Development Summit/a (Nov 15-17). You should submit your session ideas! /p p strongLisa Lane Kasperzak/strong, from strongBeyond Nines/strong, offers a href="http://www.beyondnines.com/blog/training/5-tips-successful-technology-project/"5 Tips To Managing a Successful Technology Project/a for nonprofits.   /p p Yay! The 3rd annual strongWomenWhoTech/strong summit was announced, and the a href="http://www.womenwhotech.com/2010-panels.html"panels/a are full of NTEN superstars. Please see the a href="http://www.womenwhotech.com/2010-panels.html"full list of panels and speakers/a for this great online summit. /p p Upcoming strong501 Tech Club/strong events: /p ul liAustin 501 Tech: a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=173035"Monday, August 16th, Pain Management: Who Has Time for Social Media?/a/li liNYC 501 Tech: a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=164557"Wednesday, August 18th, Share This! (Speaker: Deanna Zandt)/a/li liTriangle NC 501 Tech (NCTech4Good): a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=173974"Wednesday, August 18th: Tools for Revenue/a/li liNorthern Colorado 501 Tech: a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=173758"Wednesday, August 25th: Nonprofits and Facebook/a/li liNYC 501 Tech: a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=164559"Wednesday, September 15th: Brandraising! (with Author Sarah Durham)/a/li liNorthern Colorado 501 Tech: a href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=173760"Wendesday September 22nd: Spatializing Data: Adding the Where to the What and When/a/li /ul p See the a href="http://groups.nten.org/c/month.php"NTEN online community calendar/a for more upcoming nptech events from the community! /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/nwcAi5V_v6M" height="1" width="1"/

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/4736374044_87db8da374_z.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Flickr: mi..chael" title="Flickr: mi..chael" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="91" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongFlickr: mi..chael/strong/span/spanIf you've engaged any news source this week, you've probably heard about a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/steven-slater-jetblue-flight-attendant-bail-emergency-slide/story?id=11367793"Steven Slater/a. Slater is the (previously employed) a href="http://www.jetblue.com"JetBlue/a flight attendant who, upon allegedly being assaulted by a passenger, effectively quit his job with a tirade of expletives over the PA system before grabbing a beer and making a grand exit out the emergency chute (luggage in hand) at JFK airport. /p p Slater was promptly arrested and the media blitz began. For many organizations and individuals, this would have been a disastrous situation. In the age of a href="http://www.charleneli.com/open-leadership/"Charlene Li's Open Leadership/a, however, it may be working to both parties advantage. /p p A a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=steven+slateramp;aq=f"YouTube search for quot;Steven Slater/aquot; results in 499 videos, many of them praising his actions. On Monday of this week, aa href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steven-Slater/145469768806134?ref=ts" Facebook page for Steven Slater/a popped up and has since gained over 190,000 quot;likesquot; -- and counting. On it, users have been praising Slater's grand exit, kvetching over the trials of working in the service industry, and overall, bonding over actions they believe are justified. Many wish they themselves had taken a similar course of action at some point in the past. /p p The thing that really stands out on the page? The presence of JetBlue's name and brand. /p p JetBlue is mentioned as Slater's only affiliation. The profile picture is of the flight attendant in his uniform standing next to baskets of a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steven-Slater/145469768806134?ref=ts"JetBlue's signature snacks/a. In the quot;Infoquot; section, the website listed is a link toa href="http://www.jetblue.com" www.jetblue.com/a. While connecting with other fans and Steven, the users are also associating their (mostly positive) feelings with JetBlue. /p p While it's unclear who is behind the site -- all updates are written in the third person (and I don't believe it's a JetBlue marketing intern hiding in a back room with a laptop) -- it certainly doesn't appear to be hurting their business. In fact, they've taken an open approach to the entire event -- as Li suggests we all do in her book. (You can a href="http://www.slideshare.net/charleneli/open-leadership-introduction"read the introduction here/a.) /p p The official a href="http://blog.hellojetblue.com/blog/index.php/2010/08/11/sometimes-the-weird-news-is-about-us/"JetBlue blog/a acknowledges the incident, makes light of it, and moves on, even tagging it with their frequently used quot;a href="http://blog.hellojetblue.com/blog/index.php/tag/you-cant-make-this-shtick-up/"you can't make this schtick up/aquot;. /p p a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/jetblue-breaks-odd-social-media-silence-on-steve-take-this-job-and-slater/"Wired Magazine/a refers to JetBlue as quot;one of the earliest proponents of transparent online communicationquot; in their musings over why it took the company multiple days to respond to the incident. (The official blog post came out on Tuesday, though the event happening over the weekend.) /p p This is a crucial peice of how JetBlue handled the situation: first, they listened. /p p So, even in the pop culture detritus, we can clearly see the way social media has changed how organizations interact with their audience. JetBlue was able to listen to the quot;water coolerquot; conversation happening on the social web and then react with their statement -- or in this case, lack thereof -- as they deemed appropriate. /p p They are, in a way, embracing the failure by backing off and not taking either the side of Steven or of those who believe he was in the wrong. In doing so, they're acquiring more fans than they may have by throwing money, resources, or advertising into forming an opinion about the controversy, or even trying to cover it up. /p p The best part about the strategy of openness, and Li's tips for being an open leader, is that it hasn't cost JetBlue any more than the potentially disastrous situation itself. We would all do well to remember that. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/kjyciOzCCMY" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/sti-jg-saves-outreach-2.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="180" height="194" //spanWhen last we tuned in to the soap opera that IS the net neutrality debate, the fate of our Internet had been left in the hands of FCC Chairman Genachowski, who had a href="http://www.multichannel.com/article/455716-Genachowski_Net_Neutrality_Meetings_Aren_t_Secret_Outcome_Still_Uncertain.php"architected a process/a he hoped would lead to some action. Things weren't moving quickly, but they emwere/em moving, and down a definable path. (Thanks to the nearly 500 NTEN community members who signed the nonprofit petition!) /p p On August 4, the New York Times a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/technology/05secret.html?_r=1amp;hp"broke the bombshell/a that Verizon and Google were meeting about net neutrality to broker their own proposal. Then, on August 9, Google and Verizon took a left turn, and announced their own a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-proposal-for-open-internet.html"joint proposal for an quot;open internet.quot;/a It looks like the empahsis should be on the quot;an.quot; /p p The proposal does call for one layer of open internet access, but it also allows for carriers to manage wireLESS access in an unrestricted manner. All that data you send and receive on your phone? Under the proposed rubric, it maybe not so much be subject to the same net neutrality rules. /p p Google and Verizon have taken a lot of heat, from the a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_15745767?nclick_check=1"public/a and the a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/10/copps_versus_google_and_verizon/"FCC Commissioners/a. That may be what prompted a response from Google on their a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/facts-about-our-network-neutrality.html"Public Policy Blog/a today. ReadWriteWeb author Marshall Kirkpatrick recently a href="http://twitter.com/marshallk/status/20995886082"posted on his Twitter account/a that he generally buys Google's defense.  /p p We buy it too -- in one sense. We believe that Google is just trying to move a very contentious issue forward: give the carriers a concession, and maybe we can get some protection for net neutrality in place, finally. /p p What we DON'T buy is that this proposal is a viable solution. The internet is the internet, no matter how it's delivered, and it should all be protected under network neutrality. We can't afford to compromise on that, especially as mobile devices make wireless networks more important every day. /p p So what can you do? A couple of things: /p ul lia href="https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=displayamp;page=UserActionamp;id=471"Tell FCC Chairman Genachowski to denounce the proposal./a/li lia href="http://pol.moveon.org/google/rsvp.html?rc=fp"Tell Google that compromise not acceptable/a. Free Press, Moveon.org, and other partners have organized a rally at Google headquarters this Friday -- that's tomorrow! -- at Noon./li /uldiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/X85qhfU4HrU" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/431209056_de6dbd1548.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Flickr: kool_skatkat" title="Flickr: kool_skatkat" class="image image-thumbnail" width="75" height="100" /span class="caption" style="width: 73px;"strongFlickr: kool_skatkat/strong/span/spanLast month, NTEN's Executive Director, Holly Ross, posted a provocative article on our blog: quot;a href="/blog/2010/07/15/rebranding-accidental-techie"Rebranding the Accidental Techie/a.quot; In it, she admits that she loves the term quot;accidental techiequot; but that if we want to empower more nonprofit professionals to be the quot;tech leadersquot; that NTEN and others believe will help their organizations carry out their missions more effectively, then perhaps we need to ban the quot;accidentalquot; label and embrace the quot;leaderquot; label. /p p I posed a question to our NTEN Members' LinkedIn Group about this challenge, specifically asking our members there to suggest ways NTEN could help more quot;accidentalquot; techies re-brand themselves. It quickly became the most active discussion thread in our LInkedIn group, and I would like to share a bit of the stories and insights that resulted there. (If you're a member of NTEN, you can a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem? view=amp;gid=1053amp;type=newsamp;item=152250405"read the entire thread and particpate here/a.) /p p First, I should note that many folks don't want to leave behind the notion that quot;accidental techiequot; implies: that they are not certified technology experts, and that they (happily or otherwise) have adopted technology into their varied skillset as nonprofit professionals. As strongKate Merriman/strong put it, quot;the 'Accidental Techie' title rings a bell with so many of us who . . . fell into this field by discovering an interest or aptitude for technology while . . . pursuing other things.quot; /p p There emerged in this discussion thread a quot;case study,quot; that I felt was both inspiring and instructive. Here are some excerpts: /p p strongAmber Eastman Black, /stronga href="http://rfc.org"strongRosenberg Fund for Children/strong/a /p p emOn taking on the quot;tech leaderquot; role more purposefully:/em /p p At my last performance review, I requested and was granted a change of official job title from quot;Public Relations Coordinatorquot; to quot;Public Relations and Technology Coordinator.quot; I asked for this to reflect the fact that as a 3-person staff, it has fallen to me in the last few years to lead the effort to implement a new fund raising-oriented website; a multi-pronged e-communication and online fund raising program; and a social media presence. I also am the front-line troubleshooter for the hardware and software tech issues in the office, and the contact person for dealing with all our various tech support companies, from the network guy, to the ISP, etc. /p p Did I give up any job responsibilities to add these? No. Am I being paid any more because of this expansion of responsibilities? No. The organization could not manage either of those. But I felt it important both for my own professional and personal sense of worth, and for the organization's health, that my colleagues, our Board of Directors, our donors, and our other stakeholders take notice of and really understand the degree to which technology has become important to our organization, and that it is being handled by me, a person without a technical background. Asking for and then announcing the new job title gave me the opening to have that discussion with all involved. /p p emAn example of putting her quot;leaderquot; role into play for her organization:/em /p p . . . When it fell to me to lead us into this brave new world of quot;growing our online presence,quot; I taught myself by teaching my colleagues, and insisted they become minimally informed to the point that they could weigh in on decisions and directions that I was charged with, since I didn't want to be alone in the wilderness. I created a learning curriculum by doing a lot of reading, taking a lot of webinars, etc. While doing so, I curated articles and other resources that I found helpful, in many cases printing them out (gasp!) and putting them into a binder sectioned by topic. Then I assigned each topical section of the binder to my coworkers, we set up a meeting time a week or two later, and they did their homework and then reconvened to discuss the topic. We worked through the whole binder eventually, and they came out of the process with enough understanding to both value my leadership role in this realm, and to be sounding boards for the really big decisions, major investments, etc. /p p emThe reception from her organization to her new leadership role:/em /p p This process also helped immensely when it came time to create the next year's tech budget; justifying expenditures, etc. And it gave everyone a profound awareness of how it might have been quot;accidentalquot; that I fell into this role, but it is not off-hand or non-deliberate that I continue in it. It's vital to the organization's success, especially in these financially-trying times. /p p emAmber's summary thoughts on her transition from accidental to purposeful techie:/em /p p One thing I would add is that my approach at my job was possible because of an organizational culture that allowed it. Those in leadership positions here are comfortable with acknowledging what they do not know; exploring and assessing new strategies and tools that are presented to them; and empowering staff members to take the lead on projects for which those staff people have the interest, ability, or time... even if those projects were not ones that would have been expected under those staff members' original job descriptions. Openness, flexibility, and understanding that resisting evolution is a sure path to obsolescence, are not too common... but really vital to integrating technology successfully, since technology by its very nature is constantly evolving. /p p We thank you all for the discussion and examples you've shared with us on the topic. If you've made a successful transition from quot;accidentalquot; to quot;purposefulquot; techie at your organization (and feel free to define what success is for this!), we'd love to hear your story and your advice to others. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/ZD7T1F15Bz8" height="1" width="1"/

pIn just a few weeks, I'm heading to Colorado to chat with a group of nonprofits about using social media in their work -- but not in Denver. /ppI'm going to Western Colorado, where everything is smaller. In chatting with my hosts at the Colorado Nonprofit Association, they made it clear that the nonprofits I would be talking with work on a different scale, and I would need to address how nonprofits that work in small towns and rural spaces can use social media./pspan class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/JenNewmeyer_2010.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Jen Newmeyer, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina" title="Jen Newmeyer, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="92" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongJen Newmeyer, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina/strong/span/spanpI had a few assumptions I decided to test by talking to some organizations that work locally using social media. /ppJen Newmeyer from the a href="http://www.foodbankcenc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FBCENCHome"Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina/a, Jessica Haas from the a href="http://www.dnfrc.org/"Del Norte Family Resource Center/a, and Lana Nieves from the a href="http://www.ilrcsf.org/"Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco/a (ILRCSF) all answered my call on Facebook or Twitter and were gracious enough to share some time chatting about how they use social media.  /ppOf course, each organization is unique in their approach and results, but there are a few interesting commonalities. /ppstrongFish Where the Fish Are/strong/ppIf you've ever lived in a small town, you know the truism: everybody knows everybody's business. This can make the idea of using Facebook in a small town seem kind of silly -- but it's not! /ppThe Del Norte Family Resource Center has been in operation for about two years now, and their a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/DNFRC?ref=ts"Facebook page/a gets more traffic than their web site. A community center of sorts, the Center is available for the community to hold trainings and meetings at a low cost for low-income residents of the community. The Center's success depends on organizations using the Center, and on community residents attending and supporting the programs. /ppSo why would people who are just as likely to bump into each other at the coffee shop as they are online find the center on Facebook? Jessica Haas, who runs their Facebook page, puts it this way: quot;It's at their leisure. It's where they're at.quot;  /ppstrongService without Boundaries/strong/ppspan class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/lana_nieves.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Lana Nieves, ILRCSF" title="Lana Nieves, ILRCSF" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="75" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongLana Nieves, ILRCSF/strong/span/spanLana Nieves from the Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco echoes Jessica's sentiment, with a twist. Even when people are in the same geography, that doesn't mean they'll necessarily bump into you at the corner store. For the ILRCSF, their a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/delasanfrancisco?ref=ts"Facebook page/a and blog are cornerstones for a community that can't always come to them. quot;We serve people with disabilities,quot; Lana told me, quot;and that means that some of the people we work with can't get to our office. These tools help us stay connected to them.quot;/ppJessica says the same is true for the Del Norte Family Center, where the community members are spread out across a wide geography. Transportation is an issue and social media helps overcome that./ppstrongDiscovering Your Local Connections/strong/ppEven in the smallest of communities, you can't know everyone's business -- but social media can make it all a lot more explicit.  /ppJen Newmeyer from the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina has seen that time and again through her use of a href="http://twitter.com/FoodBankCENC"Twitter/a. She's made some deep connections with the Raleigh community through Twitter, which have led to a number of outreach opportunities. /ppIn partnership with one local quot;Tweetupquot; group, the Food Bank held a social available only to their social media followers. They gave tours of their warehouse, played music, and held raffles. The best part to Jen was that there were people tweeting as they took the tours. The next day, several area bloggers wrote about the event.  /ppLana from ILRCSF has also had this experience, finding collaboration and partnerships with organizations that work in her city only because she saw a listing on Twitter or Facebook. /ppstrongReinforcements! /strong/ppSince social media has no boundaries, it makes sense that even local organizations can make beneficial connections from all around the world. /ppThis is something that Lana from ILRCSF has experienced first hand. Her organization provides a lot of information about assistive technologies to the community they work with. Often, they want to translate these resource sheets into Spanish, but translation services are expensive, and this kind of work is difficult because of the specialized terminology. Through Facebook, the ILRCSF connected with a like organization in Spain, and now the two organizations share resource sheets, expanding the reach of their program work./ppThere are clearly a lot of benefits for local organizations in using social media. What have you found? /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/DIgOlxhobbQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://greatnonprofits.org/images/campaigns/scitech_banner.png" border="0" //ppWe're excited to be partnering with a href="http://greatnonprofits.org/"GreatNonprofits/a and a href="http://www2.guidestar.org/"Guidestar/a on their a href="http://greatnonprofits.org/scitech"2010 GreatNonprofits Science amp; Technology Campaign/a -- and not just so we can a href="http://greatnonprofits.org/reviews/profile2/non-profit-technology-enterprise-network"pick up a few reviews for NTEN/a. (You will say nice things, right?)/ppAs more and more people grow comfortable with the wealth of data becoming available in the Googlecene Era, transparency will become ever more important in our sector. It's no longer enough for you just to say you're doing good work, or to throw around numbers out of context, not when sites like GuideStar help your constituents publish their feedback about your organization for all to see. But then, you ARE doing good work, so the occasional, inevitable comment troll will be drowned out by all the folks who know you best./ppThat's what makes the a href="http://greatnonprofits.org/scitech"2010 GreatNonprofits Science amp; Technology Campaign/a -- and the work of GreatNonprofits, in general -- so great: it's focused on the positive. Here are the details:/pblockquote GreatNonprofits is launching the 2010 Science and Technology Campaign, in partnership with Guidestar, NTEN, TechSoup Global, Association for Women in Science and Tonic to identify top-rated nonprofits in this area – whether it’s through advancing scientific knowledge, offering education resources, or employing tech solutions to solve local and global problems. As a technology provider, this is an issue area that is near and dear to our hearts./blockquoteblockquote Tell us about YOUR experience -- how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need some improvement? Your participation in this campaign helps identify the nonprofits affecting change in their communities through science and innovation. Visit http://bit.ly/scitechp to learn more./blockquoteblockquote Benefits:/blockquoteblockquote ul liRecognition: Every organization that gathers 10 or more positive reviews during the month of August will make the GreatNonprofits Top-Rated Science and Technology Nonprofits List./li liCommunity Engagement: Great opportunity for nonprofits and their community members to interact and engage directly./li liFirst-person stories: Clients, volunteers, donors and others share with the public, in their own words, how this nonprofit serves its community. Nonprofits can use this resource of powerful and authentic stories to engage donors and volunteers./li /ul/blockquoteblockquote Campaign deadline: August 31, 2010/blockquotepSo, when you've got a free moment, head on over there and a href="http://greatnonprofits.org/scitech"rate the science and technology orgs you know/a. And why stop there, really? Help GreatNonprofits and GuideStar spread a little love by providing feed back on all the nonprofits you know and care about. And, of course, help us spread the word to your constituents, as well./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/VGPDg-_MBnY" height="1" width="1"/

pspan class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/media_mogul_header.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="468" height="146" //span/ppOne of the common refrains we hear is how much more effective nonprofits could be at connecting with their constituents, if only they had the staff. But what if everybody at your organization was a messenger, working together to create a community of supporters around your cause? (You know, like ema href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron:_Defender_of_the_Universe#Lion_Force_Voltron_.28Voltron_of_the_Far_Universe.29"Voltron: Defender of the Universe/a/em, only with fewer robot lions.)/ppKivi Leroux Miller, author of emThe Nonprofit Marketing Guide/em, believes we're mostly there already -- and she'll show you how to transform your nonprofit's small communiations team into a messaging powerhouse at our upcoming 3-part webinar series, quot;a href="/events/webinar/2010/08/10/turning-your-nonprofit-selfmade-media-mogul"Turning Your Nonprofit into a Self-Made Media Mogul/aquot;. As a bonus, everybody who registers gets a copy of her book!/ppstronggt; You should register for this event a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/EWEB/DynamicPage.aspx?WebCode=CSCEventsRegMamp;site=ntenamp;evt_key=d7ee490a-1fd1-4f25-b957-6cee6390bed3amp;egp_evt_key=d7ee490a-1fd1-4f25-b957-6cee6390bed3amp;ParentObject=CentralizedOrderEntryamp;ParentDataObject=Registrantamp;DoNotSave=yesamp;action=Addamp;evt_title=Turning+Your+Nonprofit+into+a+Self-Made+Media+Mogul"here/a./strong/ppFor those of you who look at NTEN as a model (for things other than cat video distribution and Saturday Morning Cartoon references), consider this: at heart, we are essentially one big communications team. Holly, Annaliese, Anna, and I all send out e-mail blasts and interact with folks via social media to varying degrees -- and Sarah has taken on a big role in that realm, as well. a href="/blog/2010/08/02/check-out-new-improved-nten-member-directory-thanks-user-testing"Heck, even Karl's blogging now/a. We all know how to use the tools, and we all know that using them in concert will help us have greater impact -- just like Voltron! -- while still allowing us the time we need to defend the universe... er, perform our other job functions./ppSo, we're excited to hear what Kivi has to say ourselves, to find out what we can do better. Won't you a href="/events/webinar/2010/08/10/turning-your-nonprofit-selfmade-media-mogul"join us/a?/pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/i43T-8AVgiU" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-none"a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MemberSearch"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/find_a_member.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="456" height="80" //a/span /p p After over a year of talking about an overhaul to a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MemberSearch"the NTEN Member Directory/a, a couple of months ago, we finally took the first step: making it a priority.   /p p The next two months were spent wrestling with our database and coding a useable front end for the new directory. Two weeks ago, I emerged from my coding stupor with what we all agreed looked like a finished product. That left us with only one more step before launch, the User Testing Phase, but this quickly showed us we still had some work to do. /p p (Incidentally, this is the launch. After you're done reading, strongbe sure to a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MemberSearch"check out the new NTEN Member Directory/a/strong!) /p p Going into user testing, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I assumed we’d receive some good feedback on layout issues and verify that our carefully worded accompanying text was as good as invisible to outside visitors (both proved to be true), but as far as substantive changes to how the directory worked, I mostly envisioned myself repeating, “Yes, that WOULD be cool, but it's a bit beyond what we can do at this point.” /p p With this on my mind, we turned to the awesome NTEN Community for volunteer testers, filling all eight testing slots within a couple hours of posting the invite on our blog; sorry again to everyone we had to turn away. Next, we designed a simple template for the testing sessions, consisting of six basic tasks for the users to try to complete -- i.e. “Find a Drupal Developer”, or “Find NTEN Members near you” -- in about 15 minutes. Finally, we prepped Readytalk to use for the actual tests, so that we could record each session while watching the volunteer’s screen as they interacted with the new Member Directory. /p p After the first day of user tests, my expectations were already shot out of the water. I had a solid page of simple but significant tweaks and new features that would make the directory much more useable. I implemented as many of these changes as I could before testing began again the next day -- at which point, I quickly filled up another page of additional improvement ideas.   /p p After all eight user tests were complete, the directory had seen more significant improvements in just three days than in its first two months of development, and my appreciation for user testing had grown ten-fold. /p p A couple examples of the user-generated improvements are: /p ul liCutting down on the accompanying language (so there was less of it for people to ignore);/li liRearranging the order of the search form and removing or deemphasizing fields that were not used (or were not being used as intended);/li liChanging the “Bio” search field to a much more powerful Keyword/Phrase field that would also look in the “Org Description”, “Org Name”, and “Job Title” fields (significantly increasing the number of returned results, given the current shortage of completed Bio Fields);/li liAdding a “Bio” logo to highlight records with a Bio or Org Description (to help users see which individuals they can click through to to find more information beyond just contact info)./li /ul p The testing led to a much improved directory that makes our original “finished product” look quite clumsy by comparison. /p p Special thanks to Cheryl, Matt, Lin, Jennifer, Andrew, Tal, Daniel, and David for giving us such great feedback for improving a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MemberSearch"the new NTEN Member Directory/a, and thanks to the rest of our members for a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/EWEB/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MyOnlineProfile"updating their profiles/a to further improve the usefulness of this community resource (i.e., fill out your Bio and Org Description fields). /p p strongHaven't done it yet? It's easy to a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/EWEB/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=MyOnlineProfile"update your profile right now/a!/strong /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/Bf5MTtFWFvQ" height="1" width="1"/

span class="inline inline-none"a href="http://www.nten.org/node/add/ntc-session"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/11ntc_session_header.img_assist_custom.png" alt="" title="" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="450" height="129" //a/span p The 11NTC session proposal submission process is now open! We're starting it earlier than normal because the 11NTC will be rocking a Capitol near you a little earlier in the year: March 17-19, Washington, DC. So, mark those calendars, digital and otherwise. /p p Take a moment to a href="/ntc/planning"review the guidelines and other fine print/a Anna's put together. Then, how about a href="/node/add/ntc-session"submitting an idea or four/a? /p p stronga href="/node/add/ntc-session"gt; Submit your 11NTC Session Proposal Ideas/a/strong /p p If this is all new to you, here's a quick recap of the past 10 seasons: Each spring, NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) presents leading research, case studies, and real world experiences from the nonprofit sector to provide participants with the strategies and skills they need to do even better work. The NTEN Community is full of impressive speakers, thinkers, and doers who will come together for 3 days of sharing and collaboration. /p p It starts with our agenda planning process -- and we want your input. /p p If I see a bunch of them rolling through my queue today, however, I'll know that you're either: /p blockquote p a) a very fast worker (as we would expect); or /p /blockquote blockquote p b) so excited about the 11NTC, you've had notes on your session ideas for months.  /p /blockquote p Either one works for us -- but you do have until August 27th.br / /p p Thanks for being a part of our community. We look forward to reviewing your session proposals. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/ZwZbCPYQ4V4" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/socialactions-logo.img_assist_custom.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="400" height="85" //span /p p If you do online advocacy work, you probably know about a href="http://socialactions.com/"Social Actions/a. If you're interested in data, and making sure that data can move freely around the web in the nonprofit space, then you definitely know Social Actions. /p p Peter and Christine at Social Actions have been at the fore of a very important movement in the nonprofit sector: helping us all understand why sharing data is so much better for us than hoarding it. /p p You may have a href="http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/taking-social-actions-to-the"read about the transitions at Social Actions/a, and now they're ready to move forward.   /p p If you are interested in shepherding all or some of the Social Actions programs, they're inviting you to a href="http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/social-actions-transition?xg_source=activity"submit Letters of Interest/a -- by August 20. Let's make sure we keep the data flowing! /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/64fHMpKAA0A" height="1" width="1"/

p img src="/sites/nten/files/images/n2010.gif" border="0" width="150" align="right" / em(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing their nptech awesome. strongMembers are in bold/strong. Tag your own news with quot;strongnten membe/strongrquot; or quot;strongnptech/strongquot; to help us find your awesome online, or contact Annaliese with your updates.)/em /p p Even on vacation, strongBeth Kanter/strong manages help nonprofits become more tech-savvy! How does she do it? Why, by inviting guests to blog! Some of us here at NTEN are pretty interested in geo-tagging and geo-locating tools and their potential for nonprofit application, so we are thankful for a href="http://www.bethkanter.org/location/"this guest post/a on Beth's Blog about a href="http://www.bethkanter.org/location/"10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World/a. /p p a href="http://www.smallact.com/blog/how-to-transition-from-a-facebook-profile-or-group-to-a-facebook-fan-page/"This post/a was written earlier this year, but it made the rounds a href="http://twitter.com/nptechinfo/statuses/19820622428"on Twitter this week/a, so thanks, again, strongSmall Act/strong and strongAnnie Lynsen/strong, for writing up a a href="http://www.smallact.com/blog/how-to-transition-from-a-facebook-profile-or-group-to-a-facebook-fan-page/"helpful how-to/a about transitioning a href="http://www.smallact.com/blog/how-to-transition-from-a-facebook-profile-or-group-to-a-facebook-fan-page/"from a Facebook profile or group to a Facebook fan page/a.  /p p strongAmy Sample Ward/strong is great at aggregating news and notes about nonprofits using and learning to use social media a href="http://amysampleward.org/2010/07/29/great-reads-from-around-the-web-on-july-29th-2/"on her blog/a. Her latest weekly round up of quot;a href="http://amysampleward.org/2010/07/29/great-reads-from-around-the-web-on-july-29th-2/"great reads/aquot; is up, and NTEN member strongIdealware/strong is included. /p p I think we'd all do ourselves and our audiences a favor if we read a href="http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/07/16/rethinking-advocacy-email/"this article/a from strongJake Brewer/strong and strongThe Sunlight Foundation/strong: quot;a href="http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/07/16/rethinking-advocacy-email/"Rethinking Advocacy Email/a.quot; It's pretty provoking -- but at the same time, says what I think most of us email-campaigners have been thinking and asking ourselves for a while. Join fellow NTEN members strongJon Stahl/strong and strongChris Tuttle/strong in the comment discussion! /p p strongAzavea/strong was named a finalist in the Winning Workplaces and Inc.'s a href="http://www.azavea.com/blogs/newsletter/v5i3/azavea-is-a-winning-workplace/"2010 Top Small Workplaces/a. Congratulations! /p p Speaking of kudos, strongBeyond Nines/strong was given a nod in a recent a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1673377/holsteins-heros-and-heart-a-good-host-is-hard-to-find"FastCompany article/a about web hosting companies. Here's what the reviewer had to say about their specialized focus on serving nonprofits: quot;Beyond Nines gets my Point of Difference award for Hosting with a Heart, and snagging a sector that needs help because they dedicate their lives to helping others.quot; /p p Don't forget: strongIdeaEncore/strong is a href="http://twitter.com/IdeaEncore/statuses/19867913911"wrapping up/a its July quot;Share it Forwardquot; share topic, but you still have time to share! a href="http://twitter.com/IdeaEncore/statuses/19867913911"Please share/a examples, templates, or links to other resources online regarding nonprofit employee policies regarding tech -- anything from hardware to social media!  /p p We're really excited to announce the newest strongNTEN 501 Tech Club./strong Please welcome the a href="http://www.joyceraby.com/blog/501-tech-club-networking-meeting-and-upcoming-presentations/"Northern Colorado 501 Tech Club/a!  (That's NoCo, for short!) Thanks to strongJoyce Raby/strong for organizing the local nptech group for her community. Stay tuned to a href="http://groups.nten.org/c/month.php"NTEN online community calendar/a for upcoming 501 Tech NoCo events, as well as other nonprofit tech community events. /p p Speaking of upcoming 501 Tech Clubs: /p ul lia href="http://groups.nten.org/RItechclub"501 Tech Rhode Island: August 10th/a/li lia href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=173035"501 Tech Austin: August 16th /a/li lia href="http://groups.nten.org/event.htm?event_id=164557"501 Tech NYC: Share this! (Deanna Zandt, guest speaker), August 18th/a/li /ul If you have an up-coming NTEN 501 Tech Club not listed here -- we need to get it on our calendars! Leave a link in the comments here, or add on the community calendar here:http://groups.nten.org/cal.htm img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/kC5do9Mq480" height="1" width="1"/

pA monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on a href="http://nten.org/blog"our blog/a./p ol liIf you haven't seen the "Double Rainbow" spin-offs, you should a href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/14/double-rainbow-roundup/"check them out right now/a. (You don't know about "a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTIamp;feature=player_embedded"Double Rainbow/a"? We'll just pretend you didn't admit that. Why? Because it reflects poorly on our productivity vis-a-vis yours, smarty pants.) The Kermit mash-up at the bottom of the page is the best. IOHO./li liYou should probably know, however, that human beings have spent 15 years in aggregate watching "a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8"Surprised Kitty/a" -- longer than it took to land a man on the moon. Fortunately, a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/arts/television/24dogs.html?_r=1"the article that calculates all the time we spend/a looking at cat and dog videos links to all those videos, as well./li lia href="http://www.nten.org/blog/2010/07/22/nature-vs-nuture-or-why-you-should-follow-your-gut-social-web"Is social media strategy just human nature/a?/li liSocial media can definitely be a time suck if you don't manage it properly. a href="http://www.bethkanter.org/twitter-tip-few-man/"Beth Kanter's got some good advice on that/a./li liBut then, maybe it's time to get away from your computer for some summer reading. Blasphemy? No, no: they're all nptech-related. Our list: ul liema href="http://www.amazon.com/Zilch-Power-Business-Nancy-Lublin/dp/1591843146"Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business/a/em, Nancy Lublin/li liema href="http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/book/the-nonprofit-marketing-guide-high-impact-low-cost-ways-to-build-support-for-your-good-cause-paperback/"The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause/a/em, Kivi Leroux Miller/li liema href="http://www.bethkanter.org/the-networked-nonprofit/"The Networked Nonprofit/a/em, Beth Kanter and Allison Fine/li liema href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470539569.html"Internet Management for Nonprofits/a/em, Ted Hart, James M. Greenfield, Steve MacLaughlin, Philip H. Geier, Jr./li liema href="http://www.amazon.com/Open-Leadership-Social-Technology-Transform/dp/0470597267"Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead/a/em, Charlene Li/li liema href="http://www.heathbrothers.com/switch/"Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard/a/em, Chip Heath and Dan Heath/li /ul /li liIf that doesn't keep you busy -- or you just can't tear yourself away from the digital world, trapped like Jeff Bridges, forever dodging electric frisbees (but enamored by the cool glow-stick outfits) -- John Haydon has a href="http://www.johnhaydon.com/2010/07/case-study-launching-facebook-page/"a great case study on launching a Facebook page/a./li liDid the whole Jeff Bridges hoo-haw up there confuse you? It was a emTron: Legacy/em reference. a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/media/26tron.html"Disney has been marketing that movie for 3 1/2 years/a, in multiple stages. So, congrats! You've avoided the hype thus far. But is there anything we can learn from their marketing tactics? (Other than the obvious, of course: a href="http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/disney/tronlegacy/"don't go snooping around abandoned video arcades/a. Can you tell we're a little excited?)/li /olimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/2JLNtMMgZuw" height="1" width="1"/

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/laptop_tree.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Flickr photo: kcolwell" title="Flickr photo: kcolwell" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="67" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongFlickr photo: kcolwell/strong/span/spanpWe know that you, my fellow NTEN community members, are rock stars. /ppYou can write fundraising email copy in your sleep and hand code your e-appeal while making breakfast and watering your plants. You track metrics while you're on the treadmill (without falling off).  /ppYou are fundraising email campaign ninjas! /ppLike all good ninjas, you don't do it for the glory, you do it because it's right. But we want to shine a spotlight on your selflessness and showcase your amazing work./ppEnter the a href="http://www.paperlesschoice.org/"Paperless Choice Challenge/a./ppIf you've been using email, websites, videos, and other electronic communications tools to give your stakeholders a choice other than paper mailings, we want to celebrate you. Four prizes totalling $20,000 will be awarded to organizations demonstrating innovation and results in paperless fundraising. The Paperless Choice Challenge submission period ends August 16th, 2010, so get your entries in today./ppPaperless Choice is a program of a href="http://www.catalogchoice.org/"Catalog Choice/a funded by the a href="http://www.overbrook.org/about/about.html"Overbrook Foundation/a. You can learn more about the a href="http://www.paperlesschoice.org/contest/"Paperless Choice Challenge here/a./pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/XUkU_rUPMCA" height="1" width="1"/

p On Wednesday, Facebook began rolling out a new feature: a href="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=411795942130"Questions/a. The idea is simple. You ask a question and the Facebook community can answer. Yes, the ENTIRE Facebook community, not just your friends. /p p Of course, we've seen something a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/"like this before/a. But Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_questions_could_be_zuckerbergs_dream.php"thinks that this is something entirely different:/a /p blockquote em Scale, social software smarts and real identities have the potential to add up to something really magical. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg, wrong as he is about many things like /ema href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_is_wrong_about_privacy.php"emprivacy/em/aem, has said that his goal with Facebook is to build empathy and connection between different people all around the world. If he was in it for the money, he would have taken Yahoo's $1 billion offer years ago and run. That goal of cultural change may very well be served better by Questions than by any other Facebook feature to date.  /em /blockquote p His article sites a question about Rush Limbaugh: /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/limbaugh.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="425" height="431" //span /p p The question is one of those that can clearly be taken as bait. But instead of vitriole, we get a sensible, and pretty compelling, answer. Marshall thinks this just might be the first step toward civil dialogue -- and away from a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007270004"the kind of rhetoric that has been so divisive lately/a. /p p Is Marshall right? Or is this just another move to position Facebook at the center of all things web, as most of the pundits are saying:  /p ul lia href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20011981-36.html"Facebook Launches Questions Product in Beta/a (cnet)/li lia href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/facebook-qa-service-questions-begins-rolling-out-could-be-massive/"Facebook Qamp;A Service 'Questions' Begins Rolling Out, Could Be Massive/a (TechCrunch)/li lia href="http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/07/facebook-questions-launches/"Facebook Officially Launches Questions, a Possible Quora Killer/a (All Facebook)/li lia href="/:http://gigaom.com/2010/07/28/facebook-goes-very-public-with-questions-product/%22"Facebook Goes (Very) Public with Questions Product/a (GigaOm)/li /uldiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/9P3wHzTlO2g" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/jeff_patrick.gif" align="left" strongJeff Patrick, a href="http://www.commonknow.com/"Common Knowledge/a/strong/p p A whopping 86% of nonprofits say they have a presence on Facebook or another social media site according to the a id="ctj1" href="http://www.nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com/" title="2010 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report"2010 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report/a.   /p p That’s astounding really, but equally astounding, if a whole lot less obvious: your site visitors are increasingly getting to your site from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Why is this important? This socially-sourced crowd a id="ypa6" href="http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/facebook-users-average-7-hrs-a-month-in-january-as-digital-universe-expands/" title="spends upwards of 15 minutes per day (EVERY DAY)"spends upwards of 15 minutes per day, emevery day/em/a, on social media sites, 3 to 7 times more than on any other major web property.  /p p Increasingly, consumers define their world in this social context, and there are a whole bunch of them. Should you be considering this important demographic when you redesign your site next time around? Definitely. /p p strongFirst Step – Analytics/strong /p p Still not convinced. No problem, I’ll lay out a few quick suggestions for sorting out whether this social demographic is, in fact, a big, or at least increasing slice of your website traffic. Take a moment to investigate the following data: /p ul listrongAnalytics/strong: Configure and then analyze reports from your web analytics to see which page on your site is the first stop for folks referred from social networking sites. Is it your homepage, a standard landing page, or deep-linking to a press release, article, or transaction page (e.g. advocacy action or donation)? While you're at it, sort out what percentage of your site traffic is coming from social sites in the first place. After Google.com (search traffic), we’re betting Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn and other social sites are up there in the Top 10 Referring Sites list. Even more striking, we’ll bet that among NEW visitors, these social sites rank even higher. /li listrongSource Coding/strong: If you’re not doing it now, set up source coding for the links posted in your interactions on FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Use a href="http://bit.ly/" target="_blank"bit.ly/a to create short urls, because it supports source code tracking. For transaction pages (e.g. email signup, contact us, donation, petition, etc.), ensure that you're configuring your online software to accept, store, and report on these source codes for all transactions. Scrutinize these reports: how much of your conversion traffic is coming from social media sites?  /li listrongAudience Overlap/strong: Use a id="od92" href="http://www.rapleaf.com" title="Rapleaf"Rapleaf/a to sort out what percent of your Facebook audience is also on your email list. Why? A big chunk of your repeat site traffic is probably coming from the emails you send out. If you have a large overlap between your Facebook and email audiences, then a whole bunch of your repeat traffic is living in the social context as well./li /ul p strongOptimize Your Site for the Social Segment /strong /p p Assuming that we agree that social media-sourced visitors are an important segment for your site, let’s take a look at how you might optimize your website for this new demographic. /p First, find the right context for driving social media audiences to your sitestrong./strong Make your life easier: remember that Facebook fans, for example, tend to respond best when presented with FB-focused calls-to-action. For example, FB ads return higher click and conversion rates when the call-to-action on the ad links to an FB asset, such as a Page. The first way to optimize your site for social media then, is to refer visitors to it -- but only for the right opportunities: ol listrongProgrammatic Calls-to-Action/strong: Direct social media supporters back to your site to complete actions not available on FB or Twitter or LinkedIn -- donations, advocacy actions or petitions, email sign-up, event and volunteer registration, job application, membership form, surveys, polls, etc. We see this a lot in event fundraising, where FB badges and other tools are deployed for event participants (to help them raise more $$ for the charity), but all peer-to-peer giving actually takes place BACK on the organization’s website. br / (Note: Causes does provide some of these actions, so consider using it if Causes is right for your organization or initiative.)/li listrongData Centralization/strong: Visitors could read your blog on FB via FB’s Notes function -- where you can syndicate your Wordpress blog automatically out to FB Notes -- but it may be easier and more efficient for you to direct fans to the blog on your site, where you already have excellent reporting tools set up, and that allow you to see traffic on your blog from all sources. Balance ease of reporting and analysis with campaign effectiveness; sometimes getting the answers all in one place merits a minor reduction in results.   /li listrongIntentional Cross-Pollination/strong: A common tactic these days is to direct traffic between your online outposts intentionally. For example, acquire fans via Facebook advertising and then present them with FB posts that link them into an action incorporating an email opt-in, intentionally creating the opportunity for FB fans to get on your organization’s email list. /li /ol p All that being said, let’s assume you're redoing your organizational web site, and want to make it work well for your visitors arriving from social media communities. Here are a few tips for making it work best: /p ol listrongTargeted Landing Pages/strong: Control your destiny where you can. Maximize impact and conversion when posting to Twitter, FB, or LinkedIn by directing fans/followers to a well-constructed landing page which includes a no-click or one-click, simple, clear call-to-action; pithy, scannable, punchy supporting copy; clear identity branding; and for-this-task-only navigation. If it’s just content, then link directly to the content. Don’t confuse visitors by linking to your homepage, for example, and then letting them search around for that article you told them about. That only increases abandons. /li listrongIncorporate Social Supporters and Social Content/strong: Go out of your way to use FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn APIs to incorporate social media posts and fans alongside your traditional site content. Your pages will feel more social, content will be real-time, and your supporters will be hyper-evident to any and all visitors. We call that “exposing your community”. Social media oriented visitors appreciate it because it makes your site more relevant. /li listrongAdd ‘Share’ and ‘Like’ to Content/strong: The social media crowd are sharers in spirit and practice, so help them to do just that: let them circulate their gold nugget finds with their network. Use the Share function (e.g. the big share box with tons of social sites or individual icons for FB, Twitter, etc.) next to individual media like articles, photos, and videos. Add in FB’s “Like” rating feature next to key digital assets, as well. Ratings add dimension to your information by helping visitors judge the value of content more quickly and robustly. If it works for Hotels.com, why wouldn’t it work for your site? Remember, you can switch “Like” to “Recommend” if appropriate -- and because folks can’t “Not Like” your content, you don’t have to worry about managing unflattering ratings.   /li listrongBlogs/strong: Add Blogs to your site to introduce a different kind of media to your site content mix. Turn on commenting to stimulate group dialog around your posts. /li listrongDiscussion Groups/strong: Consider adding a discussion board to your site. You’ll need a community manager to make it thrive over the long haul, but helping your supporters engage, educate, and support one another is a sure-fire tactic for helping the social digerati feel at home in your online world. /li listrongHouse Network/strong: Bite off the whole enchilada an socially-enable your site fully by supporting visitor profiles, friending, activity feeds, discussion, ratings and reviews, etc. Or you can take a half-step. We’ve jump-started campaign sites with simple profiles, blogs and discussions, leaving open the opportunity to add in more social features as the community flourishes. You choose how fast and far you socially-enable your site. /li /ol p Adding social content, supporters, and features to your site makes socially sourced visitors feel more at home, and introduces all your visitors to their peers -- your supporters, their thoughts, advice, opinions, insights, needs, recommendations, and ratings. Long before Facebook, there was Geocities, which failed. Facebook is approaching 500 million active members, and is accumulating members at about 100 million every five months. What’s the difference between Geocities and Facebook? Well, many things, but primary among FB’s success factors: helping people connect automatically and integrating the very concept of connecting into the user experience.   /p p The truth is, people don’t connect with organizations, they connect with other people. Putting your audience and their world front and center is the best way to optimize your site for the social crowd -- and everybody else. /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/MdUOkGpXgzU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/christy_van_heugten.gif" align="left" strongChristy Van Heugten, a href="http://www.event360.com/"Event360, Inc./a/strong/p p Two houses stand side-by-side. One has a nice, tidy entry way, the other, a boring, paint-peeling façade. If someone is shopping for a home to invest in, they're more likely to enter the home with the nicer entry first, right? When someone visits your website, the first impression they'll likely get is still your homepage. The homepage of your website is key to engaging your visitors by getting them the information they want and sharing your important message.    /p p “What audience am I building for?” is commonly the first question people encounter when they start a redesign, but I beg to differ. While the characteristics of your audience are important, they should not be the first thing dictating your design direction. Your audience is yours because of who emyou/em are. Your online presence is not about your constituents starting the conversation: at first, it's about you having the chance to give your 30-second pitch about who you are, what you do, and why it's important. It allows you to introduce yourself and only then engage the visitor in a virtual conversation with an emask, be it/em to donate, sign-up for our newsletter, register for an event, volunteer, or use your resources.  /p p So, my recommendation for the first questions to ask in your planning process are: “What is our 30-second pitch?” and “How can we translate that to our website in a user friendly design?”  /p p Regardless of whether a visitor is a member of your specific audience or not, people are people. While you should add a personalized touch to your website, the guidelines to make your site appealing are generally the same. Visually prime locations are the same for everyone. Keep this in mind when you begin prioritizing the messages and ask(s) on your homepage.   /p p There are 4 steps I typically recommend following as you build your site. Since we are a culture of acronyms, I fondly call it the “PREP” method: Plan – Research – Execute – Proact. (I should point out that emproact/em isn’t actually a word, but in my opinion if you must emact /emto be emactive,/em then you must emproact/em to be emproactive/em.)  /p p strongPLAN/strong /p ul listrongPeople look for the 5 Ws on a home page/strong: Who (are you)? What (do you do)? Why (should I be interested)? Where and When (if it's related to an event)? Consider your homepage your visual “30 second pitch” or “elevator speech”. You have a limited amount of attention from a visitor. Use it wisely to convey your main message./li listrongAnalyze any prior web traffic/strong: If you use Google Analytics or another tool, look and see where your site traffic is going. More importantly, find out where users emaren’t /emgoing. With this information, you can make decisions on how to consolidate information in other locations, reorganize your site map, or identify links to external sites that may be drawing users away from your site./li /ul p strongRESEARCH/strong /p ul listrongRefer to the scientists/strong: There have been a id="alxj" title="many website eye movement tests"/aa id="rbzk" href="http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm" title="many website eye movement tests"many website eye movement tests/a that analyze what attracts a viewer’s eye and where the most valuable real estate on a page is. Conclusions indicate that the upper left of a page is the highest viewed area, headlines draw the eye before pictures, and more. /li listrongColors are important/strong: Not all people see things the same way. In our eyes, we have the least number of receptors for the color blue. As we age, the blue receptors are the first ones to go. This doesn’t mean don’t use blue, it just means you have to be careful of blue text on certain background colors like green, grey, etc. Before you pick your site colors, test out the different color options and make sure your site is visually friendly to all ages./li /ul p strongEXECUTE/strong /p ul listrongKeep it simple/strong: If there is too much going on when someone views your homepage, it's likely they'll miss your key message or action item. Choose the top 2-3 actions you want your audience to take -- i.e. Donate, Register, Request More Info, etc. -- and highlight them with graphic buttons. Repeat it in the navigation. Make it clear what the call to action is and you'll find your users gravitating towards it./li listrongMake it even simpler/strong: Yup, it’s so important, I'm highlighting it twice. Not only does this apply to your homepage design, but to your navigation, as well. Try to limit the choices people have and ensure they don’t have too many ways to find information, or they may get frustrated or lost. For example, try to keep all general information about who you are on one “About Us” page instead of breaking it out into multiple pages (Our Mission, Our History, Our Staff, Our Story, etc). You have the power to funnel people toward the messages you feel are important./li /ul p strongPROACT/strong /p ul listrongKeep the content updated/strong. Social media is all about the conversation going both ways. Why not try to incorporate this idea into your website? Showcase stories of your constituents or participants, give updates, and make things organic so that people have a reason to come back and stay connected./li listrongListen to your users/strong. What are your constituents saying? What are they emnot/em saying? Ensure that your vision of the flow is translating properly. Check back with your analytics to see where people are dropping off and where they're aggregating. Find out why you're losing them -- Is there an external link that overpowers the message? -- and find out what info people are trying to find the most and how you can expand that message./li /ul p Many times, as designers and technical people, we get caught up in the fancy tools, tricks, and capabilities of advanced technology. The key to building or redesigning a great website is to make it easy for a user to visit and use, while smartly representing your organization’s mission and personality. As you make your plans, choosing between fancy Flash, images, and simple buttons, keep asking yourself if your choices make things better for your user and/or strengthen your organization’s message.  /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/-KJ-xl1fQxY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/kivi_leroux_miller.gif" align="left" strongKivi Leroux Miller, a href="http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/"Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com/a/strong/p p Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging? /p p We could get into a traditional marketing discussion about target audiences and personas, but let’s go at this challenge in a different way. Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time. To keep it simple, let’s group your website visitors into three categories:  /p ul listrongStrangers/strong: People who know nothing about you./li listrongFriends/strong: People who like your organization or cause./li listrongFans/strong: People who LOVE your organization or cause./li /ul p What kind of content does your website need for each of these groups? /p p strongStrangers: People Who Know Nothing About You/strong /p p If someone knows nothing about your organization and lands on your website, what’s the first thing you want them to see? /p p It’s not your mission statement. Trust me. /p p What you want them to see is the answer to their question. /p p If a stranger lands on your website, odds are they are searching for the answer to a specific question about something going on in their lives right now. Maybe it’s a problem they want to solve, or something they heard from a friend or saw on TV that piqued their interest. They went searching, and Google or another website with a link to yours pointed that stranger to you, thinking that you might have the answer. /p p What three questions are strangers who land on your site most likely to have? For some nonprofits, the answers are obvious. If you run an animal shelter, one question will be “What animals are available for adoption?” If you run a Meals on Wheels program, one question will be “How can a senior get food delivered?” If your organization addresses a particular disease, one question will be “What is the treatment?” /p p The best way to build rapport with strangers is not to babble on about yourself; it’s to be a good Samaritan who answers their questions. These questions are almost always programmatic in nature, and rarely about donating, volunteering, or otherwise helping you out. /p p Devote space on your home page and/or within your navigation to answering the three big questions most likely to bring strangers to your site. When you do, they are more likely to become friends, which brings us to our next group of visitors. /p p strongFriends: People Who Like Your Organization/strong /p p Friends know you, at least a little bit. They may have an incomplete picture of you, but the one they do have is favorable. What do they want to see on your website? /p p No, it’s still not your mission statement. /p p Tell your friends some good stories. /p p Stories are the quickest and most memorable way to explain what it is you do, how you do it, for whom, and why. You want these friends to get it. /p p Tell stories about people like them, so they can see that they belong. If you are trying to get more young families to participate in your program, tell a story about (you guessed it) a young family already in your program. /p p Tell stories that appeal to their inner guardian angels. Show them how they – through being your friend -- can look out for someone else or change someone’s life for the better, even if only in a small way. /p p Tell stories with a sense of adventure or wonderment. Appeal to that inner child that’s looking for a break from the day-to-day responsibilities of adulthood. /p p Help them learn more about what you do, but not through long statements of need or bulleted lists of programs and services. Images tell stories too – often better than words – so don’t forget photographs and video as you create your website content. Connect with your friends through good storytelling, and some of them will grow into big fans. /p p strongFans: People Who Love Your Organization/strong /p p Fans are people who know you well, and they love you. They are ready and willing to help – as long as you make it easy for them. What do they need from your website? /p p Anyone for the mission statement? Anyone? Of course not! /p p Give your fans clear calls to action so they know exactly what they can do to help or support you – which means not asking for them for “help” or “support.” That’s too vague. Be specific. Ask them to donate $50 towards a specific campaign. Ask them to volunteer for an hour. Ask them to retweet your event invitation to their followers. /p p Empower them to help you on their own time and in their own ways. Give them downloads and checklists they can use at home, work, or in their community to advance your cause in their own small way (it will feel big to them). Give them pass-along content like short videos and sample email text that they can share with their friends. /p p Give your fans the personal touch by encouraging them to connect with you in lots of different ways. When they mention you on Twitter, comment on a Facebook update, or reply to your email newsletter, respond with a thanks or some other kind of encouragement. /p p Integrate your real-time communications channels into your website, for example, by using Twitter or Facebook widgets or RSS feeds that bring the live conversation to your site. It reinforces for your website visitors that you are “here and now” with your fans if they can see that ongoing conversation. /p p strongYou Never Know Who’ll Come Clicking/strong /p p You never know who will stop by your website, so be prepared. Answer questions for strangers. Tell stories to friends. Make it easy for fans to interact with you. /p p And what about that good ol’ mission statement? If it’s a paragraph full of jargon or otherwise meaningless words to most website visitors, bury it on your About Us page. If it’s short, in plain English, and meaningful to your next door neighbor and your next door neighbor’s mom, then you can put it on your home page. But only after you’ve made room for those answers, stories, and interactions. /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/7FbjNxDygnQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/jed_alpert.gif" align="left" strongJed Alpert, a href="http://www.mobilecommons.com"Mobile Commons/a/strong/p p Thirty-eight percent of American mobile phone users -- 120 million people -- access the web via their mobile device; fewer than 30 million are iPhones or Android phones. (Mobile Access 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project). This percentage increases dramatically among the under-served 30% of the population without reliable non-mobile Internet access (Pew). The growth of the mobile web will continue to be very rapid in the coming years -- and will have substantially more reach than iPhone or Android applications. According to a research report by Morgan Stanley, mobile web usage will exceed all other web usage by 2015. /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/alpert_1.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="480" height="360" //span  /p p This leads to a common misconception: that your organization must immediately quot;mobilizequot; its website, by creating a mobile friendly version of your existing website. /p p This approach misses two key facts: one, users are already using your website on their phones, and two, mobile web users have different needs than desktop users. /p p In reality, when planning a mobile web strategy, you should consider the following factors: /p p strongI.  Web surfing behavior on a mobile phone differs from the desktop/strongTraditional web pages are a place where users seamlessly browse a multitude of links in a discovery process. Not so with the mobile web. Mobile web usage is relevant and successful when it can deliver the exact information that the mobile user needs or wants. Mobile browsers, even on smart phones, are not conducive to searching, browsing, or exploration. Sending someone to the mobile version of the front page of your website will likely not be useful to the viewer -- or your organization.  /p p Mobile web pages are effective when they deliver precisely targeted information. For example, simple or pre-populated forms, maps and location information, simple advocacy tools such as petitions, or simple instructions such as consumer or medical information. This is the type of content that should be converted into mobile optimized web pages and can be very effective for you and your constituents.  /p p strongII. Mobile visitors have limited non-standard browsers with which to get information/strongbr / Mobile phones come in all shapes and sizes. Even smart phones vary significantly. (If you have a Blackberry, try asking an iPhone user if your phone is quot;smartquot; and prepare to be teased.) /p p Most phones have little screens (see chart below) and render graphics poorly. Additionally, there are dozens of browsers and formats among the hundreds of makes and models. This requires building mobile web sites to the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator is text and images and not much of either.  In some cases, it may make sense to create separate optimized mobile sites for iPhone, Android, and one for all others. This will depend on the particular use case and the audience. Media and content rich mobile sites may serve to frustrate rather than serve your audience. /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/alpert_2.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="480" height="360" //span  /p p strongIII.  How will I get people to my mobile site?/strongThe technical and behavior differences between mobile phone web users and computer web users noted above impacts the ways in which your potential audience will discover the mobile site. Users rarely enter a URL onto their phones; instead, they follow links. Mobile sites are most commonly accessed via sent links (primarily text messages, Twitter, Facebook and email) and secondarily, through mobile search.  /p p Your organization should have a strategy to engage its potential mobile audience at least via those primary channels. A successful mobile web program typically requires a call to action beginning with a text message (or Tweet or email) which conveys the preliminary information and then drives people via link to the mobile web page which has been optimized as discussed above.  /p p The mobile web is big today and will be huge tomorrow. In order to win at the mobile web, you need to understand how it is being used by your audience and optimize your content for those purposes. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/Z42jDgUbRTM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/steve_backman.gif" align="left" strongSteve Backman, a href="http://dbdes.com/"Database Designs/a/strong/p p Websites have changed a lot over the past few years. Content management systems (CMS) have transformed standard expectations -- about posting news and updates without web design skills, managing donors and other constituents, opening up sections of your site to your community, tracking results, and more. And open source systems such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone have brought these features within reach of organizations with limited budgets and staffing.  /p p Yet, when it comes to strongorganizing/strong the redesign or replacement of an older-style site, many organizations expect to manage the process much as they had the last one. To get the most out of a modern site, however, you need to have a different kind of project management approach. /p p strongMatching Planning to Site Goals/strong /p p Some things, quite naturally, remain the same, like having clear goals and good planning. Other things have changed with the technology, such as maintaining flexibility throughout the project. Getting these things matched up correctly can make all the difference in managing a successful web project.  /p p emInteractive/em and emdecentralized/em are the two adjectives that best characterize what’s different, or can be different, in the best sites today. /p p To oversimplify a bit, modern web sites emcan/em be more interactive. They don’t have to be, and not surprisingly, quot;interactivequot; runs a continuum, but essentially, this means more staff or volunteers with wider skills can report, write, edit, and publish news and other articles; it doesn’t just have to be a technically trained communications specialist. But interactive also means members, donors, supporters, and activists can do things on their own that build up your organization and its causes. Not everyone wants, or needs, the same amount of “interactivequot;, but it sets the tone for many web planning conversations these days. /p p To oversimplify again, modern web development technologies are also more forgiving of changed minds, evolutionary thinking, and learning from experience. You still pay a steep price for not planning and organizing, but your site may not need the extensive linear calendar and preordained centralized decision-making that dominated web project management for many years.  /p p Not every site can or needs to balance these changing expectations the same way. What can be challenging for the strategist is when someone says something like, quot;Our new site should have a 'members only' section.quot; The organization may not have much consensus about the goals, planning, and staffing they need to match expectations. It's all about getting things into the right balance. /p p Here are five thoughts and lessons to consider: /p ol listrongEscape the linear calendar/strong. Older-style traditional sites pretty much required a progression that ensured the design work was done first. For some projects, that may still make sense. With a modern CMS, however, you can create the basic framework of the site independently of the visual design and then layer that in later as part of “theming” the site. It really depends on what will best serve your goals. A project can proceed in traditional phases, which might run along the lines of: overall goals and features, sitemap, wireframe, visual design, customized features, initial content, training, building out the rest, converting data, and finally, launching. Or it may proceed iteratively, with traditional processes overlapping and the site launching in a limited way and then undergoing progressive refinement and expansion. Modern CMS tools make it possible to update and build out a lot of content relatively independently of selecting and refining a site's visual design theme. Should you do this? It may help you meet overall schedule deadlines and help your team refine its decisions about the site. In other cases, it may confuse reviewers to see the content without the design. The point is, you have choices./li listrongBuild the project team around program staff and other “content specialists”,/strong not just around those with traditional technical skills. Modern web projects should take advantage of staff with design skills, including Dreamweaver, Photoshop and the rest; work with those tools still plays an important role. But the overall success of a CMS-based web project will depend less on them and more on ensuring that the broadest possible team is ready to contribute content in a timely way. It may be a marketing and communications team; it may include an Executive Director’s personal blog; it may be rotating news from program staff; it may be volunteer commentators from the board, key activists, and allies. The project plan needs to focus on defining who will provide the content and ensuring it plays out that way much more than was the case five or ten years ago./li listrongBe realistic about time from organizational staff./strong Potentially at odds with the last point, just because the new tools lower the barrier for organizational staff to participate and contribute doesn’t mean they will have the time and internal support to do so. If an outside developer’s budget gets trimmed based on the expectation that organizational staff will build out content, create the CSS, or perform other essential activities, the team needs to be sure those staff members will have time within the project schedule./li listrongMonitor and look to integrate the interactive features, /strongdon’t add them a la carte and leave them to fend for themselves. Interactive tools for donations, event registration, email sign-up, polls and surveys, contacting your legislator, commenting on blogs, linking to social media -- these have all been around for a while. Picking and choosing among tools from the digital buffet table today may end up confusing your constituents and frustrating your executive leadership. Since every organization now has access to these types of tools, it makes sense to focus on those that really make a difference -- for your organization -- and that you can collect and compare numbers (metrics) for. This works best when you can integrate those tools with each other and a single back-end contact database -- the CRM (contact relationship manager) -- alongside the CMS./li listrongUsing interactive tools won’t automatically substitute for staffing and organization. /strongUnderstaffed organizations and under-organized ones that want to use a lot of decentralized, community-oriented tools may find that their new site slips away into fuzzy messaging and co-option by partners on the fringe. More likely however, it may just fizzle away entirely, those on-line community features -- commenting, discussion forums, petitions, surveys, take action -- sitting there underutilized. You still need things like the circuit e-mail -- and now social media, outreach, lively web landing pages, and staff monitoring of your interactive features./li /olimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/gK9f1wMj6f4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/cindy_leonard.gif" align="left" strongCindy Leonard, a href="http://www.rmu.edu/web/cms/departments-offices/research-outreach/bcnm/Pages/default.aspx"Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University/a/strong/p p “Web accessibility” means creating websites that can be fully used by people with disabilities.span class="Apple-converted-space" a id="wu95" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility" title="Wikipedia provides a good formal definition"Wikipediaspan class="Apple-converted-space" provides a good formal definition/span/a:/span /p blockquote p “Web accessibility refers to the practice of making a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website" target="_blank" title="Website"websites/a usable by people of all abilities and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disabilities" target="_blank" title="Disabilities"disabilities/a. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality…When sites are correctly built and maintained, all of these users can be accommodated while not impacting on the usability of the site for non-disabled users.”  /p /blockquote p Why should a nonprofit care about having an accessible website? I’m glad you asked. /p p For a nonprofit organization, perhaps the most important reason for implementing Web accessibility is social responsibility. By their very nature, nonprofits exist to make the world a better place and to create positive social change. They should, therefore, be concerned with creating equal access to their programs, opportunities, and services.  /p p Furthermore, equal access and opportunity is a basic human right recognized by the United Nations in its “a id="rjx6" href="http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html" title="Universal Declaration of Human Rights"Universal Declaration of Human Rights/a”, including activities such as work, leisure, and education. With an ever-increasing amount of work, leisurely pursuits, and educational opportunities moving to an online format, the need for accessible Websites increases. /p p There are many additional advantages to implementing Web accessibility. After all, an accessible site is more user-friendly for everyone who visits the site. Some of the additional benefits include: /p ul liWeb content can be handled by any browser software/li liGreater visibility in search engines (which are more easily able to access and evaluate content on the site)/li liEase of conversion to other formats, such as plain text, Word, orspan class="Apple-converted-space" PDFspan class="Apple-converted-space" documents/span/span/li liAbility for low-bandwidth users to access content more easily/li liBetter and faster access for people using mobile devices (such asspan class="Apple-converted-space" PDAsspan class="Apple-converted-space" or cell phones)/span/span/li /ul p An organization’s website might be the first experience a potential client or funder has with its agency. That experience should be positive and pleasant, inspiring trust rather than generating frustration. /p p You can learn more about web accessibility, including guidelines for implementation, at a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/" target="_blank"http://www.w3.org/WAI//a /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/eMDSkRXnmwg" height="1" width="1"/