nptech.info

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/cherry_tree.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Flickr Photo: Paraflyer" title="Flickr Photo: Paraflyer" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="67" /span class="caption" style="width: 98px;"strongFlickr Photo: Paraflyer/strong/span/span p I was in DC last week with the famous Anna Richter getting our 11NTC ducks in a row. Our conference hotel, the a href="http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/DCAWHHH-Washington-Hilton-District-of-Columbia/index.do" Washington Hilton/a was just up the hill from the metro station, so I kept walking down Connecticut to get there. (Or to the Chipotle; I may have set a record for burritos consumed in one trip.) /p p Each time, I walked past a gallery set up for AED. I know that AED is a big international nonprofit, but I have never known what the heck AED stands for. So, on my way back to the hotel -- with a burrito and a Coke (Diet, of course) -- I slowed down long enough to examine their logo for clues. What exactly does AED stand for, and would that provide clues about what they do? I didn't get the answer to the acronym, but I did get something better -- their tagline: quot;Ideas Changing Livesquot;. /p p Okay, so they invest in ideas that change lives around the world. Say no more. /p p Taglines are incredibly powerful, which is why I'm always so excited when our fantastic board member Nancy Schwartz launches her tagline contest, and now she's back for round three!  /p p strongTake 3 minutes now to /strongstronga rel="enter your nonprofits taglines" href="http://e2ma.net/go/6710065755/208232739/214174548/26237/goto:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2010-nonprofit-tagline-awards" target="_blank"enter your nonprofit's taglines/a in the em3rd Annual Tagline Awards/em/strong /p p You can enter up to four (4) separate taglines, one for each of the award program's categories: your organization's tagline; a tagline for any program operated by your organization; a tagline for a fundraising campaign; and a tagline for any special event your organization produces. /p p All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated em2010 Nonprofit Tagline Report/em in late fall. It's the only complete guide to building your org's brand in 8 words or less, filled with how-tos, don't-dos and models. /p p strongEverything you wanted to know about the/strongemstrong 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Awards/strong/em /p p So many nonprofit communicators were excited about last year’s awards, and had questions for us, that we  developed aa href="http://e2ma.net/go/6710065755/208232739/214174549/26237/goto:http://gettingattention.org/nonprofit-taglines/overview-nonprofit-tagline-awards-report.html" target="_blank" mini-site for this year’s program/a. Dive in for more information on FAQs, judges, previous winners, sponsors and more. /p p BTW, here are the a rel="winners of the 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Awards" href="http://e2ma.net/go/6710065755/208232739/214174550/26237/goto:http://www.gettingattention.org/nonprofit-taglines/award-winners.html" target="_blank"winners of the em2008 and 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Awards/em/a (each year selected by nearly 6,000 voters in the field). This could be your organization in 2010! /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/hhxMHpuG6kk" height="1" width="1"/

pAt the a href="/ntc"2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference/a, we gave our session evaluation system a major tech overhaul by highlighting a a href="/blog/2009/07/23/if-we-can-do-it-so-can-you-mobile-evaluations-09ntc"mobile text messaging/a option in addition to our normal paper evaluations -- as well as an online option that was added at the last minute. At the a href="/ntc"2010 NTC/a in Atlanta, we built on what we learned and took this one step further by moving to a completely paperless evaluation system. /ppstrongHow It Worked/strong/ppOne of our main concerns in implementing a paperless system was excluding attendees who weren't comfortable with text messaging or had limited text plans (a complaint we heard numerous times in 2009), so in addition to offering the strongText Messaging/strong option provided by a href="http://www.mobilecommons.com/"Mobile Commons/a, we teamed up with a href="http://www.precisionpolling.com/"Precision Polling/a to offer a strongCall-In/strong option and an strongOnline/strong option. To keep the three systems unified and to limit confusion, we assigned a 3-digit identifying code to each of our sessions that could be used for any of the three evaluation methods./pblockquote p strongText:/strong From the user's perspective, this system was almost identical to what attendees saw at the 2009 NTC. quot;Text [3-digit Eval Code] to 69866quot; were the only directions needed, at which point the system would text back with the first question in the survey and prompt the user to text back their answer. The user's reply would trigger the next question and so on until the survey was complete (for a total of 5 sent and 5 received text messages). On the back end, Mobile Commons had made several improvements to the already simple system since the 2009 NTC, making the campaign setup much quicker and allowing us even easier access to the results as they came in. /p p strongCall-In: /strongThis system was surprisingly simple to use both from a user's point of view as well as from an administrator's. We had local Atlanta phone number for attendees to call, at which point they were prompted to enter the Eval Code for whatever session they were evaluating. This was followed by each of the evaluation questions (pre-recorded by NTEN's own Holly Ross) and a prompt for their answers. Behind the scenes, the setup was very intuitive and customizable -- with a simple voice recording system and the ability to add branching based on a user's response -- and accessing the data as it came in couldn't have been easier. /p p strongOnline:/strong On the backend, this system was nearly identical to the Call-In option, as the two were just different input options for the same Precision Polling system. For the user, they could simply navigate to nten.org/ntc-eval, at which point they would enter the Eval Code for the session they wanted to rate, and then proceed through the rest of the questions in a simple online survey format. /p/blockquotepstrongWhat Worked Well/strong/ppIn 2009, some of the highlights of our Mobile Evaluation experiment were quot;paper use cut by 95%quot;, quot;staff time devoted to evaluations cut by 90%quot;, and quot;no decline in completion ratequot;. By going paperless at the 2010 NTC, as well as by implementing all of the systems well in advance of the conference, we were able to improve on all of these./pblockquote p strongPaper use cut by 100%:/strong As quot;Paperless Evaluationsquot; would suggest, of course, but still worth mentioning. /p p strongStaff time devoted to evaluations cut by 100%: /strongIf you count the pre-conference setup, this isn't entirely accurate, but during the conference, when NTEN's 6 person staff is really stretched, the removal of paper evaluations combined with improved pre-conference communication with session designers meant there was no additional evaluation setup work required once the conference got going. /p p strongPost conference data consolidation cut by 100%: /strongThere was still the data evaluation that took the normal amount of time, but we were able to output all the data directly into useable spreadsheets from the different systems. /p p strongEvaluation completion rate maintained: /strongJust like in 2009, one of our main concerns with making a major change to our evaluation system was that we would cause confusion and see our completion rate drop significantly, so seeing it instead increase slightly (from 900 to 914) was a great result. /p/blockquotepstrongWhat Didn't Work Well/strong/ppWhile the improved pre-conference planning did smooth out a lot of the issues we ran into at the 2009 NTC, we were still left with many areas to improve on./pblockquote p strongLack of buy-in and understanding by speakers: /strongThis was probably our biggest issue in 2009, and despite an effort to improve our communication to session designers about the new evaluation system, there were still several sessions where the speakers seemed unaware of the system, and still only a handful of sessions where attendees were actively encouraged to use one of the systems. In fact, just over half the sessions received more than 4 evaluations. At this point, I'm not sure what the solution for this is other than trying to concentrate our efforts on educating our attendees instead. /p p strongDirections for submitting evaluations were not widely available: /strong We did a much better job this year making the session eval codes easily available to our attendees, but where we still missed the mark was in successfully publishing the directions on how to use these codes. Our main distribution point for these directions was the session designers, and while this is can be very successful if the speakers help promote the evaluations, it's becoming clear that this can't be our only point of communication with attendees. We also printed the directions in the program book, but unless you read the book cover to cover or were looking for them, they were much too easy to pass over. /p p strongCall-In option was mostly ignored: /strongThis was actually one of the more surprising results we found. The final numbers for evaluation distribution were 61% Online, 37% by Text, and only 2% by Phone. Comparing to the 2009 NTC distribution (52% Online, 39% Text, and 9% Paper), one interpretation is that the paper evaluations were replaced largely by online submissions, and then a handful of text users gave the Call-In option a try. I'm still a bit stumped though as to why the Call-In option didn't gain much traction as in our testing phases, I found it to be quite easy to use. /p/blockquotepstrongChanges Planned for Next Year/strong/ppOverall, our experience with paperless evaluations was extremely positive: we maintained our evaluation completion rate while at the same time saving paper and minimizing staff time devoted to the program. Of course, now that we have no more room to improve in either the saving paper or minimizing staff time (at the conference), we'll need to start focusing more on improving our completion rate./pblockquote p strongGet more buy-in from conference attendees: /strongOne of the big lessons learned this year was that while speaker buy-in is a great way to increase completion rate for some sessions, it's not going to be effective for ALL sessions. The only way to improve completion rates across the board will be to generate more awareness of the evaluation systems among our attendees. /p p strongFocus on just two systems: /strongWhile we're still not sure why the Call-In option didn't take off this year, it seems our attendees largely prefer the Online and Text versions of our session evaluations, so in an effort to further streamline and simplify the evaluation process, we will likely just focus on these two systems at the 2011 NTC in DC. /p/blockquotepstrongYour Feedback/strong/ppWhile we have plenty of lessons learned and ideas for how to improve this system for the 2011 NTC next March, we'd love to hear more direct feedback from NTC attendees (or anyone) on their experience with any of the systems and why they did (or did not) use a specific one. Either leave a comment here or you can send an email to a href="mailto:karl@nten.org"karl@nten.org/a. Thanks!/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/frD5GGMMGtU" height="1" width="1"/

p Technology used to be, as Jane Messeck of a href="http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/our-actions/in-the-community/"Microsoft Community Affairs/a puts it, transactional: it was about moving a document from point A to point B faster, making it easier to store and find things, making sure everyone could print. Technology was about efficiency.   /p p Of course, technology is still about efficiency. As nonprofits, we're really good at efficiency. We know that if we can be more efficient, we can spend more time on our mission. For a long time, this has also meant that if we get a basic IT infrastructure in place -- if we create that efficiency- - our job managing technology was done.   /p p Here's Jane explaining how all of that has changed: /p p /p p It's just not true that spending more time on mission means spending less time on technology.   /p p In the last few years, technology has migrated from the kingdom of geeks to the land of the every-person. Staff members from every department in your organization have a clear grasp of how technology can be used not just to create efficiencies, but to deliver your programs and services in brand new, and even better, ways. Your clients and supporters take technology with them, everywhere they go -- so you can use these tools to connect them to your mission, 24/7.   /p p Technology doesn't just give you more time to meet your mission. Technology strongIS/strong meeting your mission. /p p Take a href="http://kexp.org/"KEXP.org/a in Seattle. It would be easy for this little radio station to be satisfied with efficiency. Sure, they can make their content available online so they can reach MORE audience with less work. But there's nothing in their mission statement about more. /p p More is not enough. /p p Their mission is to connect people to the world through music. Streaming is only part of the equation. Now, they're exploring ways to use their web sites, social media, and other technology tools to create conversations and connect people around their programming.   /p p That's what we're asking you to do, fearless NTEN members: get technology out of the back room and introduce it to your mission. Your mission will thank you for it.  /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/ofs0f7KPdL8" height="1" width="1"/

pA monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on a href="http://www.nten.org/blog"our blog/a./p ol liWe have so many data-themed links this month, you should probably take a moment to consider what all this information may be doing to your brain. a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html"According to the NYTimes, it's not good/a. Can somebody make a href="http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/About/NewsReleases/Fried_Egg_Message"a PSA-style poster/a to illustrate this? Yes, a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/maccabee-montandon/upswing/america-hungry-need-data"they can/a!/li lia href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/20/feedback-filters-social-media/"The problem may have to do with a lack of feedback/a. A land line phone plays back your own voice at low levels. The feedback keeps you from shouting. Cell phones -- and social media sites, and your in-box -- don't offer much in the way of feedback. No, angry responses to your opinions don't count, but if computers beeped every time somebody used ALL CAPS or TMEM (Too Many Exclamation Marks!!!!) to make a point, we'd likely have fewer a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1082512"flaming trolls/a. /li liOof, that was kind of a long rant. a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPC3HH6_TU"Puppy break/a!/li lia href="http://tables.googlelabs.com/public/tour/tour1.html"Google's new Fusion Tables/a lets you import, mash-up, share, and visualize your own and others' data./li liOf course, there are so many visualization tools out there now, you almost need a guide. Idealware to the rescue: "a href="http://www.idealware.org/reports/consumers-guide-low-cost-data-visualization-tools"A Consumer's Guide to Low-Cost Data Visualization Tools/a"./li liData aggregation is good, too. Box office trackers have a href="http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/articles/2010-06-twitter-watch-karate-kid-out-front"started counting Twitter mentions to help predict movie openings/a. The adage holds true for Hollywood: no news is bad news, even in the form of a href="http://twitter.com/comedianjamie/statuses/16852224706"140 character body slams/a. But we bet that's not true for your organization. Are you tracking negative mentions? Do they correlate to anything?/li liYeah, that last one tired us on data, too. Thank goodness for a href="http://www.nten.org/blog/2010/06/16/if-youre-part-cream-youre-gonna-get-licked"Charlene Li's "Oreo Effect"/a. No, it has nothing to do with a a href="http://rocksoft.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/gluttony-iii-keeping-the-doctor-near/"Duoseptuagenuple Stuf/a.../li liSpeaking of delicious, we love us some sushi, so we're not happy to hear about a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html"the impending collapse of the Atlantic bluefin tuna population/a. Even more reason to carry a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_recommendations.aspx"the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch guides/a wherever you go./li liHave we been a little heavy this month? Let's take a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/662468/duckling_and_puppy/"another puppy break/a. And maybe a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1935347"a hedgehog break/a. (Also, if there's an ad for "Robot Unicorn Attack" at the top of the page, you won't be disappointed.) /li liAh, much better. Now, if you haven't read the just-released book, "a href="http://www.amazon.com/Networked-Nonprofit-Connecting-Social-Change/dp/0470547979/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1277317832amp;sr=8-1-spell"The Networked Nonprofit/a", by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, why the heck not? Oh, because it was just released? Fine. Just don't let it happen again./li liFinally, if you saw a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUmRfGo6QQIamp;playnext_from=TLamp;videos=tqwEyfnfNqEamp;feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh%2Bdiv-1r-4-HM"Landon Donovan's game winning goal against Algeria/a, you know his reaction left a little to be desired, so we leave you with some of the a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFrMSzoLXIU"best goal-scoring celebrations of all time/a. Try breaking some of these out at your next staff meeting when you report back on all the amazing work you've done. (Oh, and you might want to check out a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/wimbledon10/news/story?id=5322284"the longest tennis match in the history of the Universe/a -- at Wimbledon, no less)./li /olimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/c2c05-eoKAA" height="1" width="1"/

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/save_the_internet_square.thumbnail.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="100" //spanpThis past April, how did you file your taxes? Did you mail them or e-File? How did you pay your last parking ticket? Find your last job? Watch a funny cat video? /ppI'm betting the answer is the same for all of these: online. Even phone calls aren't phone calls anymore; increasingly they are Voice over IP calls that happen over the internet./ppThis all works because the Internet is one thing above all else: OPEN. /ppBecause the Internet is open, our nonprofits can share knowledge, empower people and make our communities better places. Of course, while open is good for you, me, and the work we do in the social sector, it's not always good at padding the bottom lines of the telecommunications industry. An internet that can be throttled is an Internet that can make them more money./ppIt's no surprise that giant phone and cable companies like Comcast and ATamp;T have made moves to control the Internet. It's clear they want to dismantle Net Neutrality. Now, they've sent a battalion of lobbyists to Washington to convince the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to abandon Net Neutrality and maintain only minimal oversight over our most important communications channel./ppIt's not just Net Neutrality that's at stake. If the FCC does not clarify its authority over the Internet, it can't successfully implement the National Broadband Plan -- the plan to connect rural and low-income communities to broadband. Specifically, Genachowski’s plan to transform the Universal Service Fund into a quot;Connect America Fundquot;, which will shift tens of billions of dollars over the next decade to funding the construction of broadband networks in rural America, could be at risk./ppIf the FCC doesn't succeed in reasserting its authority, we may lose our open Internet -- and millions more will just lose out on the Internet, period. We need clear rules of the road that will preserve the Internet and its potential to continue to fuel innovation and economic growth, and allow non-profit organizations to work for social change./ppNearly 2 million Americans have told the FCC and Congress to protect Net Neutrality, and thousands have come out in support of the FCC's move to reclassify broadband. But now we need your voice! Here are three way you can help:/pul liIf you can speak for your organization, sign the a href="https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=displayamp;page=UserActionamp;id=447"Nonprofit Letter to the FCC/a. /li liYou can support the cause by signing the a href="https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=displayamp;page=UserActionamp;id=356"individual letter of support/a. /li liTell your friends and colleagues by sharing these links through email, Facebook, and Twitter./li/uldiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/u3wFxC3cguY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/brett_meyer.gif" align="left" strongBrett Meyer, a href="http://www.nten.org/"NTEN/a/strong/p p You may already know you can use Google Analytics to track your Google AdWords campaigns. Makes sense: Google would integrate puppies into their products if they thought it would help. em[Ed. note: Actually, a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hpjgaknapoodndfenjgcfcmfncblhidg"they have/a.] /em /p p Because they had to standardize the system used for this tracking, you can co-opt it for your own purposes to track click-throughs from your e-mail campaigns, banner ads, links in blog posts, even paper mailings (if you use it in conjunction with a URL shortener like bit.ly). I've been to a few presentations that referenced doing this, and seen it mentioned on a blog here and there, but haven't come across much concrete information on how actually to implement it. Turns out, it's really easy. /p p strongGenerate the Tracking URL /strong /p p Awhile back, a href="/blog/2008/07/14/google-analytics-tip-track-click-throughs-from-your-messaging-campaigns"I wrote about tracking click-throughs using query strings/a. Forget the technical details, because a href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=55578"Google provides a tool you can and should use/a to create the tracking links for you. a href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=55578"Bookmark the page/a. /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_1.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="450" height="316" //span /p p It won't take you much longer to create these special URLs than it does to insert links in your messaging campaigns already. The key is to remain consistent. /p ul liIn the quot;Website URLquot; box, enter the landing page you want to send folks to./li liFor quot;Campaign Sourcequot;, I generally enter the origin of the message -- our CRM (netforum), blog, a partner's web site, etc./li liquot;Campaign Mediumquot; is the type of message, such as email, banner ad, or, if you're daring, post card./li liI don't use quot;Campaign Termquot;, but don't let that stop you./li liquot;Campaign Contentquot; should be used identify any segment you might be using. In the screen above, quot;comm_mem_actquot; refers to Communications staff who are Members of NTEN and active in our community. Remember, it doesn't matter what you use to code this, as long as you stay consistent over the long term./li liFinally, use quot;Campaign Namequot; much like the quot;Campaign Contentquot; field, to let you sort and differentiate the data (we'll get to that, below). In the above example, I'd be tracking a message about one of our Roundtable Discussions./li liClick quot;Generate URLquot;, and use the result as the hyperlink in your messaging campaign. See, easy!/li /ul p Now, let's take a look at how to track the results after you've launched your campaign. /p p strongFind the Data in Google Analytics /strong /p p Log-in to your Google Analytics account, and find the quot;Campaignsquot; header under quot;Traffic Sourcesquot;: /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_2.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="150" height="175" //span /p p You'll see something like this: /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_2_1.preview.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-preview" width="640" height="414" //span /p p Everything tagged with Google's campaign codes is lumped onto this screen, so you'll have to sort the information to make it useful. Fortunately, the pivot tables make it easy -- and you don't even have to care what a quot;pivot tablequot; is. /p p Just use the two dropdown menus above the table to sort your data. Here, I've sorted by quot;Campaignquot; and quot;Ad Contentquot; (two of the variables you set when you create the URL): /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_3.preview.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-preview" width="640" height="414" //span /p p Now we're getting somewhere. You can see that the e-mail we sent out about our IT Staffiing Report brought in a lot of traffic, and that NTEN Members (the quot;memquot; code) spent more time interacting with our site. There's more, of course, but you can make it easier to use with a little filtering. /p p On this screen, I've filtered for any campaign tagged quot;drupalquot; -- from a message about a series we ran on the Drupal CMS: /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_5.preview.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-preview" width="640" height="234" //span  /p p Now there's some potentially useful data! For example: /p ul liActive IT Staffers who are Members of NTEN were clearly the most interested in this content -- not just by sheer visits, but by their Pages per Visit and Average Time on Site./li liNon-member IT Staffers who are NOT active in our community stuck around for awhile, too. That's good to know for future outreach and programming decisions./li liMeanwhile, Communications Staff who are Members but not active in the community didn't much care about this content: check out their bounce rate compared to some of the other segments./li /ul p Don't forget to compare all of these numbers and statistics to some of your other data, including the number of messages sent, open rates, and the like. You can even export Google Analytics data to Excel to combine and resort the information. /p p Let's resort again. Thanks to the (invisible) magic of pivot tables, I can swap the sort criteria, so it looks at quot;Ad Contentquot; first, and then quot;Campaignquot;: /p p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/ga_6.preview.gif" alt="" title="" class="image image-preview" width="640" height="389" //span /p p In this example, I've sorted on quot;commquot; to find all of the messages sent to our Communications Staff segment. This way, we can try to figure out which of our programming may appeal to which segment. Looks like our Members are far more interested (or educated about?) YouTube than the non-members on our lists. Read into that what you will. /p p I'll leave it to you to poke around in Analytics to see how far you can push this with your own campaigns. Happy tracking! /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/9QYLRiKykQ4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/marissa_goldsmith.gif" align="left" strongMarissa Goldsmith, a href="http://www.beaconfire.com"Beaconfire Consulting/a/strong/p p I love details. I could write a three-page specification for an quot;Email this pagequot; button. I challenge myself to find new and exciting OS/Browser combinations to test. (Yes, I do still have Lynx on my computer). And when it comes to cutting HTML, I'm a total pixel-pusher. (Shouldn't that column be one pixel over to the right?) /p p So when I log into Google Analytics, I never even glance at the dashboard, but instead dive straight into meaty 100-row reports. To me, the dashboard report is good for big picture, but is too vague to tell me what I really need to do to make my site better. /p p But organizations love their dashboard reports. I have spent hours creating Excel spreadsheets for monthly, quarterly, and annual reports. I have filled them with all different kinds of stats, from pageviews to visits to most-printed pages. I have taken my data from several analytics packages and CRM databases. /p p These reports may result in kudos for an increase in pageviews, or grimaces for the decrease in returning visitors. But the only action that I have to look forward to is spending several more hours creating the same spreadsheet next month/quarter/year. /p p And so I became a dashboard report hater. /p p They never tell the whole story. Sometimes, they don't tell any story. One thing I've learned is that the most important thing in analytics is not the numbers, but rather the story they tell.  /p p strongThe Epiphany /strong /p p I have spent much of my time these past few years belittling the dashboard report and have often advised clients that if they want to get anywhere analytics-wise, they have to quot;go beyond the dashboard report.quot; I even used that expression at the NTC conference last April, but when it was time for Qamp;A, a gentleman in the back raised his hand, and asked the question quot;Why do you hate the dashboard report so much?quot; /p p I really had to think. Many people believe the dashboard report is very useful. It gives you a concise way to let your colleagues know the success of the work you are doing. It communicates to the higher-ups what's going on down below in an easy-to-digest format. /p p So why emdid/em I hate the dashboard report so much? /p p I realized it wasn't the dashboard report I hated, it was the culture that the dashboard report fed into -- the culture that values the existence of a report over what the report itself is telling you; the culture that values numbers over the story the numbers tell; the culture that prefers inertia to action. /p p strongEnabling a Culture shift/strong /p p Since that epiphany, I have worked to actively change the nature of the reports themselves. Here are a few ways how: /p blockquote strongTell a Story/strong p Your Excel spreadsheet skills aren't the star of your report, nor are the color-coded numbers. The story is the star. Precede your numbers with a narrative. It will help others make sense of the report.  /p p strongExplain Yourself/strong /p p Did October see a 20% drop in visits? Don't just let those red negative numbers linger. Explain why, and don't guess. Your web site analytics can help you find out where things went wrong -- or at the very least, where they didn't. /p p strongTake Some Action/strong /p p Your analytics career is not just about numbers. Always follow your numbers with a recommended course of action. Do most of your users go to the search page? Maybe you need an IA facelift. Did December see a dip in traffic? quot;December is traditionally a slow monthquot; is not good enough. Instead, try quot;December is traditionally a slow month, but it is an important time of year to connect with donors, so next year we should work on a campaign to increase our donor prospect traffic.quot; /p p strongMix it Up/strong /p p Nothing is duller, for you or your colleagues, than staring at the same table, month after month, with different numbers. Identify a few core stats that must be in every report, and then rotate other stats in and out, or include interesting tidbits: /p ul liemLook beyond the top ten/em. Some of the most interesting tales of your web site appear beyond the top 10 rows of your web reports. What do you see there? Is there anything new, unusual, or interesting?/li liemFeed your curiosity/em. Have you ever wondered about the different browsing habits of IE and Firefox users? The attention span of Californians vs. New Yorkers? Want to know the age inclination of your audience? Using stats to figure these things out can be fun, and can give you a valuable look at your users. a href="#_ftn1"[1]/a But don't just report a number for its own sake; report on something you can act on./li liemAsk and answer a question/em. In every report ask and answer a question that will help you make your web site and/or web presence stronger. If you have a homepage slide show that takes up a lot of real estate, maybe you want to ask quot;How many people actually click on the homepage slideshow? How many of them convert? How many of them return?quot; Let the statistics answer the question./li liemBe Current/em. Did your organization put out a huge, game-changing press release? Then make sure to include some information in your dashboard report that includes the quality of the traffic regarding that particular event./li /ul strongMake the Process Efficient/strong p You will never steer completely away from a dashboard report. So find ways to make the process efficient. I love Excellent Analytics, an Excel Plugin that pulls your analytics information into an Excel Spreadsheet. Thanks to the wonderful world of APIs, there are new things being developed all the time. /p p strongFinally, Don't go Too Crazy/strong /p p If you've been sending out the same dashboard report for five years, a sudden shift in how it looks and feels may not bode well. Make a few changes each month. First, begin with the narrative to accompany the data. Then, start adding some more actionable statistics. Bit by bit, colleagues in your organization will begin to see the value in these changes. /p /blockquote p a name="_ftn1" title="_ftn1"/a[1]You can use sites like a href="http://gorumors.com/crunchies/"http://gorumors.com/crunchies//a, which give you interesting statistics about Internet users around the world. It's not the same thing as asking your users how old they are or what their income is, but it is a way to get a larger picture of your audience. /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/xJX323wCaUM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/shabbir_safdar.gif align=left img src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/shayna_englin.gif align=left stronga href=www.truthypr.comShabbir Imber Safdar/a and Shayna Englin, a href=http://www.englin.net/Englin Consulting, LLC/a/strong/p p Everybody's on Facebook, so clearly your non-profit should be there, too, right? /p p Probably, but given limited resources it's important to get a better handle on the specific value your organization's investment of time and resources on Facebook is delivering toward your bottom line. It's time to make it accountable. /p p Commercial marketers, who blaze the trail 2-4 years ahead of us nonprofit marketers, have been using the marketing funnel as an accountability tool to focus their marketing efforts. Marketing funnels are visualizations of how specific marketing efforts move would-be customers to make a purchase. In one simple graphic, it shows how effective your marketing is and where you can apply changes to achieve increasing results. /p p One approach to making your Facebook efforts accountable and more forcused can be found in the marketing funnel. /p p Here's the concept: /p p span class=inline inline-noneimg src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/facebook_1.img_assist_custom.gif alt= title= class=image image-img_assist_custom width=450 height=244 //span /p p That bottom part of the funnel is what nonprofit communicators often forget when we think about social media. We forget to answer the question, quot;Why are we spending resources – staff time, money – on Facebook?” (or Twitter, or Foursquare, or Tumblr, etc.) /p p The funnel should resolve in Facebook delivering something of specific value to your organization -- something that furthers your mission: volunteers, money, or some other resource that lets you make the world a better place. /p p Spend a little time clarifying your funnel, specifically that last bit about measurable value and the second to last bit about how Facebook users will get there. For example, if your Facebook funnel delivers donations, then will you use Causes or collect donations on your website? If you're using your own website, the second to last bit is about clickthrough to your site. /p p Once you've got your funnel in place, you can then set to measuring each stage. Typically once you measure you'll find a bottleneck where people are not effectively moving from one stage of the funnel to the next. Here's an example of how you can take an abstract funnel like the one above and apply it to your organization. /p p span class=inline inline-noneimg src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/facebook_2.img_assist_custom.gif alt= title= class=image image-img_assist_custom width=450 height=367 //span /p p This is a very typical Facebook marketing funnel for nonprofits that primarily raise money to fund the mission-oriented work they do. Here's another version that makes the numbers clearer: /p p span class=inline inline-noneimg src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/facebook_3.img_assist_custom.gif alt= title= class=image image-img_assist_custom width=450 height=367 //span /p p Now you have some clear metrics of how effective your Facebook efforts are at delivering value to your organization's bottom line, and you have for a sense of where to experiment to improve your results. You might try starting at the top of the funnel. Ask yourself, what kinds of material must I create in order to get more of my fans to click thru to my website? Should I write longer, shorter, more frequently? Experiment for 3 weeks and compare the results. If its improving, keep on keeping on, and if not try another experiment. /p p strongBut wait, these are terrible results! If I share this with my colleagues they'll kill the social media program entirely!/strong /p p By and large nonprofits (and most for profits) have not figured out how to make Facebook produce results for their organization's bottom line. Your colleagues already know this, and eventually someone in a position of authority will reallocate resources to reflect this reality. First they are likely to start changing the tactics you're using to improve the results. It's in your interest and the interest of your organization to confront the results and start improving them of your own volition. /p p The best part of this is that experimentation in this area is free. We describe a number of techniques for identifying more or less effective Facebook tactics in our free ebook quot;a href=http://www.truthypr.com/2010/04/measure-social-media-nonprofit-facebook-page-analytics.htmlIs Your Nonprofit's Facebook Page Worth It?/aquot; /p p Read it, see if you can clarify your Facebook marketing funnel, and have fun testing! /p p emShayna launched a href=http://www.englin.net/Englin Consulting, LLC/a with over a decade of experience identifying and mobilizing supporters for non-profits, causes, and political candidates. Reach Shayna at a href=mailto:shayna@englin.netemshayna@englin.net/em/aem./em/em /p em p emShabbir Imber Safdar is a certified Web Analyst (CWA0510002) and the author of two ebooks, quot;a href=http://www.truthypr.com/2009/11/free-ebook-3-fundraising-metrics-for-your-nonprofit-website.html3 Fundraising Metrics For Your Nonprofit Website/aquot; and quot;a href=http://www.truthypr.com/2010/04/measure-social-media-nonprofit-facebook-page-analytics.htmlemIs Your Nonprofit Facebook Page Worth It?/em/aemquot; (with Shayna Englin) He would like nothing more than to analyze your data, which you can learn about at a href=http://www.truthypr.com/www.truthypr.com/a/ema href=http://www.truthypr.com//a/em /p /emdiv class=image-clear/div

pimg src=http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/steve_peretz.gif align=left strongSteve Peretz, a href=http://www.mrss.com/M+R Strategic Services/a/strong/p p Since the release of the a href=http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study/a, we know many of you have been hard at work looking at how your programs measure up against industry benchmarks. /p p But the emBenchmarks Study/em is really meant to help you think (or rethink!) how you collect and calculate your data in the first place — since the most important metrics for your organization are, of course, YOUR metrics. /p p Here are three tips for better collecting and calculating your organization's metrics:br / br / strong 1. Source /strongemstrongEverything/strong/emstrong!/strong /p p Does your fundraising campaign use the same donation page for both email messages emand/em website promotions? Are you promoting the same advocacy page on Facebook that you're using in your online advertising? If you've done either of these things, you're in good company — but you also know how hard it is after the fact to tell where your donors and activists came from. br / /p p It's essential to set things up so that you know where someone who makes a donation or takes action comes from. If you're using the same donation form everywhere on your site, you won't be able to tell if that spike in donations came from the great email you sent or from the well-trafficked blog post that linked to your website. /p p It's worth taking the time to set up a different page for each traffic source. And if you know in advance that the blog is going to link to your donation page, clone the page and give them their own page so you can see how much they helped! /p p (Of course, if you can use custom URLs with source codes – such as Google Analytics codes – to distinguish where users are coming from, that will work too! For instructions on how to do just that, click a href=/blog/2010/06/24/howto-use-google-analytics-track-your-online-marketing-campaignshere/a.)br / br / Sure, having one donation page for a campaign makes it quicker to tell how that campaign is doing overall. But in order to truly analyze the effectiveness of your program, you need to be able to go beyond how much a campaign raised and track where all that exciting activity came from. /p p strong 2. Get Raw /strong /p p Once you've sourced everything, I recommend tracking raw data – the actual numbers of clicks, actions, donations, etc. Only when you're ready to calculate a metric like response rate or conversion rate should you move from numbers to percentages. /p p Why? Let's say you want to track your email fundraising open rate. The equation for that rate (found in the glossary of the em2010 e-Nonprofit Benchmarks Study/em) is the number of email messages opened divided by the number of email messages delivered. That's easy enough to calculate if you track the numbers. /p p Let's take an easy example. Imagine you sent three emails: the first email went to the full list of 100 people, the second email went to the 10 people on your email list who are donors and the third email went to the other 90 people who aren't. Your email system will spit out open rates for each of the three emails, but what if you want to track the OVERALL open rate across the series? /p p If all you have is the rates, instead of the raw numbers, you're stuck averaging three open rates from very different groups and giving them equal weight. But if you have the raw numbers, it's easy to combine them to calculate an overall metric. /p p How's that work? Imagine that those emails were opened by 13 people, 5 people and 8 people respectively. In order to track the open rate across this messaging series, you would take the RAW numbers of email messages opened (13+5+8=26) and divide that number by the raw number of email messages delivered (100+10+90=200) for an open rate of 13% (26/200 = 13%). Not too shabby. /p p If you hadn't kept track of raw numbers, you'd be calculating a less-accurate average of the three rates: 13%, 50% and 9%, respectively. Averaging this way would give you an open rate of 24%! By giving the email you sent to only 10 people the same weight as the other two emails, you would arrive at an inflated open rate. /p p We know you don't want to make important programmatic decisions based on misleading data, so just remember: tracking your data in raw numbers is always going to be more accurate. /p p strong 3. Compare Like Messages /strong /p p Of course the email you sent to the most responsive segment of your list had better rates than the email that went to your full file! /p p On average, your fundraising emails will have different rates than your advocacy emails, and both of those emails will have different rates than your newsletter. So when you're comparing emails, make sure you're comparing like messages. You're going to get the most informative results if you compare messages with similar asks, messages with a similar emnumber/em of asks, and messages that were sent to the same audience. /p p By comparing like messages you'll be able to see if differences in your rates are caused by differences in your program or differences in the mix of types of emails you're sending or differences in which part of your email list you're emailing. /p p You can find even more great tips and information in the a href=http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study/a – and be sure to check out the study glossary, which describes how we calculated various metrics. /p p Still have questions about how to put the a href=http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study/a to use for your organization? You can reach me directly at a href=mailto:speretz@mrss.comsperetz@mrss.com/a /p p strongABOUT M+R STRATEGIC SERVICES/strong /p p M+R is dedicated to helping our clients advance their missions in order to bring aboutpositive change. We do this by helping organizations and campaigns we believe in develop smart and effective strategies, hone their messages, mobilize their members, build grassroots support, raise money, and communicate effectively with the media, the public and decision-makers, both online and offline. a href=http://www.mrss.com/www.mrss.com/a /p p strongS/strongstrongign up to receive new M+R whitepapers, reports, studies and articles via email at:/strong a href=http://www.mrss.com/whitepapers.htmlwww.mrss.com/whitepapers.html/a /p

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/charlene.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Charlene Li" title="Charlene Li" class="image image-thumbnail" width="75" height="100" /span class="caption" style="width: 73px;"strongCharlene Li/strong/span/span p Since Anna and I are in DC doing recon for a href="/ntc"11NTC/a (you're coming, right?), we're doing our best to take advantage of all the awesome that DC has to offer.  Lucky for us, our great pals Maddy and Lindy at a href="http://www.socialfish.org/"Social Fish/a organized a a href="http://www.buzz2010.org/"Buzz 2010/a breakfast with Charlene Li, who just released her latest book, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Open-Leadership-Social-Technology-Transform/dp/0470597267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1276703687amp;sr=1-1"Open Leadership/a. /p p Like us, Charlene thinks that a href="/blog/2010/06/11/leadership-manifesto-let-thousand-flowers-bloom"leadership isn't just at the top/a.  Everyone can be a leader in their organizations, and everyone can bring openness - through social media - to their work.  The tension - that funny feeling we get about opening up - she says comes from the fact that this new openness is driven by relationships.  Relationships, at least good ones, aren't about control.  /p p The fear of open, the fear of not being in control manifests itself in some interesting ways organizationally. At a pre-workshop breakfast she pointed out what she calls quot;The Oreo Effect.quot;  Often, she sees senior managers and people at the bottom of the org chart pushing for openness, meeting resistance at that middle manager level - the cream of the Oreo. If openness is flattening our organizations and shortening the distance between the lowest rung of our org chart and the top, then what happens to those folks in the middle? /p p They get licked. /p p Unless they get on board and figure out how to marry the push for social media with the goals for their departments and demonstrate real meaning for the work their staff are engaging in. Which brings us to Charlene's definition of Open Leadership: quot;span class="Apple-style-span"Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring a commitment from people to accomplish goals.quot;/span /p p span class="Apple-style-span"For those who are ready to dive into open leadership, Charlene is as practical as she was in Groundswell, sharing elements of openness to help you get started.  First, she outlines tactics for information sharing in an open way:/span /p p nbsp; /p ul lispan class="Apple-style-span"Explaining (here's why we made this choice)/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Updating (here's the latest news on this issue)/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Conversing (responding to dialogue)/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Open Mic (tell us what you think)/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Crowdsourcing (help us solve this problem)/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Platforms (setting standards and data exchange)/span/li /ul p nbsp; /p p How many of these elements do you employ at your organization? I like to think that at NTEN we implement a lot of these, but I had to think long and hard about that when Charlene asked us to then conduct an openness audit and score how open we are in all of these information sharing areas.  I won't tell you what I scored NTEN at. Instead, I'll first as YOU to score us. /p p a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RZKH66H"Complete the NTEN openness audit/a. /p p Tell us how good you think we are at being open!  I'll follow up with a post comparing your scores to the one I gave us.  AND - one lucky survey respondent will get a SIGNED copy of Charlene's new book. Oh, and you can a href="http://www.charleneli.com/resources/"get a copy of the audit/a for your own organization as well. /p p And in the meantime, let us know - are you the cookie or the cream?  And what are you doing about it? /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/jM6On4X3ko0" height="1" width="1"/

p On Friday, we published a a href="/blog/2010/06/11/leadership-manifesto-let-thousand-flowers-bloom"Leadership Manifesto/a.  We want every one of you to stand up and lead your organizations to the technology mountain top.  So, we're going to explore what it means to be a technology leader over the next year or so, bringing you lots videos, podcasts, webinars and blog posts where we can all exchange ideas.  We're starting today with a video from Barbara Buswell, Executive Director of the PEAK Parent Center. /p p I met Barbara at the 2009 NTC in San Francisco, her first NTC. She was exactly the kind of leader I love to meet - open, enthusiastic, and ready to get started. So when I had the chance to meet up with her last week in Salt Lake City, I wanted to capture her thoughts about her role as a technology leader: /p p /p p I was in Salt Lake to deliver a presentation on technology leadership to other parenting centers from the Western states.  It was a great experience, and I was lucky to hear some wonderful stories from organizations that are committed to doing their work better by using technology well.  In a single room we had social media mavens, cloud computing adopters, and some folks who can amazing things with HTML and duct tape. They even live-streamed the sessions, which meant that now I can share it with you too.  Here's the video, and my slide deck: /p p /p p div id="__ss_4413891"stronga href="http://www.slideshare.net/nten_hross/let-a-thousand-tech-flowers-bloom" title="Let A Thousand Tech Flowers Bloom"Let A Thousand Tech Flowers Bloom/a/strongdivView more a href="http://www.slideshare.net/"presentations/a from a href="http://www.slideshare.net/nten_hross"Holly Ross/a./div/div /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/OhMTZUihdWw" height="1" width="1"/

span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/revolution.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="Flickr photo: Chris.Corwin" title="Flickr photo: Chris.Corwin" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="96" height="150" /span class="caption" style="width: 94px;"strongFlickr photo: Chris.Corwin/strong/span/spanpNothing gets done without leadership. Leaders are the ones who find the peaks we need to climb amongst those clouds. They inspire us to put one foot in front of the other to get there. When we get lost, leaders help us find our way. And at all times, leaders help us enjoy the journey. /ppspan class="Apple-style-span"My favorite thing about leadership is that it can come from everywhere.  While we may think of our Executive Directors as leaders, how many of us think of the Help Desk staff in the same way?  But the truth is that leaders lead from wherever they are, even when it's not the corner office. /span/ppRight now, in our sector, we need technology leaders.  We are standing right on top of a critical inflection point, and we owe it to our causes to make sure that we navigate the change as best as we possibly can. So I am calling on all of you to stand up and lead.  We will follow you./ppYou know where we are going. When you started this work, technology was all servers, Cat5 and HTML.  Technology was all about storing stuff and moving it around more efficiently.  It was monumental, a revolution in its own right.  But in retrospect, it was just the opening salvo in a much larger paradigm shift. Once we could store and share every aspect of our lives efficiently, the stage was set for the real revolution./ppAnd that's where we're headed now, through a time in which the need for our work has never been greater. We're headed to a place where:/pul lispan class="Apple-style-span"Technology is essential to the success of every aspect of our work,/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Technology is in the hands of nearly every one of our clients, volunteers, and stakeholdersspan class="Apple-style-span",/span/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"Your staff and clients are innovating uses of technology in the field for you,/span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"It is easier than every to share, collaborate, and aggregate. /span/li/ulpspan class="Apple-style-span"You feel the shift, right? Everyone at every nonprofit, from the smallest to the largest, is much more aware of technology than they ever have been.  And while they may be wary, there is a sense that something important is about to happen./span/ppBecause it is, and you are going to lead us there.  Together, the NTEN community is going to make those proverbial thousand flowers bloom.  Here's what we need to do:/pol lispan class="Apple-style-span"strongLet go of commodity technology.  /strongWe'll always need servers and email.  But like the paper clip, servers and email have only the most tangential relationship with your mission. As tech leaders, we are going to work tirelessly to get those tech commodities off of our plates an into the hands of the cloud, or a fantastic tech shop.  Instead, we're going to spend our time in program planning meetings and strategy talks, figuring out how to leverage technology to make the work our organizations are doing become that much more effective. /span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"strongInvest in technology instead of spending. /strongTechnology will no longer be an office supply expense! If technology is going to help us meet our missions, we're going to have to measure its impact, just like we measure our financial investments. We're going to research our investments, conduct small experiments, and we're going to measure the heck out of things. That way, we'll learn from our successes and our mistakes and continue to improve the use of technology in our organizations.  Nothing gets people on a bandwagon like success, and nothing contributes more to success than measurement.  /span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"strongRecognize your fellow leaders. /strongThe old style of IT management was a command-and-control model.  It was about quot;expertsquot; making decisions for the end users and mandating those decisions. These days, there are more experts than you think. innovation and expertise in technology can come from any staffer in any role, and technology leaders need to recognize and embrace that.  We need to run IT shops that protect our assets while encouraging this innovation. When everyone's a part of process, the revolution happens much more quickly./span/li lispan class="Apple-style-span"strongOpen by default. /strongFeeding people does not end hunger. Solving the issues that we are working on requires that we work across our sector to address these complex problems in equally complex ways. The technology part of collaboration is pretty amazing at this point. Now the only thing standing in our way is our own fear of openness. Tech leaders need to lead this culture shift in their organizations.  We need to ask quot;Why not?quot; instead of quot;Why?quot; /span/li/olpspan class="Apple-style-span"We're asking a lot of you. You're busy enough already. But the bottom line is this: we owe it to our mission, to the people and causes we fight for every day, to be as effective as we can.  Anything less is not good enough.  /span/ppJust know that you're not alone.  We're going to spend a lot of time talking about leadership in the next year. In addition to videos and podcasts and guest posts from all sorts of leaders in the sector, we're also excited to launch a Technology Leadership Academy this fall with the support of Microsoft. We hope that we'll be able to inspire and inform you, but also have a little fun. We're going to see this revolution through to the end, but like Emma Goldman, we'll take some time to dance. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/XTkuM-qKeQY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="/sites/nten/files/images/may_member_update_header_peas.jpg" border="0" width="200" align="right" / em(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing/ememtheir 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/ppstrongNancy Schwartz/strong asked our community and other nonprofit communities a few weeks ago about their favorite nonprofit email newsletters. She was nice enough to share back a href="http://www.slideshare.net/GettingAttention/breakthrough-nonprofit-enewsletters"this great slide deck/a about email newsletter best practices and strategies. Thank you!/ppCongrats to strongKivi Leroux Miller/strong on her book launch and her amazing Amazon rankings! And, true to form, she a href="http://www.writingfornonprofits.com/freelance/2010/06/03/lessons-from-my-book-launch-getting-to-1-on-amazon/"wrote up her marketing experiences and strategies here for us all to learn from/a. Seriously, you should read her a href="http://www.writingfornonprofits.com/freelance/2010/06/03/lessons-from-my-book-launch-getting-to-1-on-amazon/"quot;case studyquot;/a on driving buzz using blogging, Twitter, and Facebook -- and email. /ppI stumbled across a href="http://talismantol.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/dashboard/"this post/a this week, and I'm glad I did: a href="http://talismantol.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/dashboard/"The Nonprofit Dashboard/a, where strongBarbara Talisman/strong gives great advice about building and using a dashboard effectively to track goals and outcomes at your organization. She also provides a link to a sample dashboard one nonprofit is using. Thanks, Barbara! (And, if you're working on this issue at your organization, you should definitely check out our a href="/events/webinar/2010/07/29/online-workshop-taming-data-monster"Taming the Data Monster/a workshop coming in July)./ppstrongWild Apricot/strong blogged about the a href="http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2010/06/02/linkedin-sharing-new-tool-non-profit-outreach.aspx?utm_source=feedburneramp;utm_medium=emailamp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WildApricot+%28Wild+Apricot+blog+on+non-profit+technology%29"updated sharing tool on LinkedIn/a and suggests ways nonprofits and their supporters can use it to help spread the word about their news and work. Thanks for updating us! And, hat tip to strongNorman Reiss/strong for a href="http://twitter.com/nonprofitbridge/statuses/15424332286"the heads-up/a. /ppWe are so proud of strongAllyson Kapin/strong and strongEllen Miller/strong being featured as two of quot;a href="http://sweetsandtweets6.eventbrite.com/"DC's Most Influential Women in Tech/aquot; at the upcoming a href="http://sweetsandtweets6.eventbrite.com/"Sweets and Tweets event/a. Congrats!  /ppUpcoming strong501 Tech Club/strong events:/pul lia href="http://www.techfoundation.org/"501 Tech Boston:/a Cambridge, June 15/li lia href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112729715438743"501 Tech Austin: HelpAttack!/a (New Social Media Tool with Nonprofit Applications), Austin, June 21/li lia href="http://nctech4good.org/"NCTech4Good:/a Chapel Hill, NC, June 25 (full-day conference with other partners!)/li lia href="http://501technycjune10.eventbrite.com/"501 Tech NYC: Who's Your Mayor?/a (Foursquare + Nonprofits), NYC, June 30/li/ulSee more community events and add your on our a href="http://groups.nten.org/c/month.php"community calendar/a.img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/NQlqUfae_IM" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/privacy_social_media.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="469" height="146" //span /p p Yesterday, on the NTEN channel, we started a discussion on the future of privacy for nonprofits with a href="http://stoweboyd.com"Stowe Boyd/a, known for his speaking and writing on the social revolution on the web. Stowe painted the backdrop of the formation of what he refers to as quot;publicyquot; -- the idea that the social web is inherently open with little privacy for users. /p p The question that Stowe suggested nonprofits ask of the third-party services is, quot;What is their social contract and how stable is it?quot; emHello,/em emFacebook?? /em /p p Listen to Stowe's presentation on a href="/events/webinar/2010/06/01/evolution-privacy-and-social-web"Publicy and the Erosion of Privacy/a: /p p /p p After Stowe sets your mind reeling and asking what this new landscape means to your nonprofit, you'll want to join NTEN for some of the real, actionable information you'll need to address the changing nature of privacy online instrong our 3-part /stronga href="/events/webinar/2010/06/24/webinar-series-evolution-privacy-and-social-web"strongWebinar Series: The Evolution of Privacy and the Social Web/strong/a.  /p p You can register for the full series or individual sessions featuring the experiences of the a href="http://www.aclunc.org/"ACLU of Northern California/a, a href="http://www.blackbaud.com"Blackbaud/a, and a href="http://www.identitywoman.net/"Identity Woman/a. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/oN53QOIQpZ4" height="1" width="1"/

p Yesterday, some of our staff members received an email with the following message: /p p span class="inline inline-center"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/email image.JPG" alt="" title="" class="image image-preview" width="450" height="90" //span /p p We weren't alone. What followed were screams of outrage from across the Internet: quot;I can't believe they did this!quot;, quot;UNSUBSCRIBE!quot;, quot;What?!quot;  /p p Here at NTEN, we strongly believe in keeping private information private. We have a strict opt-in policy. We refuse to give member contact information to NTC Sponsors amp; Exhibitors and tend to leave decisions like quot;Do you want to be in our database?quot; up to the quot;youquot; involved. /p p To hear that other nonprofit organizations aren't doing the same and even go so far as to scour their in-boxes in an effort to beef up their database came as a surprise. /p p Has your org or an org you've worked for ever done this?  Do you agree that email addresses are something that should be handled with more care? Or, are we all just over-caffeinated and overreacting? /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/2nUMKCpg6cQ" height="1" width="1"/

pBack on May 28, a href="http://www.bethkanter.org/"Beth Kanter/a asked a question on her a href="http://www.facebook.com/beth.kanter"Facebook page/a:/ppspan class="inline inline-center"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/kanter)status.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="400" height="54" //span/ppHere at NTEN, we've been thinking about that a lot, too. First, we had a a href="http://www.facebook.com/beth.kanter#!/group.php?gid=2307354780amp;ref=ts"Facebook Group/a. Last year, we switched to the a href="http://www.facebook.com/nten.org"Facebook Page/a. After nearly three years of monkeying around in Facebook in a not so very organized way -- does that sound familiar? -- we're finally able to say we've gotten close to a secret sauce... at least for our folks.  /ppAlthough we're still slowly adding Fans/friends/likes, we're finally getting a lot more interaction on the page. People are posting more on their own, and they're reacting to what we post, sharing their two cents. That's what's important to us:community interaction.  /ppSo what's in our sauce? If I had to express it as recipe, I would probably go with: /pul li2 parts photos or videos (your call)/li li2 parts tangential but fun (i.e., Are you going to drop your iPhone for the Incredible?) /li li1 part serious discussion/event promotion/li/ulpMix vigorously -- and frequently. The more you make this recipe, the better it gets! Remember to season it liberally with responsiveness. /ppAnd yet.../ppOne of the main stats we track to articulate the value of our social media presence is site traffic. I was poking around purposefully examining our Google Analytics, and took a look at our referring sites. Here's what I found:/ppspan class="inline inline-center"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/GA_sites.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="400" height="96" //span /ppIn a single month's time -- and our most successful month with Facebook so far -- Facebook drove less than half the traffic Twitter does. Half! Interesting, no? So what good are all those Facebook folks? (Not that they aren't good. I still love them!)/ppRight now, I'm going with this theory: Facebook isn't driving as much traffic, but it does have one big intangible that Twitter doesn't: conversation. People on our Facebook Page like to talk to each other, and that builds the community that we consider essential to the success of our mission, even if we can't easily put a concrete number next to it.  /ppThere are some interesting and different takes out there on measurement, including:/pul lia href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/facebook-page-evaluator/"Social Page Evaluator/a /li lia href="http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/Whats-the-Value-of-a-Facebook/22568/?sid=amp;utm_source=amp;utm_medium=en"What's the Value of a Facebook Fan? /a/li lia href="http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/192404"What's Your Nonprofit's Social Media Measurement Strategy?/a /li/ulpWhat do you think?  How are you valuing your Facebook community? /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/N8uk-VVnJ48" height="1" width="1"/

pspan class="inline inline-right"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/beachboy.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="Flickr photo by Giorgio Montersino" title="Flickr photo by Giorgio Montersino" class="image image-img_assist_custom" width="200" height="150" /span class="caption" style="width: 198px;"strongFlickr photo by Giorgio Montersino/strong/span/spanYou probably already know many of the advantages of working virtually: no commute (saving money, time, and the environment), fewer office space requirements, improved morale, or maybe even an office on the beach./ppThe problem with working as part of a virtual team is the quot;teamquot; part: how do you work strategically with others when you can't talk to them face-to-face? We've long been able to work outside the office individually, but we're entering a new paradigm where the very concept of the office is being rewritten. /ppWe'd like to help put you at the forefront of that change with our 4-part webinar series, quot;stronga href="/events/webinar/2010/06/04/virtual-team-leader-training-manager-remote-teams"Virtual Team Leader: Training for Managers of Remote Teams/a/strongquot;. /ppstronga href="/events/webinar/2010/06/04/virtual-team-leader-training-manager-remote-teams"gt; Register now to become a Virtual Team Leader!/a/strong/ppThis training will be led by Tom Heck, the President amp; Founder of the International Association of Teamwork Facilitators (IATF) and creator of the Virtual Team Leader training program. /ppThe curriculum of the Virtual Team Leader course will, of course, be delivered virtually, following this schedule:br /br /June 4: The 7 Qualities of Highly Successful Virtual Team Leadersbr /June 11: How To Structure Your Virtual Team Meetings For Successbr /June 18: Telephone Conference Leadership Skillsbr /June 25: How To Establish, Strengthen, and Evolve Your Virtual Teambr /br /Tom is offering the course for a special rate to the NTEN community for $100 (that's a 50% discount!) and we hope you stronga href="/events/webinar/2010/06/04/virtual-team-leader-training-manager-remote-teams"takeadvantage/a/strong! br //pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/MwIpRztT93o" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/privacy_social_media.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="469" height="146" //span /p p Well, at least we can admit when we're wrong.   /p p We were scheduled to hold an online privacy workshop on Thursday.  You all are talking about privacy like crazy, and it's a topic that's incredibly important to the work we do as nonprofits.  Trouble is, it doesn't look like you want to spend four straight hours talking about it.  So we're going to make things a little easier, and add some bonus love. Here's the deal: /p ul liYou can a href="/events/webinar/2010/06/01/evolution-privacy-and-social-web"register now for a one hour presentation and Qamp;A session/a with a href="http://www.stoweboyd.com/"Stowe Boyd/a on the future of privacy.  strongThis event is FREE for NTEN members/strong and will be held on Thursday, June 3 at 11:00 am Pacific./li liThen, you can register for a 3-webinar series that will dive deeper into the important privacy topics, featuring:/li /ul p strongUS, Our Organizations, and the Evolving Web / /strongstrongPresented by: Kaliya Hamlin/strong /p p Identity has never been easy to define for an individual or an organization. With the evolving social web, distinguishing who you are becomes a challenge. Dealing with the implications for an organization responsible for managing data of their constituents' identities creates an even greater challenge. In this session, we'll explore what identity means to your constituents, how to maintain trust of sharing private data, and identity tools that organizations can leverage to further collaboration. /p p strongWhat's at Stake: How to Identify Privacy Risk / /strongstrongPresented by: Chris Conley, ACLU of Northern Californiabr / /strong /p p Social media services can be a boon for non-profits, allowing organizations and members to learn, connect, share, and act. But these services also collect vast amounts of information when we use them, and outdated privacy law means that this information may not have the protection it deserves. We’ll learn a bit about online privacy law, discuss how non-profits are affected by the lack of legal and practical protection for private information in the social media space, and consider possible approaches to addressing this threat. /p p strongProtecting Your Clients amp; Constituents / /strongstrongPresented by: Jake Marcinko, Blackbaud/strong /p p Your donor and supporter information is sensitive data.  Is it treated as such in your nonprofit?  A way to address data security and privacy concerns is the “CAUSE” methodology and in this session, you'll learn how Collection, Access, Use, Storage and Eradication (CAUSE) can be used to manage sensitive donor information.  The use of social media changes an organization's ability to control information, and we'll discuss how to adapt while ensuring the security of your constituents. br / As soon as we are able to confirm dates for the series, we'll let you know, and you can register.  /p p So come a href="/events/webinar/2010/06/01/evolution-privacy-and-social-web"join us for a great discussion of Privacy/a, while we still have some left!  /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/YsTc00X829U" height="1" width="1"/

p span class="inline inline-none"img src="http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/privacy_social_media.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-_original" width="469" height="146" //span  /p p There's a discussion we need to have. As we hurtle toward the social web, the notion of quot;publicquot; and quot;privatequot; are being redefined, and it's not sitting well with everyone. Stowe Boyd, keynote speaker at our upcoming event, quot;a href="/events/webinar/2010/06/03/evolution-privacy-and-social-web"The Evolution of Privacy and the Social Web/aquot;, puts it this way: /p blockquote p quot;Here, at the start of 2010, a new decade, we should anticipate significant blowback from the transition to an online world based on a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicy"publicy/a. It is not 'the death of privacy' per se... It is not that notions of privacy will disappear. What is happening is the superimposition of publicy on top of, and partly obscuring, privacy.quot; /p /blockquote p Our stakeholders entrust us with their information. It may be the most valuable thing they give us. But, now that many of us have begun to barter privacy for convenience online, we need to talk about how we can best support and protect our clients, volunteers, donors, and ourselves. /p p strongYou should register for this important discussion a href="/events/webinar/2010/06/03/evolution-privacy-and-social-web"here/a./strong /p p The aim of this event is to give you the real, actionable information you need to address the changing nature of privacy online. We'll open the workshop with a plenary by Stowe Boyd on quot;Publicy and the Erosion of Privacyquot; before diving in to your choice of 3 breakout sessions: /p p strongBreakout Sessions:/strong /p ul liUS, Our Organizations, and the Evolving Web (Presented by a href="http://www.identitywoman.net/about-kaliya/bio"Kaliya Hamlin/a)/li liWhat's at Stake: How to Identify Privacy Risk (Presented by the ACLU)/li liProtecting Your Clients amp; Constituentsstrong /strong(Presented by Jake Marcinko, Blackbaud)/li /ul p You'll receive recordings of every session after the event, so you can review them all at your convenience. /p p strongWhen:/strong Thursday, June 3rd, 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Pacific / 1:00 - 3:30 pm Eastern /p p strongCost:/strong $50 for NTEN Members, $100 for non-members /p p I hope you'll be able to join us. /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/Ifh1iPlNEpw" height="1" width="1"/

pA monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources./p ol liSo, yeah, a href="/blog/2010/05/26/facebook-privacy-changes-are-you-getting-what-you-asked"Facebook was in the news a little/a. Do you think it's part of their outreach strategy to a href="http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/"ignite privacy brouhahas/a every now and again? It's working. Here are some links: ul liIf you're concerned how many people might find that emone/em picture through Google -- you know the one we're talking about -- you need a href="http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook"this handy tool from ReclaimPrivacy.org/a to help you lock down your settings./li liHere's a href="http://media-tech.blogspot.com/2010/05/social-plug-ins-and-like-button-insane.html"a very geeky overview of how the new quot;Likequot; button can actually track you/a on sites other than Facebook. (We have to say: hats off to the FB engineers for being brilliant and potentially evil at the same time.)/li liBut if that sort of thing doesn't worry you, you can a href="http://www.wisnet.com/noteworthy/add-a-facebook-like-button-and-box-to-your-website/0/0/435/"add a quot;Likequot; button to your own site/a pretty easily. We won't judge./li /ul /li liWe spend a lot of time talking about the importance of data. At work. But what happens when you a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?hp"try to apply the same principals to your life/a? Clearly, there are geeks, and then there are geeks./li liBut you don't have to be a geek to appreciate a href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/11/kittens-autotune/"kittens in Auto-Tune/a. We hear Kanye's cat actually sounds like this (and that it's the best cat ever)./li liThanks to Dahna for the heads up: a href="http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009-11-18/pet-otters-pose-imminent-danger-of-being-hugged-to-death/"baby otters may be even cuter than kittens/a./li liArizona's SB 1070 inspired some impassioned responses -- and no small amount of sarcasm. We do so like a href="/blog/2010/05/06/if-you-build-it-will-they-laugh"public service campaigns with a sense of humor/a./li liRemember a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities"Geocities/a? If you miss design so bad it was... well, bad, you can a href="http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/"make your own site look like a Geocities site with just one click/a. We're pretty sure it's reversible./li liIf you're near NYC, you should check out Personal Democracy Forum's quot;a href="http://personaldemocracy.com/mobilize-your-cause-bootcamp"Mobilize Your Cause/aquot; bootcamp./li liNetwork neutrality. Let's do what we can to a href="/blog/2010/05/24/and-now-save-internet-update"Save the Internet/a. Our children will thank us. Maybe not when they're teenagers, but eventually./li lia href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/creative-crowdsourcing/"Crowdsourcing web site usability/a we can understand. a href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/creative-crowdsourcing/"But fashion design/a? We suppose it can't be worse than a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/popwrap/item_icrvS9CfxfamFRAObLF2yL"what designers come up with all by themselves/a./li lia href="http://www.bethkanter.org/"Beth Kanter's new blog design/a. We're just sayin'./li liAnd, to bring things full circle (a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-43098-LOST-Examiner~y2010m5d24-LOST-flash-recap-The-End-brings-the-circle-to-a-close"à la emLost/em/a), a new report from Pew Research finds that conventional wisdom is wrong: a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pew_71_of_young_adults_change_online_privacy_settings.php"young adults are actually more likely to be concerned about and protect their online privacy/a./li /olimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/kBq3wgn93No" height="1" width="1"/