To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Salesforce Acquires Buddy Media for $689 Million – “Salesforce has entered an agreement to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for approximately $689 million, the company has announced. The price is lower than the recently reported $800 million figure, but still a formidable investment from the enterprise software giant, which is on a seemingly never-ending acquisition spree. Salesforce had acquired collaboration tool company Stypi in May 2012, as well as social media monitoring platform Radian6 in March 2011.”
• 4 Results from Crowdsource Experiment at #12NTC: Nerd, Geek and Gear Herding « Sage Words – “At the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#12NTC) in San Francisco, California, we led a session called Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding 2.0. Building on last year’s session, we were pleased that this year we had the opportunity to introduce the “crowdsourcing” experiment to collectively solve our nonprofit technology problems.”
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings | Official Google Blog – “Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons. But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user. So today I’m really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph, which will help you discover new information quickly and easily. Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words. But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
• The Identity Spectrum – Identity Woman – I love this spectrum map of the various kinds of online identity! Such a great resource for understanding and planning for community engagement. “The Identity Spectrum gives a understanding of the different kinds of identity that are possible in digital systems. They are not exclusive – you can mix and match. I will define the terms below and discuss mixing and matching below.”
• Current.org | Evaluating social media efforts, May 2012 – “Now that most public media stations have become active on social networks — with some combination of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs and YouTube channels — staff members at many stations are struggling with the question: Are we getting the most bang for our social-media buck? After all, building and maintaining a meaningful social media presence requires a significant investment of time — and it’s not always easy to measure the return on that investment. What does social media success look like, anyway?”
• New Study: Donations Decline for Nonprofits – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – “Of the different trend-spotting and benchmarking resources, few are as important and authoritative as the “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance” published quarterly by Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud. Yesterday in Washington, DC, Target’s senior fundraising analyst Paige Grainger gave a terrific “state of the nonprofit industry” talk, which summarized key findings from Target’s latest, 2011 Index. The full report is here.  Paige spoke at a luncheon that Care2 sponsored of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). Target’s data this year was drawn from 80 different nonprofit organizations, 38 million donors, 79 million gifts and $2.5 billion worth of donations revenue (although it excluded any donations worth $10,000 or more). Channels covered included online, direct mail, telemarketing and canvassing.”

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The first week of April was like an annual family reunion for the nonprofit technology community as the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) converged on San Francisco. The annual conference from NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network brought together 1,800 nonprofit professionals, technologists, and service providers for three days of sessions, panels, and workshops covering the gamut of topics related to technology and social impact. With more than 150 sessions and twice as many speakers, plus all of the additional social events, there were countless conversations and ideas buzzing through the airwaves and Twittersphere. Three topics rose to the top with the most interest.

Email isn’t dying, it’s evolving!

A blog post with the proclamation, “Email is dead!” comes around every year or so, reigniting some debate and sparking long comment threads on blogs (and, always ironically, email list servs). But at this year’s NTC, the conversations about email were much less about its impending departure and more about exploring its evolution. Email is still a major component of organizational communication and a channel used by nonprofit supporters and donors; it is critical that it grows and develops to match the changing ways we use it and share messages.

Segmentation (dividing up your list to target specific groups of people with different messages) and tracking aren’t new, but the tools are becoming more sophisticated—and so are we. Lara Franklin of TechSoup Global and Upwell’s Rachel Weidinger started with a presentation about the basics—how organizations can begin segmenting and using email marketing clients to track and manage messages and campaigns. The session by Jeff Shuck of Event 360 took the conversation to the next level, honing in on how to successfully use member data in your communications. Cameron Lefevre of M+R Strategic Services and Lindsey Twombly of the Human Rights Campaign discussed how to optimize email messages for mobile phones in their session, since more and more, we are using email while we’re in line for groceries and otherwise away from our desks.

Drawing is the new Elevator Pitch

Take a minute and go look at your organization’s website, printed materials, and other promotional items that you use to tell people—as quickly and effectively as possible—just what it is that your organization does. Do you see a lot of text? If so, you aren’t alone. At this year’s NTC, the role of “the picture” emerged as a force to reckon with. Dan Roam suggested in his keynote that creating pictures and images that effectively explain our work could be important to gaining more funding. He asked attendees to draw their ideas in lieu of taking traditional notes in later sessions, and we saw people move from thinking in text to thinking in graphics in just 48 hours.

Attendees were also talking about infographics this year. Beth Kanter, a thought leader on technology for nonprofits, presented a great session on data visualization and shared some low-cost tools for organizations to use. The conference also had graphic faciliators, who captured conversations and takeaways visually. (You can see them on the Rally blog.)

Socializing isn’t just for Facebook

I had a few conversations with NTC regulars who remarked that the social media frenzy seemed to have finally calmed. They were happy that it didn’t center stage at the conference and that sessions covered other tools and strategies more equally. But there actually wasn’t less conversation or excitement about social media; it has just been around long enough now that gets folded into other conversations, such as social fundraising.

Marketing experts Katya Andresen, Mark Rovner, and Alia McKee, came at the topic of social fundraising with a scientific lens during their session, exploring human behavior and options that nonprofits have for effectively communicating and fundraising. Blackbaud’s Steve MacLaughlin shared data and trends in online fundraising, as well as how to integrate both social media and mobile into fundraising efforts. Similarly, Common Knowledge’s Jeff Patrick tackled highlights from recent research for online fundraising and social network use by nonprofits. Coming straight at the topic, Cheryl Black of Convio and Margaux Mennesson of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance talked about specific tools and strategies for social fundraising.

In addition, two reports were released during the conference: the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report and the 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study. You can download them now for free.

Fellow attendees: What other popular topics or interesting conversations would you add to the list? For those who didn’t attend, what are some of the nonprofit technology topics, tools, or case studies on your mind lately?

Location: San Francisco, CA

Topic: Designing Online Engagement to Collaborate with Your Community

Description: You can design online engagement to unleash your evangelists. In this workshop, we’ll focus on all aspects of designing high-value, engaging, and participatory content that creates a partnership with your fans. A true evangelist is moved to create, is a seamless co-creator with your organization, and motivated spreader of content. Successful organizations intentionally design and construct multiple online channels that enable access for all fans and develop paths for relationship reciprocity and trust, fostering true evangelists.

In this session, we will discuss how co-creation unleashes online evangelists and strengthens cause centric communities, and help you to do that as well. Specifically, we will reveal the latest research about designing online engagement, highlight the connection between the theory of relationship ties and online evangelism, and offer examples of organizations with successful co-creation strategies. Towards the end of this workshop, we’ll work together to design a co-creation strategy to engage and motivate your online community and evangelists.

Related Links:

• 2012 NTC
• Session information
• Presentation slides

With so many incredible videos submitted to this year’s contest it was no easy task, but judges in the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards have narrowed down the field of entries to 16 finalists. Now, the YouTube community has the opportunity to get involved and cast their vote for the best nonprofit videos of the past year.

The 16 finalist videos can be watched on the Contest homepage. Participation is easy: just select your favorite video or videos in each category. You can vote once per day. Don’t forget to tell your friends and social media buddies to do the same.

>> Vote on the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards!

Winners will be announced on April 5, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco. It’s a great finale to the whole awards program and we anticipate a really exciting finish. Contest Sponsor Cisco, will be awarding $3,500 in prizes and up to $3,500 in products to the winner of each category, and the Case Foundation is awarding one $2,500 grants to the four organizations with the most fearless videos submitted to this year’s contest. In addition, the winners of each category will receive free registration to next year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference. Oh, and each winning organization will have their video featured on the YouTube homepage on April 5th!

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that understand this and are going the extra mile to create media that moves important causes forward.

The excitement is moving to a finish! Check out the finalists and lend your vote to the video that moves you.

Are you a nonprofit? Did your organization create impactful videos in 2011? Do you want your organization to be recognized for making great videos and maybe win some incredible prizes? Perfect.

The 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Contest is taking submissions starting February 1st. The contest is presented by YouTube and See3 Communications and generously sponsored by Cisco and us, NTEN. We’re seeking out and celebrating the best videos that nonprofit organizations have created to advance their missions using this powerful medium to create meaningful change for the better.

So what do the winning nonprofits get for participating?

The four best videos will each receive:

• $3,500 in prize donations
• An additional gift of up $3,500 (US) worth of Cisco products to help each winning org harness the power of human and technology networks to multiply their impact on the people and communities they serve.
• Free registration to the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference, provided by NTEN.

This year’s contest features a special category for all orgs, regardless of size: “Best Video Storytelling” will celebrate videos that employ narrative and tell the real, human stories of people, organizations, and issues.

The winning videos will be announced at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference and featured on YouTube’s homepage on Thursday, April 5th.

You read that right: the winning videos will be featured on the YouTube homepage.

At the end of last year’s contest, the winning videos received almost 1 million new views after being featured there for just one day.

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message, and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires, and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that see the importance of this. This contest is meant to show nonprofits of all sizes they can win by making video part of their communications strategy.

Organizations are more video savvy than ever. Last year’s contest had nearly 1,400 entries from 821 organizations in 4 countries. There were 24,000 votes cast by the public and a surge of views on YouTube for the entrants. That’s encouraging, but 2012 is a new year and the contest organizers want to make sure as many amazing nonprofits enter as possible.

Here are some details to get you started:

• Submissions for Best Small, Medium, and Large nonprofit organization as well as Best Video Storytelling must be videos made between January 1st 2011 and February 29th 2012 . Each nonprofit can submit as many videos as they would like, but the contest encourages only the best work from each organization.
• Entries cannot exceed 10 minutes in length and are limited to nonprofits from the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. See contest rules here.
• All nonprofits are welcome to enter their video. There are no specific types of missions we are looking for. The contest is about recognizing nonprofit organizations for outstanding use of video to create meaningful positive change.
• You can submit your videos from February 1st until February 29th. Tell your friends at other orgs to submit as well!
• Starting March 14th, voting is open to the public, so be sure to share the word (Email, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, etc.).
• Important: Your organization MUST be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program. If you’re not already,make sure that’s the next thing you do after you read this post (it’s quick, easy and free to eligible orgs). If you’re picked as a semifinalist in the contest, YouTube will make sure your organization’s application for membership is approved in time to be eligible for public voting.

Start thinking about which creative, compelling, and interesting video your nonprofit wants to submit, then plan to rally your supporters to vote in March. Good luck!

This message is cross-posted from the NTEN blog.