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).

• HopenSource – Thanks to @350 for the link – check out this great portal of hope and inspiration from Grist Magazine. "Show why Earth's not effed" and get inspired from the stories of those making change.
• LearnPhilanthropy.net – Online venue for grantmaker education – "The Grantmaker Education Initiative is bringing people together to create a stronger, more rational, and less fragmented system for grantmaker learning than we have today — one that builds a new culture of professional development in the field, works better for the individual learners involved in philanthropy, and better for the many groups and organizations that provide learning programs and resources to them.<br />
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  LearnPhilanthropy.net is a simple online venue we’ve created to invite dialogue among those who are passionate about grantmaker education. We hope to establish a collaborative learning community — with plenty of space for ideas and wisdom of the field. We aim to work together to create a vision for meeting the education and learning needs of people in our field. We invite you to join us, take our survey, and we welcome your contributions."
• Do Something: Helping Humanity With a Click of the Mouse | Fast Company – "Sending a text or clicking to vote may be the trendy way to help humankind. The question, says Nancy Lublin, is whether such so-called slacktivism really works. Name-calling is never nice — that much most of us learned in kindergarten. Go ahead and criticize the substance of an action or the content of a speech, but just calling a person a nasty name is like pulling hair. Unfortunately, a lot of it happens in the do-gooder sector–and lately, much of it has been directed at projects that could fall under the umbrella of a newish movement called "slacktivism.""
• OPEN CALL: Do Nonprofits Make Films? We Say Yes! – netwitsthinktank.com – "What's the top thing you can do this year to engage your constituents? Both online and off? Quick, what springs to mind? Well I'm here to tell you that it should be video. If you are going to do one new thing in 2010 to help get the word out about your organization’s mission, it should be to create a video."
• What You and Your Nonprofit Should Know About Facebook Changes – Beth's Blog – Facebook seems to be an ever-changing landscape whether it's features, privacy, security or functionality: something's always changing. Beth has a great post discussing some of the changes and how they impact your organization on facebook.
• The State of Online Word of Mouth Marketing [STATS] – "In a session yesterday at Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray presented research findings on peer influence and word of mouth marketing. Some of the statistics were surprising, and the presentation was rife with practical tips for marketers we thought worth sharing."

The Council on Foundations conducted the survey of grantmaking organizations via its online survey and benchmarking website. Organizations can use the benchmarking tool to make unique comparisons of the data to go beyond the report’s included statistics.

Anyone who has worked in the nonprofit technology sector can attest that staffing is always an issue. It is often the department that isn’t even a department, projects completed by staff with other titles and job duties or by consultants. Grantmakers are increasingly interested in helping nonprofits increase their technology facilities, whether by staff, education, or hardware. BUT, as this report shows, grantmakers need to be looking at their own organizations before trying to understand how to best help nonprofits.

“Thirty-two percent of respondents indicated the party primarily responsible for technology was the finance/administration staff and 25 percent of respondents indicated the party primarily responsible for technology was in-house technology staff. An Additional 19 percent reported that consultant was the party primarily responsible for technology.” Foundation staffing numbers can be more accurately represented by relevant peers, rather than foundation asset size (as the number above represent) by using the benchmarking tool online.

Technology staff that a foundation does have, is frequently not included in strategic planning (65%), and 84 percent of organizations surveyed said they do not have a technology plan, or have one that is not up-to-date (71% and 13% respectively). Foundations are more likely to have a disaster plan than a technology plan.

Barriers for technology implementation and maintenance are similar to those of nonprofit organizations with cost and lack of staffing coming in as the highest constraints. Following those, lack of training and lack of organizational commitment are the next most frequently cited barriers—again, echoing many of the complaints that nonprofits have voiced.

In two areas that the recent report on grassroots organizations did not cover, we find more disappointing news for grantmakers. The use of open source software in most categories is decreasing. This worries me the most as open source is a terrific way for nonprofits to support software development and decrease costs. Knowledge management is the other unique area, especially important for larger grantmakers, with less than exciting news. Only 2 percent have implemented a knowledge management system!

More than one third (38%) indicated they were not interested in knowledge management, and 47 percent indicated they were trying to define what knowledge management meant to their organization.

A very discouraging report (the third of its kind, COF has surveyed grantmakers in 2003, 2005 and 2007) for the philanthropy sector. Grantmakers should be at the forefront of technology use and capability internally and for external communications. Grantmakers will need to turn these numbers around to better serve, lead, and support the nonprofits they are encouraging to use technology to its fullest.