More posts coming soon. I am going to write about the new Facebook app that allows you to raise money for your favorite causes. Looks like Facebook is bringing out some cool tools in the near future.

Just a little self-promotion. NTEN just released the top ten speaker ratings at the recent Nonprofit Technology Conference. Guess who made the top ten? You’ll have to click here to find out.

tim,
I attended some of the same sessions you did - heard you on 2 panels. If you were to give advice to a web 1.0 np about advancing into the 2.0 world, what would you pick as the starting point? blogs, videos, rss, tags … Or should they just start on their e-Newsletters and use social networking to “create their community.” Am excited about the tools but don’t know where to start.

I actually don’t think there is a right answer to this question. However, if it were my decision I would start a MySpace page first. This is probably the one that takes the least amount of time to set up and maintain. To have a successful page, make sure you have strong action alerts. MySpace users seem more compelled to action than anything else, and this is a great way to get people to forward your alerts (in the form of a MySpace bulletin), and get them to join your friends list. Your MySpace page can also serve as the main part of your social networking strategy as it can host your blog, pictures, videos and action alerts in one place. Some groups have found MySpace users will join your email list, and some will even donate.

This is a simple first step to test the waters and see how things work. You’ll find you become more brave with Web 2.0 after trying one or two things.

Of course the other thing you could do is hire me:)

Day 1

The first session I attended was one on eNewsletters. This is always a tough topic, but one that is vitally important to all nonprofits. It was interesting to hear the panelists all say the same thing. Make the newsletter fun an interesting to read. This is always tough for nonprofits, as we all want to make every supporter know everything about what we do. While it might be against our nature to make things fun, it will go a long way in increasing the readership of eNewsletters. They also stressed the need for dynamic content. Overall the session was pretty interesting and told me that most nonprofits have a ways to go before we see compelling eNewsletters. For some good examples, check out the link here.

Up next was a panel I participating in on how nonprofits are using YouTube to broaden their audiences. My favorite (other than the Oxfam one) was one done by Amnesty International. If anyone says you can’t make an amusing and engaging video about a serious situation, this video proves that wrong.

Day 2

On Friday morning I attended a fundraising session, which showed that email is still the best way to raise money (something I highly agree with). The session showed that creating different and unique appeals can help raise money. It also showed that using segments of your list is a much more effective way to raise money than to blast your entire list. While I didn’t learn much new in this session, it helped to solidy a lot of what I already thought, which is useful in itself.

Finally in the afternoon I added a session on social networks and how they can help nonprofits. They did something in this session I have never seen at a conference before: they brought beer. Since it was 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, this seemed to make sense and brought a laugh out of the attendees. Again, nothing earth shattering here except if you’re not on social networks, you are missing out as an organization.

Overall I really enjoyed the conference. If I had one negative to say, it is that there were too many consultants speaking and not enough people with real-world examples of how they had used certain tools to further their message. That being said, I hope to be at next years NTC in New Orleans!

Still waiting on Barack Obama’s online fundraising numbers. I expect to be impressed.

Welcome to my new website dedicated to online communications. It’s going to take me a few days to get up and running, but I will be posting daily updates on issues ranging from how the Presidential candidates are using the Internet to gain supporters and money, to how bad my commute was on the T (let’s hope those are few and far between). I’ll also talk about some great examples of organizations using the internet/online communications to further their cause. I will also be providing reports from the Nonprofit Technology Conference in April and the Convio Users Conference in October. Hopefully you will find this a useful resource.

Thanks for reading and wish me luck!