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).

• JustGiving blog: Seven-year-old Charlie raises more than £100,000 for Haiti! – Read this great case study from JustGiving about Charlie's bike ride to raise money for Haiti relief support. "Charlie was really upset by the television footage of the Haiti disaster, so, in conversation with his mum, he came up with idea of cycling around South Park near his home in Fulham, London as many times as possible. As Charlie puts on his JG page, ‘at least 10 laps, I hope!’. Charlie set himself a fundraising target of £500 for UNICEF – not an insubstantial amount for a seven-year-old."
• Why We're In the Age of the Citizen Philanthropist – There's a great post up on Mashable with quotes from Britt Bravo (Have Fun Do Good), Kari Dunn Saratovsky (Case Foundation), and Peter Panepento (Chronicle of Philanthropy). "Our new communications technologies have empowered the individual, and caused a disruptive effect on the non-profit sector. Here are five examples of the citizen philanthropist’s immediate impact."
• Footnotes: Online Outreach on a Budget – January Nonprofit Blog Carnival – "This month we spent some time collecting posts about nonprofit communications on a budget. Below you'll find a combination of great resources that were submitted, and information I've found useful in my own research on online outreach. So bookmark this post and take the time to apply this knowledge to marketing and communications at your organization – it's cheap (or free) and has worked for others!"
• Online Branded Communities: Misguided and Missing the Point – Marketing News Blog – This is an excellent review of best practices and case studies for online community management. Even though the authors (Kathy Baughman and Steve Hershberger) are focused on for-profit brands, the lessons ring true across sectors. "If you ask brand managers the purpose of online communities, the reply you’ll most often hear is “customer engagement.” Among marketers, this term is more prevalent than Frisbees at a dog beach. But the real question is this: Are brands providing meaningful and engaging experiences to their customers through their online communities? Our research on 135 online communities representing 45 major brands indicates that, with few exceptions, the answer is no."
• Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits by Laura Quinn in Computers & Internet – "What types of software should your nonprofit be using? It’s hard to even know even what types exist, let alone what might work for you. Through a friendly, easy-reference format, this book helps you pinpoint the types of software that can help your organization based on your needs and your level of technology savvy, and provides user-friendly summaries to demystify all the possible options.

  The 84-page Field Guide includes an overview of 35 different types of software, helping you to understand what each is, how it fits in with your needs, how much you might expect to pay, and some of the most common vendors in the area."

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).

• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all – "Last December, I showed some unwitting prescience by worrying about a backlash against microfinance, the practice of providing small loans – or perhaps savings products or insurance – to poor people. I fretted that there was little compelling evidence that it worked. A year later, the evidence is arriving and the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe published an article in September, subtitled, “Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like ‘microlending’ doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty.” " – I'm interested to hear what you all think about this issue, especially now during the 'giving season.'
• Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source! | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "That's right, I said it. Promise to read the rest of this before you send me hate mail, though. What I mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. For the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" — a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire."
• Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Best of 2009 | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Check out the diverse submissions to the December Net2 Think Tank that simply asked for the best blog posts of 2009! I'm sure there are some resources, conversations and pointers in here that are new to everyone.
• What Matters Now eBook – Get the ebook now for free! "We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team."
• Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report | Dutch Perspective by Marc van Bree – "In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances."

As GuideStar explains,

“We’ve got good news and bad news.” The old joke fits the findings from our latest nonprofit economic survey, which looked at how charitable organizations fared financially between March and May 2009. The good news is that the proportion of nonprofits reporting decreased contributions, 52 percent, remained unchanged from our previous survey, which covered October 2008 through February 2009. So things apparently didn’t worsen dramatically for charitable organizations between March and May.

The bad news is that the numbers don’t reflect the stress the economy is placing on nonprofits. As one participant put it, “We are hanging on, barely.” Another reported, “The only reason we are still solvent is that we had a financial crisis and could no longer pay our utility bill. After media coverage of the situation, we were inundated with generosity and kindness, and the donations covered the utility bill and the excess paid off outstanding bills, with a little cushion for the future. We were very fortunate. We realize this is a one-time deal, but it has put us back on our feet.”

What’s significant to me? The fact that on every dataset the numbers are nearly exactly the same as the previous year.  Maybe this means those polled were in positions to have a buffer from the downturn; maybe it means that the real impact will show up in the 2010 surveys; or maybe it means that the effects of the downturn aren’t playing out the way speculators thought.

Check out the numbers and results here.

What do you think?  Has your organization seen more significant changes in it’s funding or services “because” of the economic downturn?

Instead of more pessimism, at this one-day event on 6 July, we ask you to work together with fresh ideas to Reboot Britain.

How can we take advantage of the radically networked digital world we now live in to help revive our economy, rebuild our democratic structures and improve public services?

Confirmed speakers include Martha Lane-Fox, Gillian Tett (author of Fools Gold), Howard Rheingold,Charles Leadbeater, Craig Newmark (craigslist), Sir Michael Bichard (Design Council and Institute for Government), Jon Gisby/Daniel Heaf (Channel 4), Paul Miller (School of Everything), Alan Moore (SMLXL), Lee Bryant (Headshift), Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital), Andy Hobsbawn (Do the Green Thing), Jon Watts (MTM London), Jeff Saperstein (Creating Regional Wealth), Jim Schuyler (CTO to the Dalai Lama), MT Rainey (Horsesmouth)

New speakers are being added daily. Check out http://www.rebootbritain.com for more.

Over 350 people have registered for Reboot Britain so far.  If you haven’t already registered you can do so here http://rebootbritain.eventbrite.com/ (Tickets are been priced according to your ability to pay.)

As well as the formal sessions we have a Reboot Camp taking place simultaneously across the venue which include the following:

• Demos present their Progressive Conservatism thinking for public services.
• How are we going to manage doing more for less?
• Learning Without Frontiers: How technology is changing cognitive development, and redesigning our schools for the new age
• WeBank host a peer-to-peer session on new models for lending and borrowing, using Zopa as a case study showing how quickly you can lend or borrow without the middleman

Other sessions include:

• Innovation Live – Stan Stalnaker, Hub Culture
• Social Innovation Camp Express
• Tim Davies – 50 small hurdles that prevent public bodies from unlocking their knowledge
• Elevator Pitches – online democracy, transparency and participation tools
• Conversing with local government at grassroots level- Hyperlocality and active citizenship
• The Stalemate – where next for the media and politics?
• The future of public service media
• Social x Social
• Busting the Silos – opening organizations for growth
• Practical examples of new financial instruments

I can’t wait for this event! I will be there, blogging and Tweeting; and will also be facilitating the Social by Social game session!  If you are in London on July 6th, definitely check this out.  If you aren’t, well, be sure to follow the blog or my twitter account for udpates at the event!