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).

• This is What a Librarian Looks Like – I love this example of a Tumblr blog used for a perspective-changing campaign. It's a great case study of how individuals and start and drive a campaign and the way that a concept can translate across cultures and countries.
• 12 Digital Fundraising Trends for 2012 – "Back at the start of January I set myself the target of publishing twelve posts on trends I think are going to prove important to digital fundraisers this year – both as a means of kick-starting my own thinking after the holiday season and to help inform your planning considerations at this key time in the year." Check out the 12 Trends, from Personalized Video Thanking to Ebooks to Digital Fundraising Staffing!
• NTEN’s Technology Leadership Academy Returns for 2012 – "We're excited to announce that the Technology Leadership Academy is returning in 2012. Even better, thanks to the generous support of Google and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we're able to offer the Academy at no charge to qualifying organizations. The Academy gets at the very heart of what NTEN does. We believe that with improved tech leadership, nonprofits like yours will provide more and better programs, inspire more communities, and involve more volunteers to share their time." The deadline to apply for the next learning group is February 24th!
• Digital Storytelling Challenge from TechSoup – "TechSoup’s annual Digital Storytelling Challenge (TSDigs), powered by Lights. Camera. Help., combines professional instruction and friendly competition into a hands-on media-making project." Learn more about the various educational programs planned and how to submit either your one minute video or five photo presentation to the competition!
• INFOGRAPHIC: The Rise of the Planet of the Apps | App Annie – This infographic and accompanying data is a great overview of the changing landscape of mobile applications around the world. It's also a great example of how infographics can help illustrate data, but coupling them with more complete narrative can ensure readers really understand what the data is saying.
• 2011 Online Giving Report – “'2011 did not have the 35% year-over-year growth rate in online giving that happened in 2010, but online fundraising did not lose its mojo,' said Steve MacLaughlin, co-author of the Report and Blackbaud’s director of Internet solutions. 'Every sector in the analysis has had double-digit growth since 2009, but as with all large numbers, the bigger the overall percentage gets, the slower it tends to grow.'In 2011, online giving was up 13% on a year-over-year basis when large International Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis. International Affairs is the only sector that didn’t experience positive growth in 2011, due to the tremendous amount of online giving in 2010 in response to the Haiti earthquake. When these organizations are included in the analysis the overall online fundraising growth rate drops to 0.3%."

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).

• Don’t assume everyone is offline | DavePress – "When I’m talking at events or to meetings of people within an organisation about the benefits of moving communications and engagement activity online, I often have someone put their hands up and say: 'I totally get what you are saying, Dave, but the problem is that we can’t move all this stuff online, because not everyone has access to the web.' There are two responses I usually give here. One is the most obvious and slightly boring, which is that online engagement is an as-well-as, and not an instead-of. Keep doing the offline stuff for the offline people! I might also ask at this point, however, ‘what are you doing to fix this?’. In other words, if a large number of people in an area haven’t the access or the skills to use the internet – what are local public services doing to get this fixed?"
• Kiss Malaria Goodbye – I really like the use of video and the compelling message/ask in this campaign: kiss! I wonder, though, when looking at the campaign information and actions if participants or potential-participants see the connection between responding to the ask (upload your kiss – your kiss can make it better) and the real goal of tackling Malaria? What do you think?
• Get free postage and mail books you can spare to a child in need. | The Giving Effect – I love this campaign because it makes participation easy, let's participants feel like they are making a difference but also helping directly, and can be done from anywhere. Basic elements that should be considered in any campaign. What do you think?
• HOW TO: Create Custom iFrame Tabs on Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page – "In March 2011 Facebook disabled the popular Static FMBL App that many nonprofits had used to create custom tabs on their Facebook Pages. Rather than having their apps be based on FBML, Facebook has now switched over to iframes. Those nonprofits that have already created custom tabs using the Static FBML app will continue to be supported (not indefinitely, however), but those that want create custom tabs for the first time or switch over to iframes have a few new apps to experiment with, namely Static HTML iFrame Tabs, Static HTML for Pages, and TabPress."
• E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis … – "The truth is that everyone is, indeed, a community facilitator / manager nowadays, as you saw in a recent blog entry where I referenced Gautam’s comments along these very same lines. So I thought I would develop further on this topic, specially since, earlier on today, I bumped into a couple of rather relevant and interesting links very much connected to this topic that I am sure you would enjoy quite a bit. The first one is coming from my good friend, Gautam Ghosh, once again, who earlier on tweeted a link to a blog post that he put together in September 2010 and which, despite the months gone by already, it’s just as valid today, if not more!, than ever before. Have a look into “5 Skills for Online Community Managers” and find out what some of the community facilitator traits would be like, according to him…"

5 Nonprofits, 5000 Responses

I think there’s a lot of potential for the way organizations can use a tool like this, and I’m sure there are plenty more that you can think of! The folks at Qriously think so, too. They are going to give five organizations 5,000 responses each (these could be divided up into multiple questions or used all for one), for free, with just two stipulations:

1. You can only use global or national surveys (not local)
2. You have to share what you learn!

That’s it!

Share Your Questions to Win
So, as a way of opening up the possibilities and participation, I’m asking that organizations “submit” via the comments. If you’re interested in participating, please share:

1. The name of your organization
2. The question you’d like to ask
3. How the question will help inform your work

As you know, I’m a big believer in community-driven processes, and there’s nothing that helps you be community-driven than tapping in and listening directly to the people you want to serve. Hopefully, sharing your questions and reasoning in the comments will help others think about the way they can survey the community at large, and sharing back what you learn will help us all!

Winners

The 5 organizations to get free trials of Qriously include:

Storiesofourcity.org – submitted by Katy Gilber

Katy did a great job of identifying a series of questions that the 5,000 responses can be divided between that can really help with content planning as well as community engagement planning.

EpicChange.org – submitted by Stacey Monk

I love the way Stacey blended the goal of getting feedback that can improve their messaging and content with the goal of spreading awareness/exposure of the brand. Great job!

Austin Civic Orchestra – submitted by Mazarine Treyz

This is a great example of targeting mobile users by asking specifically about those generations most likely to be on a phone! The question needs some work in refining the ask and providing answers, since it isn’t an open response field, though.

Neighborhood Montgomery – submitted by Takoma Horn

I think this is a great topic to break up into multiple questions. You could ask for a sentiment measurement, like “how do you feel about commercial development” and then use some of the other 5,000 responses for specific, similar to the examples Adam shared in the comments.

buildingcommunity WORKSHOP – submitted by romoseki

I’m really interested to see how these questions can be reshaped to better understand sentiment around architecture as well as even start some conversations (guide content development). Adam shared some great examples of reworking the questions to provide answer options, too.

I’m inviting all of the 5 organizations to share a guest post here after you use Qriously to ask your questions to share what you learned and how it contributes to your work!