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).

• Semphonic Web Analytics Consulting: The X Change Non-Profit Analytics Challenge – "The Non-Profit Analytics Challenge is a rare opportunity for the brightest analysts in the digital measurement field to collaborate & assist non-profit organizations to optimize their websites. The Analytics Challenge is a ½ day event at X Change conference on September 13th. Semphonic President and Conference Founder Gary Angel says " What a gift to have the best minds in the industry to work together and the big bonus is helping 2 chosen non-profit organizations."" Apply today!
• Twive and Receive Reveals the Top 20 Most Generous Cities & Who Would Win In A Fight Between the Hulk and a Kitten | Razoo Media Room – "Julie Nations, the Executive Director of The Ellie Fund said “It’s been the best communications outreach program we’ve ever done. Like every nonprofit, we wanted that prize money, but this was a bigger opportunity. It got us using social media in a way we hadn’t before, and our supporters loved it. This was a real chance to harness social media across all platforms. We reached out to people we’ve never met and got them onboard. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can give.’ I say everybody can be great because everybody can Twive!”"
• What Are We Accomplishing and How Do We Know? | NTEN – Here's a great run-down from Amy Luckey of the process to use in exploring and evaluating your organization's impact. And she uses NTEN as an example so you can see all the work we've been doing to figure this out for our strategic plan, too: "What does your organization do?" That is a question most nonprofit folks can answer pretty easily. We have our elevator pitches ready to go. "What is your organization accomplishing?" Now that's a different question, one that's not as simple to answer for most of us. It's also one that is increasingly being asked by potential donors big and small.
• 7 Social Media experiments we tried with the 99% Power Coalition | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Joe Solomon does a great job sharing the tools, tactics, and mini-campaigns used in the recent 99% Power Campaign. I don't necessarily agree with all the tactics, but I SO appreciate him sharing their work! What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
• 75% of Young Adults Gave to Charity Last Year, Study Finds – News – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The new Millennial Donor Survey is out! "Charities rarely make deliberate efforts to solicit young adults because they think people in their 20s and early 30s are unlikely to give. But a new survey of more than 6,500 people ages 20 to 35 shows they are inclined to give—and are more than willing to ask their friends and relatives to do the same—when they feel passionately about a cause. About 75 percent of young people who provided data for the 2012 Millennial Impact Report said they gave money to a nonprofit in 2011, while 70 percent said they have helped solicit donations by encouraging colleagues and others to support a cause."
• Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator | Call2Action – Great case study about Feeding America's recent multi-channel campaign: "Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action. Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities."

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).

• Unfriended: Six Million Americans Fled Facebook Last Month – Culture – GOOD – "I told you last month why I thought everyone should get off Facebook, and it turns out people listened. Though the social networking behemoth continues creeping toward 700 million global users, six million Americans quit the site in the month of May. That's the first time Facebook has lost U.S. users in over a year. The site also posted losses in Canada, the U.K., Norway, and Russia, while most of its gains came in countries in the developing world, including Mexico and India."
• 2011 donorCentrics Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report – "Five years into the research, it is clear that direct mail giving is still the overwhelming majority of fundraising revenue, and organizations must find ways to optimize multichannel giving versus hyper-focusing on internet giving alone. Nonprofits must closely consider how fundraising channels work in relation to one another versus as competing initiatives."
• Official Google Blog: Bringing tech knowledge to nonprofits through the HandsOn Tech Corps – "Community service has always been important to us. When thinking of ways we can give back, we often focus on where our strengths lie—namely, in technical knowledge. More and more frequently, Googlers who volunteer note that many incredible nonprofits around the U.S. lack the tech knowledge or resources that could immensely help their operations and their cause."
• 5 Web Reports Every Nonprofit Should Know – Google Analytics | NetWitsThinkTank.com – "Those who follow me on Twitter, or for whom I’ve helped implement NetCommunity websites, won’t be surprised to find me write about Google Analytics. Probably no better an indication of my love for the knowledge waiting to be unmasked within this tool, is the (fun?) fact that I can often be found laying in bed at 6am and digging through client web reports. The knowledge one can gleam from this tool is practically endless–and the resulting testing and site modifications one can make, even more so. No wonder than, I am commonly asked; “What are the top web analytics reports and tools every nonprofit should know?”."
• Pew Research raw survey data now available – Looking for some data to help tell your organization's story? "The Pew Research churns out a lot of interesting results from a number of surveys about online and American culture, but they usually only shared aggregated results, pre-made charts and graphs. This is well and good for the information-consuming public; however, these results can spawn curiosities that are fun to dig into. Luckily, the Pew Research Center launched a Data Sets section that provides raw survey responses and the questions in a variety of easy-to-use data formats."

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).

• ReputationOnline » Blog Archive » Jonathan Waddingham on ‘Can you turn fans into consumers?’ – Jonathan Waddingham from JustGiving has a great post up today: "The advent of Facebook fan pages has been great news for brands wanting to create communities without having to build their own social network. In many cases, it’s largely pointless trying to create your own community when the people you want to attract are already part of another one… But what do you do with your fans once you’ve got them?"
• How Facebook turns active users into community managers – without paying a dime (video) | Powered by John Haydon – John Haydon has a great post and video discussing facebook's strategic design that empowers users to be community managers. "You want to develop a stronger, more passionate community. You want your members to invite like-minded folks to join your community and you want the cultists to encourage others to be more active. You them to do both of these things regularly. And you want this all to happen naturally – because it won’t happen if you push."
• Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik – "Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people. … So in this post my hope is to share with you what is unique about measuring one such channel, Twitter. The blog post is also sprinkled with my own words of folksy wisdom as to how you should use the channel for maximum impact."
• Is Your Organization Human Enough for Social Media? — SocialFish – "Social media can be overwhelming. There are so many tools, none of which you’ve used before, so you don’t have an intuitive sense of how they work, let alone if they are really helping you get the work of your organization done. And if you’ve gotten into these tools at all, you’ve probably noticed that they are not implemented in the same way as many other initiatives within your organization. You’re not sure who’s supposed to tweet or blog, and suddenly there are people outside of your staff who are saying things your staff used to say."
• Three Ways You Can Help Build The Future of NABUUR | NABUUR Blog – "NABUUR exists so people like you can make a real difference for communities worldwide. With your contributions, you have improved the lives of countless others. You have proven it works. Now, your talents and time are needed to take the next step: make NABUUR itself self-supporting and driven by a global community of volunteers. In the last year alone, the numbers of volunteers and villages have doubled. Together, we learned how to connect, share and work together via the internet, without bureaucratic controlling bodies. NABUUR is following this path itself: already, many of you have taken over work that previously required office staff. And a bold next step is ahead! From January on, NABUUR will be volunteer-run: no more office staff. The NABUUR platform will remain online, and limited central support will still be available, but how it will develop will be up to the community to decide."