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).

• The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Visualizing Prominent Information Flows during the Tunisia and Egypt Revolutions – This is a very cool visualization from danah boyd pulling together twitter accounts and displaying tweets, reactions, and much more. Really interesting to see the combination of various kinds of information sources – from traditional media outlets to individuals.
• Too Many Messages and Only One Facebook Page: April 6th Movement in Post-Mubarak Egypt | technosociology – Check out this great guest post by Susannah Vila on the technosociology blog! "This post draws from over 30 in-depth, semi structured interviews conducted with coordinators of and participants in the Egyptian revolution between March and August 2011."
• A Roundup of Valuable Twitter Tools – Noupe – A great round up of Twitter tools – some great long-time favorites and some newer tools. Any others you'd add? "It is hard to argue against the value of Twitter these days, especially for businesses and professionals looking to network and stay ahead of the curve. Like the throngs of designers and developers that have flooded this social media outlet’s streams and sapped its API since its inception. And with so many amazing tools available to expand on, and enhance the overall user’s experience, Twitter is becoming even more useful and handy than ever before."
• How Much Money Do Americans Give Online? [INFOGRAPHIC] – "Everyone says it’s hard to measure social good success. Well, non-profit consultancy Convio begs to differ. The firm recently put out an infographic showing that the Internet is the fastest-growing channel for non-profits. The graphic compares money raised, awareness gained and a variety of other factors across a three-year period. Since 2008, non-profits have cracked the $1 billion mark for online fundraising. In 2010, the average online gift jumped up to $91.94."
• Five Ways for Human Service Nonprofits to Reset their Funding Models – "…most nonprofits have in effect two customers— the beneficiaries they are supporting, and the funders who are paying for the work. In most instances (unlike business) these are not the same parties. … But this is a balance that very few nonprofits manage to strike; the lion’s share of their energy and focus goes into their program model, not their funding model. The big empirical finding runs counter to the conventional wisdom that nonprofits need to diversify their funding across multiple funding sources— foundations, high net worth donors, small individual contributors, corporate philanthropy, government, etc.— in order to grow and become more sustainable. What we have found instead is that for the vast majority of large nonprofits, especially for those with budgets of $50 million and up, it pays to focus, not diversify across different sources."

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).

• Groupon Case Study: Jolkona’s Groupon Experiment | Community Organizer 2.0 – Check out this great interview by Debra Askanase with Laura Kimball, discussing their experiment using Groupon! "Jolkona ran a Groupon deal as an experiment to try to raise money for a specific campaign using Groupon. Jolkona partnered with the Seattle International Foundation (SIF), which pledged to match every donation, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000. Starting July 26th, Groupon Seattle’s G-Team allowed subscribers to join Jolkona and SIF in making an investment in women’s leadership by pledging support in increments of $10. For each $500 collected, Jolkona would fund one week of training for a woman leader to come to Seattle and participate in a 10-week fellowship program, run by iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service."
• Year-end appeals have you stumped? Four quick tips to get the ball rolling | Big Duck – "This is the time of year when most people I know are thinking about ‘back to school’ and beginning to plan their fall/winter holidays and vacations. Of course for us Ducks and most of you, this time of year is dominated by the ever-glorious year-end fundraising appeal. These days, the year-end giving season starts as early as October. In fact, as I write this (in mid-August), we’re already at work on several year-end campaigns. If you’re not quite there yet, here are a few quick tips I hope you’ll find useful to get your fundraising wheels in motion."
• When Communities Identify Their Own Poor, Aid Has The Most Effect | Fast Company – "When governments and NGOs plan on giving assistance to the most needy, how do they know who needs the most assistance? It's a question people are at great pains to answer, yet social welfare programs around the world are still plagued by error and abuse. That has not deterred the development of programs to help people escape extreme poverty. But because the poor–especially those earning less than $2 or $3 per day–typically hold informal jobs with no official records about their earnings, conventional ways to determine need are ineffective. MIT researchers in a recent study (PDF) looked at two alternative methods for establishing who needs assistance."
• 7 Things Nonprofits Can Talk About on Facebook Besides Themselves « – "Recently I met with a client who was sensitive about what they posted on Facebook, because they not only had privacy issues to be concerned with of their constituents, but they didn’t think that the other things they do would be applicable to their fans on Facebook. In other words they didn’t think that their fans on Facebook cared about what their organization was doing other than fundraising."
• Complex and Contradictory: A New Way to Think of Digital Activism | The Meta-Activism Project – "The effect of digital technology on political contention is neither good nor bad, it is both.  Yes, the Internet can help activists mobilize and re-frame public issues.  It can also distract citizens and feed apathy.  It can also help repressive governments watch and censor their citizens.  The sooner we accept digital technology’s complex and contradictory effect of political power dynamics, the sooner we can move forward to answering more interesting questions about those effects.  What contextual factors lead to these different outcomes?  Why does one factor win out over others when all three are in play?"
• 5 Reasons Social Media Measurement is Making You Lie to Yourself | social media measurement | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert – I love the comparision Jay makes here between Twitter and email, followers equals sends and actual Twitter reach (people reading and responding) equals open rate. Really changes the impact of those Twitter numbers! "Social media measurement causes unsavory (and ineffective) marketing behavior because unlike the rest of our marketing key performance indicators, social media metrics are out there for anyone to see."

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).

• Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks – This new report from the Knight Foundation and Monitor Institute explores engaged communities: "Ten years ago, a tiny web site asked people to volunteer to write their own encyclopedia. Today, Wikipedia is the most widely used reference work in the world. Rapid advances in digital media and technology are changing how we connect to information and each other. The way we engage in public dialogue, coordinate, solve problems—all of it is shifting. New networks are emerging everywhere. It’s exciting—and frightening. What is this new network-centric world? What does it mean for community change?"
• The US will use Twitter and Facebook to issue terror alerts – "The U.S. government is working on a new warning system to replace their oft criticized five-color coded terror index, and according to a new document obtained by The Associated Press, they're turning to Facebook and Twitter." How do your social media channels fit in your organization's emergency communications plan?
• Repair Interview: Joe Solomon of 350.org on Climate Change and Building a Movement – "Social Media Coordinator, Joe Solomon took some time to explain what 350 really means, talk about transforming community inspiration into political power, and share a story about how his work with 350.org inspired him in ways he never imagined." Check out this terrific interview with Joe – I'd love to hear your ideas, reflections and stories about how you are inspired to make change!
• Mobilizing online communities in the Face of Disaster: Tips … – "On the 12th of March, one day after the tragic earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan Ichi – Hiroyasu Ichikawa – the NetSquared Local organizer from Tokyo sent an e-mail to our NetSquared Local Organizer listserve asking for the best practices for mobilizing online communities in the time of a disaster. In the weeks that have followed, Ichi’s e-mail provoked a series of responses from all over the world. In this post, we hope to voice many of the tools, resources, and tactics that have been shared, in hopes of encouraging others around the world to get involved with the digital relief efforts."
• 6 questions to prepare you for a social media crisis – "In social media, the disasters people talk about most are fundamentally crises of public relations. These fall into two types: crises that originate in social media, and crises that originate offline. In the era of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, both types of crisis require a rapid, social media response. Looking at the most recent social media crises is one way to think about the kinds of challenges for which you need to prepare. But social media has a way of ensuring that each crisis is different from the last, so if you’re prepared to handle a YouTube meltdown, you’ll probably get served with a FourSquare nightmare. That’s why it pays to look for principles of online crisis management that will be relevant in the long run."

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).

• Social Citizens Blog | Immerse. Converse. Disperse. – "This interview is part of our "Social Citizen Sightings" series, in which we highlight how people are using their creativity, idealism, and digital fluency to support their causes every day. Milena Arciszewski is 26. She enjoys camping, reading, adventure travel, and clean socks… and I should mention is starting a nonprofit called Pando Projects. Pando Projects is a nonprofit that empowers people—in particular Millennials—to step up as leaders and develop new, local solutions to the problems in their communities. The initiative seeks to support ordinary people in accomplishing extraordinary things by helping them to tackle national and global challenges. By providing tools and support for people with ideas, the group hopes to empower Americans to change the world, one project at a time. The pilot phase launches this month and will support 15 New Yorkers with ideas for grassroots projects."
• What’s in a word: Abundance, capacity, resource, network and community » ext337 – I really like this post from Marnie Webb, sharing her internal conflict working on the difference between words, like network and community. It's something that I try to tackle by having a clear personal definition, for my own word choice. But that doesn't mean everyone else sees the world, and words, the way I do. What do you think? How do you define the words Marnie highlights (networks, community, abundance, resources)?
• Internet Fame and the True Impact of Influence — SocialFish – "You may be aware that there is a big debate going on in the social media blogosphere about “influence”. We’re all familiar with the mantra that we should be out there leveraging influencers in our communities in order to get the word out about our causes, brands or services… and that makes total sense from a generating-word-of-mouth point of view. But hold on. If you’re trying to do this, and you don’t actually know who your industry influencers are (perhaps because you’re not really immersed in your own open community, or because your community is too large or public-facing to be able to list your champions in an organic way), and you’re looking at some tools out there that purport to measure influence…. maybe you’re starting to think “this is not as easy as it sounds.” Maybe you’re starting to think that influence is not about how many followers someone has on Twitter. Maybe you’re starting to think that “influencer scores” are totally meaningless for your goals and objectives."
• How to connect with your community in 8 words or less | Case Foundation – "What’s the relationship between an organization’s tagline and its strategy? When we announced the winners of this year’s GettingAttention.org’s Nonprofit Tagline Awards (The Taggies), a bit of a debate unfolded about the connection between tagline and strategy. Fundraiser and blogger Chuck English asserted that a tagline is nothing but a tool, and that approaching it otherwise diverts organizations from the critical work of strategy. In response, Katya Andresen, COO at Network for Good, commented, “Taglines are a great test of your strategy. You can't have a clear tagline if you don't have a clear sense of 1) your mission; 2) what is special about your organization; and 3) what your audience cares about.” I couldn’t agree more with Katya. And I was glad to see Chuck raise the issue."
• PayPal and Oxfam offer 100% giving for February | UK Fundraising – "Throughout February PayPal will cover Oxfam's running costs for all donations to Oxfam via PayPal. The organisations describe the "100% giving" campaign as "a completely new form of charity giving in the UK". They claim that "it is the first time a charity has offered a donation scheme in which it is guaranteed that 100% of your donation will go directly to the cause because a corporate partner is paying the running costs"."
• Philanthro-teens delving into nonprofit world – Crain’s New York Business – "In the past year, 79% of girls in the United States have contributed food or clothing, 53% have given their own money, and 66% have asked family or friends to give or volunteer, according to research commissioned by the United Nations Foundation. Today's teens also plan to be generous when they get older. More than 75% say they will regularly give to charity, versus 63% in 1989, according to a nationwide survey by the Girl Scout Research Institute of 3,263 students in grades three through 12."

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).

• Official Google Blog: Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project – Take yourself on an art tour using Google Maps! "One of the things I love about working at Google is that you can come up with an idea one day and the next day start getting to work to make it a reality. That's what happened with the Art Project—a new tool we're announcing today which puts more than 1,000 works of art at your fingertips, in extraordinary detail."
• [Book Interview] Nonprofit Example of Social Media Excellence: National Wildlife Federation – Here is a terrific interview with my friend and colleague Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation – she discusses both the tools she uses and the lessons she's learned from managing the social media presence for the NWF. One of the highlights: she notes that they would not have had such success in raising money online if they had not already invested in building up a community of active supporters.
• How Journalists Are Using Social Media to Report on the Egyptian Demonstrations – "The demonstrations are continuing despite the government’s attempts to block communications channels, including the Internet, SMS, TV broadcast by journalists, and mobile networks. Pundits have been weighing in on the role of social media in sparking the uprising, and whether it is a necessary ingredient in accelerating modern revolutions or simply an over-hyped notion. In some respects, the attempt to block communication has done little to stifle reports coming out of the country. Though much of the citizenry isn’t able to broadcast themselves, their stories are being told and amplified by reporters. What’s interesting is that the information flowing out is a hybrid of the “old school” reliance on reports from journalists on location and “new school” amplification through the social web."
• A Devaluation of "Friends" May Be Driving Trust in Thought Leaders – Steve Rubel – "This morning in Davos our CEO Richard Edelman unveiled the key findings of the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer – an annual survey. There's a lot to dig into here. However, I want to highlight three data points that underscore a critical theme that my colleague David Armano and I detailed in our recent trends deck. The takeaway: to stand out in a very cluttered media world, organizations must increasingly activate their internal subject matter experts as thought leaders and do so across several spheres of media – traditional (WSJ, CNN, etc.), Internet upstarts (eg Business Insider, Politico), corporate/owned platforms and social."
• The Battle Against Info-Overload: Is Relevance or Popularity the Best Filter? – "The rise of social media has led to an exponential proliferation of content online and widespread demand for tools to filter that information. Popularity and relevance are the most common metrics through which to filter that content – but are they the best? We asked three people building cutting-edge social software what they think the relationship between relevance, popularity and filtering is going to be in the future. They offered three very different responses. What do you think the future of information filtering will look like?"

Check out the interview below to learn more about how My Colorado Project is empowering local change!

How did My Colorado Project come about, how did it get started?

My Colorado Project is a website that highlights the attributes and interests of a new generation of givers. Rather than try to get younger donors to fit into our existing programs, we’ve built a site that encourages young people to do what they’re best at – connect online, build networks of like-minded people, and make philanthropy fun. Based on the “giving circle” concept, we’re giving donors a new way to personalize their giving and support their favorite causes.

My Colorado Project started out as a project of our current CEO Alyssa Kopf who was frustrated with the popular perception that young people don’t give.

“Working as a professional fundraiser, I knew that I was giving and my friends were giving but our common donor tracking systems weren’t capturing how the diversity of our interests and frequent smaller donations added up to a sizeable amount over the course of a year. My Colorado is our attempt to build a new fundraising model for peer-driven giving and create new tools for planning and tracking your philanthropic footprint.”

Alyssa and I talk about the creation of My Colorado Project often and my perception was that she took it kind of personally as a young person and as a nonprofit professional that she and her peers weren’t on the radar screens of their favorite organizations. I don’t think that anything really great gets done without having a serious personal interest and now we’re ready to give a significant asset to young people all over Colorado.

How do you define e-philanthropy and how does MCP align with that vision?

We hope that MCP will better illustrate the difference between transactional and transformational e-philanthropy.  We believe that the latter offers a more sustainable giving experience and that MCP can help young donors along the road to becoming thoughtful, strategic, and happy philanthropists.  The bulk of the online giving tools currently available focus on the transaction.  Hey, we need that, no doubt, but when you focus only on the transaction and on making donations more efficient you miss something even greater! We want young donors and nonprofits alike to know that there is a richer, more fulfilling, and more financially rewarding experience that they can have.  Not only can you provide financial support, but you can tie your cause to your self-identity and transform not only your community, but yourself.

If you do your generational research you’ll find an awful lot of evidence to suggest that this is how younger donors want to get involved. My Colorado Project builds on that interest and offers a very personal and meaningful way to be introduced to giving and develop as a philanthropist.

What was the process, costs, and development of MCP like?

The greatest obstacle for me as the manager of the project is to create a website which meets the user-experience standards of the average Millennial. Do you know how hard that is?! We Millennials (I stand accused with a b-day of 1980) are a fickle bunch and our expectations are high. We’re used to cruising around multi-million dollar websites that have teams of designers, copy editors, and testers.

My Colorado Project has had to make the most of every dollar invested in the project. Every Nonprofit Pro reading this is going to laugh at my feeble attempt at pity!

But we have one thing working in our corner. We have 7 skilled and wicked smart nonprofit Pros who know our community, know our sector, and know philanthropy. We’ve been doing it for 25 years and have proven that our accessible, inclusive, and incremental model adds value.

We’re fortunate to have been able to present this idea to funders who have given us a great start and we recently struck up a relationship that we’re very proud of with one of Denver’s most innovative nonprofits, the Open Media Foundation. They are helping us build the next phase of development  and we hope that our relationship will extend above and beyond that relationship and into entertaining and valuable content development.

My Colorado is completely replicable and we hope that we can share it with other communities.

Can you share some examples of how groups have used the platform so far?

It has been super enjoyable to see both our nonprofit members and passionate individuals use My Colorado Project in its Beta stages.

First are those I call the Ambassadors. About a year or so ago Community Shares started using different terminology to describe our volunteers.  We wanted to refresh how our most committed supporters think of themselves.  Not only are ambassadors treasured donors and drivers of a mission, but in this age of social media they have also become the most important spokespeople and storytellers a nonprofit can have.

Fundraising 101 tells us that the most impassioned and successful messages are the stories that come right from the mouths of people who have shared a significant life experience with that organization. Many giving circles are started by a single individual with an extraordinary attachment to a cause or organization in particular.  They tell their stories, recruit their friends, and use use mainstream social media tools to expand their cause. The cause becomes part of their personal brand and they wear it with pride.

If they are really savvy, they ask for help from the organizations to build trust, and keep the giving circle growing.

One of the giving circles I like is the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network Denver.  They’ve used their giving circle to bring in current and past board members to establish a foundation of donor support that they can count on year in and year out. This is a great first step for an organization which is largely staffed by the board of directors themselves.

“Annie’s Amazing Animals” is another inspiring effort.  Annie, who is 8 years old, posted a video asking for donations to her favorite nonprofits instead of gifts! She far exceeded her giving goals and posted a video thank you to her supporters.

My Colorado allows donors to start giving circles and support up to four different nonprofits with as little as $5 a month. The purpose of this is to give donors flexibility to be themselves and support multiple causes. I like to think of some of them as “nonprofit mutual funds.”

One of my favorite moments was when Robert Egger, the founder of DC Central Kitchen and V3, came to visit us a while back and his advice to me was to “keep it local and make sure it translates offline.” I have my notes from that meeting on the bulletin board above my desk.

There are very few things that are as empowering as the internet. I’ve noticed my own personal tendency to want to take projects that were originally small in scale and offer them to the entire world!  But, I think that social media will see a slight correction after its astronomical rise and more and more people will try to fill in the local gaps that really big national websites have missed.  I think My Colorado Project will be attractive because it is small and community based.

What were you most surprised about with the process and adoption – what were you least surprised about?

After this next phase of development is over in February – monthly contests – we’ll take a break from development for a second to focus more on the promotion of the project. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am by the adoption of the program with so little marketing on our part. We’ve really only just begun the extended roll-out phase and already we have thousands of new dollars circulating through the community. We’re a long way from our potential but it is a rewarding start.

What was the role of community in building this platform and now in the further improvements and development?

We’re very conscious of building a Colorado asset with the input and needs of the Colorado community in mind.  Community Shares is first and foremost an organization committed to the 100+ member nonprofits we serve.  Our role in the community is unique in that we interact regularly with local funders and associations, thousands of individual donors and employees, more than 150 businesses, and our 100+ nonprofits and those they serve.

In addition to our staff’s ability to be in 20 places at once, we also did our homework before embarking on such an ambitious goal. As a part of Community Shares’ capacity building program we sponsored a study and subsequent toolkit for Colorado nonprofits titled, Engaging Tomorrow’s Donors Today, which surveyed over 700 donors on generational differences in giving and analyzed the role of social media and e-philanthropy in a rapidly changing sector.

We’re entering the fun part now where we get to more widely market My Colorado Project, but our My Colorado 25 – our first group of giving leaders – and more than 100 nonprofits stand at the ready to tell us what they think and what they want. The time to stand aside and let the comments roll in is near!

What’s on the list for next developments?

The Personal Philanthropy Plan is next. The first phase of that robust effort will be a monthly contest which will use creative and thought-provoking questions to help Coloradans have fun and think more about the values and interests they are most interested in pursuing from a philanthropic perspective.  After that we’ll begin building a more robust plan that each participant can fill out to set goals and put a plan into place to become more strategic and focused in their approach.  Wow – that doesn’t sound like fun! But it will be! It will be, I promise that it will be super fun!

The neat part about My Colorado is that there is always another cause and another organization to hear from and learn about. Always another donor perspective and content to view. The showcase for our community’s nonprofits is going to be more vibrant than ever before.

How can people join or follow your work?

Community Shares and My Colorado Project are both really easy to follow and learn about. If you want to know more about My Colorado Project, please visit the website and take a test drive by forming a giving circle. Whether you’re from this great state, have relatives or friends here, visit occasionally for recreation, or have just been here to catch a connecting flight we hope you’ll support our grassroots initiative. If you’d like to form a giving circle but don’t see your desired beneficiary, you can suggest any 501 c3 as a beneficiary of your giving personal circle.

• @mycoloradoproj
• www.mycoloradoproject.org
• @csharescolorado
• www.cshares.org
• Community Shares FB

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).

• Social Networking Sites Move Into Charity World – NYTimes.com – "Crowdrise, Jumo, Causecast, Causes on Facebook and others try to use social networking and crowdsourcing to build interest in charities and causes, and to help them attract donations. … But to many in the nonprofit world, the value of the sites remains to be seen. For one thing, they hand partial control over charity brand names and trademarks to users who are often unknown to the nonprofit groups they support. And virtually all of them ask users to pay to donate."
• Target community for best return on social media efforts – My recent interview with the Nonprofit Business Advisor is out! I talked with Kelly Sullivan about some of the most common mistakes or myths nonprofits have about social media, as well as opportunities to get started strategically. Would love to hear your thoughts and additional pointers you share with nonprofit leaders looking to dive into social media!
• An Important New Foundation Blog | Tactical Philanthropy – Great post from Sean about a new blog from the Peery Foundation. Does your organization have a blog? I'm interested in what you think about the reflections Sean shares and what you've learned from running your blog. "The reason I’m excited about the Peery Foundation blog is because I think that Dave and Jessamyn get that social media is best understood as a conversation and a conversation is most interesting when you focus on listening and learning. They’re even willing to take listening to extremes, such as this recent post by Jessamyn in which she attempts to crowdsource her own annual review by asking readers who she has interacted with to give her feedback on how she’s doing. While she offers the option of emailing her the response, she encourages people to post their feedback as a public comment."
• Get Your Group On: Introducing Posterous Groups – The Official Posterous Posterous – "Today we’re announcing Posterous Groups, a new service for communicating privately with your friends, family and colleagues." I use Posterous for my personal blog and have found it to be a easy platform – curious if others are using it for their organization or community group and if the groups feature is something you'd like to try!
• Yes, Finds Pew Study, People Will (and Do) Pay For Digital Content – "For a long time – right or wrong – content on the Internet has been synonymous with "free." Free music. Free videos. Free access to your local newspaper. Free blogs. And so some have worried that people might be reluctant to actually spend money to buy digital content if they can already find it (or something similar) online without having to pay. But a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project should assuage some of those fears. In fact, almost two-thirds of Internet users have paid for digital content."

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).

• YouTube Goes Fully Social And Challenges Facebook | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging."
• Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project – "Last week a reporter from the New York Times read our recent Government Online report and emailed me with a question—how did I explain the disparity between African-Americans' and Hispanics' views of the importance of government social media versus whites? Did I think it had anything to do with minorities being more trusting of the government during the Obama era? Since my reply got pared down due to space constraints, I’m reproducing my response to his query in full below."
• The new JustGiving Facebook app is here « JustGiving blog – JustGiving has a new facebook application out! It launches alongside the current JustGiving application for Facebook which was launched in 2007, which has seen over a half million users – and over 139,000 active in the past month – and over 9500 fans. The JustGiving team is always great about sharing stories, lessons, and insights – so I'll be watching to see how this new tool goes!
• Wild Apricot Blog : Make Your Own Infographic – "Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Yesterday we looked at an interesting infographic that suggested a new way to view your volunteers. Today, let’s look at infographics in general – and resources to help your nonprofit get started on making your own."
• Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right | Beth’s Blog – "The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works. It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem. In this interview, Jennifer Ford Reedy, VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management, at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success."

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).

• More Startups. More Jobs. – Here's a great conversation starting piece by Eric Ries: "Advanced countries are competing to attract the world’s best entrepreneurs — the US should too. Entrepreneurship is one of the most significant contributors to a nation’s prosperity. In an increasingly globalized economy, many of the advanced nations in the world are racing to attract the brightest entrepreneurial minds, regardless of their country of origin. The startups created by these highly skilled immigrants will generate most of the jobs and wealth in these countries in the future. This is a race we cannot afford to ignore."
• 2009 In Social Media: A Cartoon Review – Rob Cottingham, from Social Signal, created a very fun video that recaps all the major contributions of social media to the world in 2009 – think you were on top of it all? Well, check out Rob's video and see what you missed!
• Highlights from My Conversation with Tori Tuncan, Founder of Lend4Health – Zane Safrit – "Tori Tuncan, founder of Lend4Health, joined the show recently. Lend4Health is a non-profit organization that facilitates community-funded, interest-free micro-loans as a creative funding option for individuals and groups seeking optimal health. Currently, Lend4Health is facilitating loans for the "biomedical" treatment of children and adults with autism spectrum and related disorders. Tori shared the story of her journey to date with Lend4Health, helping children and their families who experience autism spectrum and related disorders." You can listen to the audio recording of the interview or read the transcript.
• How Digitized Content Democratizes Knowledge – PC World – "If you follow the trend lines for book and magazine availability, pricing and the costs of distribution and digital storage, we'll soon find ourselves living in a world where literally millions of titles are available to just about everyone, just about all the time. How will that change human culture?" This very interesting post from PC World explores implications of the changing digital landscape – it's a great read!
• Chief Reputation Officer: Whose Job Is It, Anyway? – Forbes.com – "n the 20th century, PR and marketing were separate but unequal career paths, and CMO was the highest-ranking and most-respected title to which one in those jobs could aspire. The standard career paths in these areas were relatively linear: As a lead communicator, you went to j-school, did a turn in journalism or an agency and then apprenticed under a "gray hair" boss until he retired. This is compared with the typical path of a chief marketing officer, who got his or her M.B.A. in marketing, hired agencies that made him or her look good, learned how to manage big budgets and award-winning creative and then got in the running for the corner office. Today that is changing because of the increasing importance of reputation management."