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).

• Report Release: The 2010 Nonprofit IT Staffing and Spending … – "Nearly 1,200 nonprofit professionals filled out the latest annual survey, sponsored by NTEN and The NonProfit Times, providing us with another year of benchmarks and data concerning: salaries, outsourcing, recruiting, organizational structure, and other aspects of Information Technology practices in the nonprofit sector. One of the findings that stood out to us: Only 40% of respondents reported that their organization has some type of formal technology plan. And much less than that (22%) reported that their organization had ever evaluated Return on Investment (ROI) of technology projects or programs."
• World Bank’s Mapping for Results launched – Check out this deployment of the Ushahidi platform for digital storytelling and reporting: "This weekend at the World Bank annual meetings the World Bank launched their new Mapping for Results platform. The initiative visualizes the location of World Bank projects to better monitor project and impact on people; to enhance transparency and social accountability; and to enable citizens and other stakeholders to provide direct feedback. All 79 IDA countries, the lowest income nations, are included with the geographic locations of projects, financing, and sector identification such as water, transportation, governance, etc. There are also indicator data including maternal health, infant mortality, malnutrition, poverty, and population. The tool is meant to openly share and visualize the operations of World Bank financed activities down to as local a level as possible and compare these with actual need and monitor the effects over time."
• Conversation is the New Attention – "This article is adapted from their SXSW 2011 talk, Toss the Projector: Redefining the Speaker/Audience Dynamic. In the talk, Tim and Chris unveiled Donahue, a new experimental tool designed and built by Arc90 and Behavior Design which tears down the wall between audience and presenter, allowing the audience to interact directly with the presenter’s ideas to begin a conversation."
• 2011: The Year the Check-in Died – "Early last year, "checking in" was the cool new craze. No visit to your favorite tech news site could be had without getting buried in a tsunami of articles about Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, BriteKite or a myriad other startups. The big guys quickly followed suit: Yelp introduced "Check-Ins" while Facebook launched "Places" and most recently, Google Latitude updated to incorporate check-ins and check-outs. But here's the thing: the trends aren't actually that good."
• Hey, Let’s Fix The Internet – What do you think – can we change? Change the internet? Change the way we associated with others on and offline? This post has me thinking about many different perspectives on community organizing and community engagement and I'd love to hear what it triggers for you!

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).

• Net2 Think Tank Round-up: Creating Awesome Video | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "For this month's Net2 Think Tank we asked you to share your tools and tactics for creating effective video messages – regardless of budget and organization size. Affordable video capability and basic editing software are now widely available and easy to use. But, how can organizations and enterprises best use video to inspire change? Below is a list of tips and suggestions on making decisions to do with hardware and software, message and editing, video quality, and promotion ideas."
• Women Give 2010 | Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University – "Women at virtually every income level are more likely to give to charity and to give more money on average than their male counterparts, after controlling for education, income and other factors that influence giving, new research from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University finds. Women Give 2010 is the first report to compare philanthropic giving between men and women across all income levels based on a nationally representative sample. It uses data from the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS), the nation’s largest study that tracks giving patterns among the same households over time."
• Facebook app causes raises $16m – "Causes, the popular Facebook charity application, has raised another $9 million in funding and introduced gift cards to let people donate online without using a credit card. The story in the San Francisco Chronicle says the new gift cards are available in Safeway and Vons supermarkets in California in denominations of $25 and $30."
• Local Philanthropy Playground | Local Philanthropy Playground – "The Local Philanthropy Workshop (LPW), developed by the Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation and TechSoup Global with the support of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, first took place between August 31 and September 4, 2010. More than 35 NGO and IT practitioners came together to explore ways of strengthening Romanian civil society through communications and local philanthropy development, lowering barriers to outreach through involvement of the Romanian IT&C community and developing a practical best practices repository with a platform for ongoing discussion. This blog seeks to capture the information gathered at the workshop, keep the discussion alive and build momentum."
• The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine – "Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures."

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).

• Marketing to Media-Savvy Gen Y: Transparency, Authenticity – Advertising Age – News – "They entered the consumer market during the stormiest economic climate since the Great Depression. And like the generation that was forever altered by the harsh sacrifices of World War II, millennials are likely to be permanently affected by the Great Recession and its long-term ripples. But these characteristics won't change about the demographic: They are vocal, demanding and discerning."
• Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Can I be honest? I’m worried about the lack of nonprofit leadership creating a culture of innovation. While multi-channel outreach such as action alerts, microsites, social media, fundraising appeals, direct mail and telemarketing are good strategies to have in your toolbox to fundraise and market your organization; it’s simply not enough anymore. To truly raise your nonprofit’s profile (aka increase brand awareness), grow your constituency, and raise even more money in 2011 and beyond, organizations need to also focus on innovating."
• Facebook And Skype Officially Announce New Integration – "Today Facebook and Skype officially announced a new partnership which includes the complete integration of the Facebook newsfeed into Skype as well as the phonebook which lists all of a Skype user’s Facebook friends. This is another major partnership for Facebook who has announced numerous partnerships in recent weeks, including yesterday’s announcement with Bing."
• National Theatre’s Twitter Screw-up – What We Can Learn From Other People’s Mistakes | The Nest – "Over the last month, The Nest has been conducting social media training in nine regional theatre venues across five states. Commissioned by national touring agency, Performing Lines, the training assisted venues in marketing the forthcoming tour of Red Stitch’s acclaimed production of ‘Red Sky Morning‘. We helped marketing and management staff get to grips with, and genuinely leverage, social media to help sell the show."
• URL Shorteners: Blind(ly) Heading Towards Disaster? – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Social networking has forced nonprofits to be comfortable with two-way communications, transparency, and adapting to short social conversations using limited character counts. As part of this communications evolution, nonprofits have grown accustomed to relying on url shorteners such as bit.ly and ow.ly to quickly share links to blog posts, advocacy and fundraising campaign on social networks. Plus some of the tracking stats (number of clicks, referrer, locations) have been useful to nonprofits in helping to determine which links resonated with their constituents. However, just today a .ly shortener called vb.ly has been seized by the Libyan government for failure to comply with Islamic law. And now this has all .ly url shorteners on high alert. You may be wondering how this is possible and what kind of impact will this have on nonprofits?"

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).

• Understanding Facebook Places Functionality Opens Possibilities | Community Organizer 2.0 – Debra has a great post walking through the steps to setting up, using, and understanding Facebook’s new geo-social tool, Places. Thanks, Debra, for a thorough guide!
• Is online community engagement “real” « Bang the Table – This is a great conversation starter and thinking piece about community engagement, not just online community. “I am sometimes confronted by a prejudice in my travels; that the relationships developed through online community engagement are less real than those created via face-to-face engagement processes. Like most prejudices I believe it is based on fear and misunderstanding. Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be asked to chair a mini-conference in Sydney about Interactive Community Engagement for the Public Sector. While there were many interesting and engaging presentations one particularly stood out for me because of the challenge it presented to online engagement methodology.”
• RSA – Connected Communities – “Traditional approaches to community regeneration which define communities in solely geographic terms have severe limitations. They often failed to deliver on key social capital improvements such as improving trust between residents or fostering a greater sense of belonging. In this report we argue for a new approach to community regeneration, based on an understanding of the importance of social networks, such an approach has the potential to bring about significant improvements in efforts to combat isolation and to support the development of resilient and empowered communities.”
• Internet Founder Tim Berners-Lee Details 4 Concerns About Future of Mobile Web (Nokia World 2010) – “This morning at Nokia World 2010 in London, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, widely known as the inventor of the Web, addressed the audience in a keynote speech where he spoke about the future of mobile technology, including both the positive impacts it brings as well as the areas of concerns. After encouraging developers to build for the Web, so as to deliver applications that work on all types of devices, even the ones that haven’t been invented yet, he then proceeded to detail areas which need addressing, specifically privacy, accountability, network neutrality and the 80% of the world that doesn’t have access to the World Wide Web.”
• How Useful is Social Media to Nonprofits?  – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – No matter where you look, social media is on everyone’s radar. The big question nonprofits ask is, how useful is social media? In an attempt to help nonprofits answer that question, Idealware, in partnership with NOI, recently released “The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide.”

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).

• Openness or How Do You Design for the Loss of Control? | Blog | design mind – "Openness is the mega-trend for innovation in the 21st century, and it remains the topic du jour for businesses of all kinds. Granted, it has been on the agenda of every executive ever since Henry Chesbrough’s seminal Open Innovation came out in 2003. However, as several new books elaborate upon the concept from different perspectives, and a growing number of organizations have recently launched ambitious initiatives to expand the paradigm to other areas of business, I thought it might be a good time to reframe “Open” from a design point of view."
• The internet: is it changing the way we think? | Technology | The Observer – "American writer Nicholas Carr's claim that the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains has sparked a lively and ongoing debate, says John Naughton. Below, a selection of writers and experts offer their opinion."
• Emergency Social Data Survey Results – americanredcross's posterous – Check out the slides and data from the American Red Cross's survey on Emergency Social Data!
• In Case of Emergency, Update Your Facebook Status | Beth’s Blog – "In January, after the Haiti Earthquake struck, if you were participating on social networks, you couldn’t help but notice the many, many Tweets and Facebook status messages about the Haiti Earthquake. The messages included pleas for support or retweeting the news, but beyond that the stream included pleas from people on the ground in Haiti asking for emergency assistance or letting loved ones and friends know they’re okay. A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies—and they expect first responders to be listening."
• Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS » Most Significant Change (MSC) – "The most significant change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation. It is participatory because many project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the sorts of change to be recorded and in analysing the data. It is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the program cycle and provides information to help people manage the program. It contributes to evaluation because it provides data on impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program as a whole."
• Transparency: Where the Stuff on the Internet Comes From – Transparency – GOOD – "Every day, thousands of stories are passed around the internet on blogs and via Twitter. A new study by Journalism.org has examined the source of those stories. It turns out, most of them come from old-school media. We may like to share information via Twitter, but the information we share comes from the morning's newspaper. This is a look at where blogs and Twitter users are getting their stories, and what kind of stories their users are most likely to link to."
• Marshall Ganz: Why Stories Matter « Friends of Justice – "Learning skills and practices is not like learning a formula; it’s more like learning how to ride a bicycle. You can read 10 books about it or listen to someone lecture about it all day, but how do you really start learning to ride a bicycle? You get on. And you fall. That’s how you learn practices. That’s how you learn organizing." Thanks to Joe Solomon (@engagejoe) for the link!

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).

• HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media – "Throughout the non-profit world, organizations struggle with social media’s impact on the volunteer and donor cycle. The rise of “slacktivism” — doing good without having to do much at all — challenges organizations to rethink the way they cultivate their core volunteers and donors. There are some important social media strategies for transforming those one-click “slacktivists” into fully engaged activists. Here are five tips from some of the best in the non-profit business."
• In Effort to Boost Reliability, Wikipedia Looks to Experts – Digits – WSJ – "Wikipedia is teaming with universities in a bid to entice professors and their students to beef up its coverage of complicated public-policy topics — part of a move by the online encyclopedia to strengthen editing and fill in gaps in its articles. The Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit site, received a $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to work with academic experts on Wikipedia articles related to public policy, which could include everything from political theory to legislative history and issues such as health reform and science. The goal is to get professors — and, in turn, their students — involved in producing more articles on public policy and improving the quality of the articles that already exist."
• The Next Generation of American Giving – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – Here is a great guest post from Jocelyn Harmon on the Care2 Frogloop blog: "“Our donors are aging-out.” “We need to attract younger donors.” “We need to be on Facebook.” These are some of the common refrains I hear from nonprofits. It seems that everyone is trying to bring younger donors into the fold. But what does younger mean? Does it mean connecting with the Baby Boomers, creating a gateway to the Millenials, or both? And, how do you do it? Should you buy a list of 50 – 60 year olds, or should someone on your staff become savvier with email marketing and social media? A new study, by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies, The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures, answers these questions, and more. See an overview of the findings below."
• ChatRoulette : Web Ecology Project – "This paper represents an initial study of ChatRoulette.com, conducted between February 6th and 7th, 2010 by researchers in attendance at Web Ecology Camp III in Brooklyn, NY. We sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender. We also conducted 30 brief interviews with users to inquire about their age, location, and frequency of ChatRoulette use."
• Twitter tactics – Louder.org.uk campaigning resources and info – "Twitter is growing at gigantic rate, experiencing 1,500% growth in the last year (for more stats see The State and Future of Twitter 2010). For those who are not converts it does seem to be the latest in a line of social media tools that everyone thinks you should be using. But what is in it for campaigners trying to bring about social change? Below sets out three main ways in which campaigners have already been using Twitter in their work to get you thinking and there are also three great examples to illustrate. Please add any experiences or thoughts of your own."