Tag: community

Great reads from around the web on January 13th

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of January 13th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

  • Transformative Collaboration « Alison & Associates – Alison Rapping has a terrific, comprehensive blog post today all about jump starting collaborations. It's a must-read! "Collaboration. It was the hottest “buzz word” of the last decade — And if you ask ten people to describe it, you could get ten very different answers. Collaborations are going to be a driving force in building stronger relationships and stronger communities. In the new decade we are in the “perfect collaboration storm:” energy around our “community visions”, enormous critical community needs, myriad of new nonprofit organizations, and desire for greater impact. This can only happen if we work together. Our community is whole and interconnected; we can’t create a powerful vision in silos."
  • Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Congrats to Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston and Kami Watson Huyse on the launch of their new adventure: Zoetica! "Zoetica serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with top-tier, word-of-mouth communication services. A social enterprise, Zoetica provides superior communication consulting, training, and strategy to help mindful organizations affect social change."
  • GreatNonprofits: Find non-profits and charities to review, donate, or volunteer. – "GreatNonprofits and Guidestar want to hear about the great nonprofits providing job training or job placement in your communities. Tell us about YOUR experience – how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need improvement? Participate in this campaign to recognize the top-rated nonprofits developing your community through job training or job placement." Deadline: January 31, 2010
  • Surprise! Only 5% of Websites Have a Twitter or Facebook Link – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Factual, an “open data repository” analyzed 4 million websites via data from Common Crawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use." Check out the stats highlighted by Allyson Kapin in this short but interesting post!
  • Nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 announced – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns – "Osocio is happy to announce a list of ten nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 award. Osocio has started selecting best campaigns featured on our blog, because we want to put the most creative and innovative social ads into spotlights. So that non-profit organizations can learn and benefit from these best practices. This is the Top 10 list of the best social campaigns featured on Osocio in 2009. One of these campaigns will become the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009."

… Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on January 13th

Great reads from around the web on December 2nd

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of December 2nd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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."

… Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on December 2nd

Great reads from around the web on November 25th

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of November 25th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

  • E-Commerce News: Customer Loyalty: If You Build a Branded Online Community, Will Customers Come? – "Despite the enormous popularity of peer-to-peer social networking, the adoption cycle for branded online communities has been relatively slow. That a growing number of consumer brands are transforming their existing static Web sites into interactive online communities is a trend that is not only recent, but also rapidly accelerating." What do you think? Do you have a branded online community for your organization or project? How did you ensure participation and membership?
  • ProjectRSS for describing projects (part of the Open Philanthropy effort) – I've recently come across this project from John Brennan (@worldlyjohn on Twitter) and am interested in what you all think about it! "Open source software exists in the computer industry. Open architecture exists in the construction industry. Yet only recently has there been a push for standards in communication of the philanthropic industry. The time is now. Open Philanthropy is about sharing. Open Philanthropy is about community. Open Philanthropy is about working together to increase the size of the proverbial pie (not the piece)."
  • The Report | Think Social – "This is a first draft of a longer effort dedicated to the study and advancement of developments in social media in the public interest that enable people to write history by acting online. It features concept definitions and examples for ten trends that we believe are shaping the use of social media in the public interest. We have compiled this list through interviews with public- and private-sector leaders; analysis of initiatives, organizations and government programs; reviews of industry and mainstream news coverage; and submissions from thousands of online participants."
  • Five Social Media Fundraising Trends for 2009 – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media – "Over the past six months, I've been collaborating on a book with Allison Fine, titled "The Networked Nonprofit" and we've been sifting through stories, research, and seeing many patterns. So for this post, I'd like to share 5 fundraising trends that we saw emerging in 2009 related to fundraising and social media and that will most definitely continue to have impact in 2010."
  • Miro Community – "Miro Community lets you bring together all the videos about a topic, a community, or product into one elegant website, no matter where the videos are hosted." GetMiro.com is an open-source, non-profit video player and podcast client, check out the tool here: http://getmiro.com

… Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on November 25th

Great reads from around the web on November 24th

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of November 24th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

  • Have you always wanted to be a 'climate insider'? | TckTckTck – The 350ppm movement is doing a lot of hard work in the lead up to the talks in Copenhagen this December. "Our latest feature is a global rapid response community we launched last month, called ClimateInsider. ClimateInsider is fast becoming the new media hub that will support a digital rapid response network leading up to and during Copenhagen climate change summit." Check it out and apply to be an Insider now!
  • Facebook Charity Interview Questions – Earlier this year, John Carnell created a series called Twitter Charity Interviews that has over 40 interviews with nonprofits using Twitter talking about how, why, and what they do with the micro-blogging tool. Now, John is looking to replicate the process but focus on Facebook. If you want to share the ways your organizations is using Facebook to engage with supporters, visit this link to get the questions and the submission information.
  • Give to the Max Day – GiveMN – giveMN.org created Give to the Max Day as a way to kick off use of the new giving platform. It was more of a success than they expected with huge numbers of participation and donations! You can see the full results here and check out the site, too.
  • Strategy stuff – a three pronged approach – "Drawing together a few discussions I have been involved in recently about the different types of documents an organisation – such as a council – might need to put together to define its approach to engaging online, I thought it might be useful to set out how I think it could be done."
  • New Start Magazine: The toolkit for practitioners in regeneration, economic development & sustainable communities – "New Start is the toolkit for regeneration practitioners. It's a creative and informative magazine, but it's more than that: it's an online news service, a recruitment aid, a partner for organisations wanting to spread learning and to showcase good practice, and the place that the sector's leading thinkers use to kick-start a debate on key issues."

… Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on November 24th

Great reads from around the web on November 18th

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of November 18th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

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).

  • 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – Have you registered yet for the Nonprofit Technology Conference? This is one of the best opportunities each year to meet others from the nonprofit technology sector, learn what other organizations are up to, what's new and what's next! I'll be there and hope you will be, too 🙂
  • What is your conversation strategy? | Powered by John Haydon – John Haydon has an excellent post today to get you thinking more strategically about your use of social media, and not just what tools to use but what to say once you're using them! "When most businesses and non-profits start using social media, they start with “small talk” with their communities. They politely reply to tweets, express appreciation to donors, respond as quickly as possible to customer support issues, and generally try to add value to their network. But all to often, they fail to move beyond the “small talk” and create meaningful discussions that their communities are dying to have."
  • Whuffie Webinar – "What if you had access to the latest big ideas from the corporate world, distilled into a 10 minute video that was 6.5 more memorable than other ways of learning? What if you then had access to one of the leaders in the not-for-profit world who would show you how to take these principles and apply them to your day to day activities? What if all of this was free, every month?" You do! Check out this great webinar series from Polar Unlimited.
  • Idealist.org: Imagine, Connect, Act – Idealist is trying something. They want to see what could happen if we serious commit to working together, on an offline. "It's time for the world's idealists to work together, online and in person. The first step in this campaign is to ask you to take a few minutes to read this proposal. What you'll find there is a vision for this network, a path and a timeline to build it, and an invitation to be part of this movement from the very start. Then, to share your thoughts and join the 1,361 people in 91 countries who are making this happen, please sign up here."
  • YouTube – Direct's Channel – "YouTube Direct allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site, enabling your organization to request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease. News organizations can ask for citizen reporting; nonprofits can call-out for support videos around social campaigns; businesses can ask users to submit promotional videos about your brand. With YouTube Direct, the opportunities to connect directly with the YouTube community are endless."

… Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on November 18th