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).

• Is For-Profit the Future of Non-Profit? – Amy Schiller – The Atlantic – “Charity is for patsies. If you really care about making the world a better place, buy a trendy bag. That was the logic Lauren Bush Lauren articulated in a 2013 interview about FEED, a for-profit entity she founded that creates simple, eco-friendly tote bags whose price covers the cost of donating school meals to children in Rwanda via the UN World Food Program”
• What Solutions Are Hiding In Our PDFS? : The Rockefeller Foundation – “The World Bank recently published a noble and important report with answers to the question Is anyone reading our reports and publications? They note that nearly 50 percent of their policy reports have the goal to inform and influence the social impact sector, yet more than 31 percent of these reports are never downloaded, and 87 percent are never cited.”
• Google’s Ray Kurzweil: The Business Of Extending Human Life Is Going Into “High Gear” | Co.Exist | ideas impact – “Over the last many centuries, human life expectancy has very gradually lengthened with improved health and medical technologies and research. In the next 20 years, we can expect our expected life spans to be extended at a far more rapid pace than in the past.”
• Facebook Manipulated User News Feeds To Create Emotional Responses – “Facebook conducted a massive psychological experiment on 689,003 users, manipulating their news feeds to assess the effects on their emotions. The details of the experiment were published in an article entitled “Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks” published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The short version is, Facebook has the ability to make you feel good or bad, just by tweaking what shows up in your news feed.”
• Which Social Networks Are Growing Fastest Worldwide? – eMarketer –

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 Rise Of Women In Tech | MBA Online – “It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …The benefits for women who enter tech are hard to deny. They experience smaller wage gaps due to gender than women in other industries. But the relationship between women and tech companies isn’t one-sided – the companies get some nice perks, too. Companies whose boards of directors contain 3 or more female members had higher returns on sales, returns on investments and returns on equity. The infographic below delves deeper into how the phenomenon of women in tech is on the rise.”
• Social Media for Social Good [Infographic] – “In our new Social Media for Social Good infographic, we profile several successful grassroots and nonprofit campaigns, explain tactics that increase the impact of a message, and explore emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering.”
• A new study asks: Should the nonprofit and charitable sectors engage in political activity? : Bright+3 – “Should nonprofits engage in political activity on issues that broadly impact the nonprofit sector? That’s one question posed by a new study, Beyond The Cause: The Art and Science of Advocacy, and the conclusion is, well, inconclusive. It turns out that there just isn’t much consensus across the sector on this very basic – if difficult – question.”
• It’s official: News consumption is all about social and mobile — Tech News and Analysis – “New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network.” Where do you get your news?
• ROI: How Infographics Can Help Your Business [Infographic] | Social Media Today – “With the infographic craze in full-swing, you might ask: Are infographics just a pretty way of displaying data, or will they actually benefit my business? Earlier this summer we published a Sensible Social Media Checklist for Business. The first version of the infographic was published on June 15th and included Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. The popularity of the graphic prompted us to publish a second version of the checklist to include even more social media channels – specifically Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+. The second version of our infographic went online on July 19th, and was even more successful! Hundreds of bloggers posted our checklist on their own blogs, and over 2000 people downloaded the checklist as a reference to use in their own social media strategy. To showcase our results, we decided to create an infographic to demonstrate the ROI (Return on Infographics) and results we experienced.”

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).

• Dear Community Managers, don’t be hard on yourself, it’s your company culture that’s not ready to be “social” – The Buzz Bin – "In my ten years of working with corporate communications and marketing pros across Fortune 500, small to medium sized organizations, I have come across two specific types of organizations: i) organizations that have a culture of learning, collaboration and hence find ways to increase efficiencies and ii) companies that have the same beliefs but those beliefs never made it past the MISSION STATEMENT.  I have no problem against the latter as long as you are positively affecting the company’s bottom line and meeting your goals but I do have a few things to say to social media strategists who have been hired to do their job but end up spending more time just wrestling within their office corridors to go “social.”"
• Microsites for Nonprofits: Your Questions Answered | NTEN – "What do you do when you want to give extra publicity to a specific cause or campaign? Featuring one campaign too prominently could distract from other things. If you don't feature your campaign enough, it could get lost in the mix. So what's the solution? One proven method quickly growing in popularity is the microsite. A microsite is a mini-website, generally two to four pages, focused on a specific topic or campaign. These mini-websites are usually graphic-heavy and have very straightforward, action-oriented copy. Actions can include making donations, social media sharing, signing a petition, and more. Microsites can also promote dynamic content."
• Why Being Good Enough Is Never Enough on the Internet – Forbes – This is an important post I think everyone should read! Thanks to Deanna Zandt for being so thoughtful and smart in her analysis: "Let’s break down why the meritocracy myth is both so pervasive and problematic. The Internet is indeed a blank canvas in many ways. The egalitarian nature of the web as platform — for example, technically, no link or traffic is prioritized over another — makes it easier to connect people and ideas that were previously isolated. In the early days of the web, it was stunningly clear to most of us that we could do whatever we wanted, and that freedom was intoxicating. What we weren’t paying attention to was how we brought the advantages we carry in our offline lives– often defined by race, gender, class, and now, technological access and skill– to that blank canvas."
• Ushahidi and the Long Tail of Mapping for Social Change | TechPresident – I couldn't agree more with David's post and analysis of DeadUshahidi, a directory of "dead" installations of the open source Ushahidi mapping platform. Read the full post to hear both David's take, and suggestions for success from Patrick Meier. "DeadUshahidi’s mocking tone towards maps it deems ineffective, without any understanding of the goals of the groups behind them, is problematic. Moreover, mocking people or organizations whose maps don’t succeed hardly seems noble, and could even deter experimentation. In Silicon Valley, they say they celebrate failures and their lessons as key to a culture of innovation and success. While its intentions are ultimately good, it is hard to see how DeadUshahidi fosters such a culture in the world of crisis management."
• Millennial Presence in the Media | Mobilize.org – Did you read the list from ABC4.com of 8 characteristics of Millennials? I think Nathan has a great post here highlighting how off the mark some of those "characteristics" are, especially the idea that all Millennials would be considered Socialists! What do you think?

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).

• Semphonic Web Analytics Consulting: The X Change Non-Profit Analytics Challenge – "The Non-Profit Analytics Challenge is a rare opportunity for the brightest analysts in the digital measurement field to collaborate & assist non-profit organizations to optimize their websites. The Analytics Challenge is a ½ day event at X Change conference on September 13th. Semphonic President and Conference Founder Gary Angel says " What a gift to have the best minds in the industry to work together and the big bonus is helping 2 chosen non-profit organizations."" Apply today!
• Twive and Receive Reveals the Top 20 Most Generous Cities & Who Would Win In A Fight Between the Hulk and a Kitten | Razoo Media Room – "Julie Nations, the Executive Director of The Ellie Fund said “It’s been the best communications outreach program we’ve ever done. Like every nonprofit, we wanted that prize money, but this was a bigger opportunity. It got us using social media in a way we hadn’t before, and our supporters loved it. This was a real chance to harness social media across all platforms. We reached out to people we’ve never met and got them onboard. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can give.’ I say everybody can be great because everybody can Twive!”"
• What Are We Accomplishing and How Do We Know? | NTEN – Here's a great run-down from Amy Luckey of the process to use in exploring and evaluating your organization's impact. And she uses NTEN as an example so you can see all the work we've been doing to figure this out for our strategic plan, too: "What does your organization do?" That is a question most nonprofit folks can answer pretty easily. We have our elevator pitches ready to go. "What is your organization accomplishing?" Now that's a different question, one that's not as simple to answer for most of us. It's also one that is increasingly being asked by potential donors big and small.
• 7 Social Media experiments we tried with the 99% Power Coalition | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Joe Solomon does a great job sharing the tools, tactics, and mini-campaigns used in the recent 99% Power Campaign. I don't necessarily agree with all the tactics, but I SO appreciate him sharing their work! What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
• 75% of Young Adults Gave to Charity Last Year, Study Finds – News – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The new Millennial Donor Survey is out! "Charities rarely make deliberate efforts to solicit young adults because they think people in their 20s and early 30s are unlikely to give. But a new survey of more than 6,500 people ages 20 to 35 shows they are inclined to give—and are more than willing to ask their friends and relatives to do the same—when they feel passionately about a cause. About 75 percent of young people who provided data for the 2012 Millennial Impact Report said they gave money to a nonprofit in 2011, while 70 percent said they have helped solicit donations by encouraging colleagues and others to support a cause."
• Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator | Call2Action – Great case study about Feeding America's recent multi-channel campaign: "Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action. Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities."

Location: Harrisburg, PA

Topic: Using Social Media to Tell Your Story and Raise Funds

Description: Is social media helping you reach your organizational goals and meet your mission? Is it even helping you raise money to support your work? This session will provide an overview of the latest research on social networking and online fundraising and provide some guidelines and best practices to get you started today. Whether you’ve been using Facebook for years or aren’t quite sure what all this “tweeting” is about, this session will have information and resources you can put to use right away.

Related Links:

• PANO Conference
• Pennsylvania Association for Nonprofit Organizations
• Session slides
• NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network
• eNonprofit Benchmarks Report
• Nonprofit Social Networking Report

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).

• Constant Contact Survey Reveals Social Media is a Critical Marketing Tool for Event Planners; Usage Expected to Increase | Business Wire – "A new survey from Constant Contact® finds that social media marketing has become a critical marketing tool for small businesses and nonprofits planning events, with 77% of event planners currently using social media to market their events, and another 14% planning to do so in the next year. The survey also reports that event planners still rely heavily on email marketing, online event marketing tools, websites, and print advertising to promote their events, indicating that traditional forms of event marketing still play an essential role in promoting an event." Get the free ebook "The State of Event Marketing" at: http://img.constantcontact.com/docs/pdf/EVM-EBOOK.pdf
• Upgrading Voter Registration – "Approximately 24 million active voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or have significant inaccuracies, according to the Pew Center on the States. Research in Pew's report, Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient, underscores the need for registration systems that better maintain voter records, save money, and streamline processes. This is an effort that eight states are spearheading with Pew’s support." Registering people to vote, so long as you allow anyone to register for any party and do not advocate for specific voting actions, is not outside your 501c3 status. I really wish more organizations included voter registration efforts in their community work!
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Digital Activism | The Meta-Activism Project – "Usually when we talk about digital activism we talk about concrete anecdotes (the Arab Spring, the 2012 presidential race, the Koman/Planned Parenthood blow-up) or abstract trends (slacktivism, cyber-war, hacktivism).  What we rarely talk about is how we talk about digital activism: Is our focus in the right place? Do we know what we’re talking about? Are we being honest?"
• Jillian C. York » The Arab Digital Vanguard: How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution – This is a terrific piece from Jillian York – a must read on digital activism! "This article was first published in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Vol. 13 Issue 1 (Winter/Spring 2012), “Language, Identity and Politics” and is re-published here with permission."
• The Age of Mobile Email Has Arrived. Are You Ready? | NTEN – "What if you found out that one-quarter of your subscribers were reading your emails on their mobile phones? There’s a good chance they already are. (And if they’re not, they will be soon!) As of November 2011, 89.6 million Americans are using their mobile phones to access their work or personal email. That's an increase of 28% in the last year alone."

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).

• Eric Lanke: Stop Calling It Strategic Planning – "So I'm working my way through Humanize, and like most everyone else, I'm really enjoying it. This will probably be the first of several posts describing the thoughts it provokes for how I am and should be running my association. But dare I start with the endlessly controversial subject of strategic planning? I've heard Jamie Notter (and others) decry this staple of association board meetings as a tool whose time has come and gone, but it wasn't until I read the treatment of it in Humanize that I really understood what he was talking about. And it's convinced me of one undisputable fact. I need to stop calling what my association does strategic planning."
• 2011 NTEN Champions Fundraising Campaign by the Numbers | NTEN – "The funny thing about being the Nonprofit Technology Network is that it can be really hard to practice what we preach. You may recall that the NTEN community recently helped us raise over $15,000 to host more local events throughout 2012. We learned so much while running that campaign, but we also made lots of mis-steps along the way. One of the things we wished for as we navigated the campaign: benchmarks. Besides average gift amount, what might we expect?"
• New Research Proves the Business Case for Product Giving : PitchEngine : Get the Word Out™ – "New research from Indiana University concludes that businesses can do well by doing good through product philanthropy.  Donating products to charities helps corporate bottom lines, reduces waste in landfills, and provides relief for people in need. With a record number of Americans living in poverty today, product donations allow people to use their limited resources to pay for food, health care, prescription drugs, utilities and other vital needs. The study, released today by Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), provides the first detailed examination of the return on investment for donating merchandise as opposed to liquidating or destroying it."
• Is email going out with 2011? | craigconnects – "I took a look at a few articles and studies, and according to ComScore's 2010 Digital Year in Review, email use dropped 59% among Internet users ages 12 to 17 in 2010. Users ages 18 to 54 have reportedly turned away from email, as well — many are instead communicating through social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. An increase in email use, however, was visible in the 55+ age group, who used web-email 15% more in 2010 than in 2009. The report also went into detail on what sites people spent their time on: it illustrated that time spent on webmail sites declined while social networking sites increased considerably." Would love to hear what your experience and perception of email use is! For me, I see the way I use email and treat email changing, but the importance and irreplaceability (is that a word?) of it staying the same. You?
• Multiple Constituent Groups, One Database: Case Studies | Idealware – A great collection of three case studies from very different organizations, including Fight Colorectal Cancer, Sarah's, and Earthjustice. How are you managing your data?

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).

• Why Real-World Socializing Is the Next Big Thing for Social Media – "From the Latin root socials, meaning “united, living with others,” the word social is firmly grounded in the physical world and implies face-to-face interaction. If you’re a social person, it means you like to spend time with other people. But this definition conflicts with today’s concept of social networking, in which we interact primarily with screens rather than with people."
• Here’s What People Look at on Facebook Brand Pages – "In an effort to catch your eye on their Facebook pages, brands have experimented with apps and splashy profile photos. But in almost all cases, it turns out, the humble Facebook wall itself steals the show. In an webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, the 30 participants who viewed top Facebook brand pages almost always looked at pages’ walls first — usually for at least four times longer than any other element on the page."
• The Buzz Builders Blog – "As Habitat for Humanity celebrates their 35th anniversary, along with the completion of their 500,000th home this month, they’re jumping on the “social” train and investing in new web tools that integrate the “social media experience” with the “volunteer experience.” Check out these three great tools that Habitat has developed to make volunteering more social in this digital age."
• How One Company Saved Thousands of Dogs Using Social Media – Great post from Frank Barry with beginner, intermediate and advanced levels! "Social media is all the rage, but does it actually help create real change in the world? The folks at Best Friends Animal Society would answer with a resounding yes! Best Friends has introduced the Invisible Dogs Campaign, a nod to the invisible dog leash from the ‘70s and ‘80s. “Invisible dogs” refer to the forgotten pets found in city shelters that face tremendous odds to get adopted. “[We’re] turning that into a real message about adopting dogs unseen in the nation’s shelters,” explains Claudia Perrone, marketing manager for Best Friends. Best Friends provides a valuable example of social media mobilizing people to take action in the real world."
• What Nonprofits Can Learn From Occupy Wall Street – Social Good – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – "In the six week since Occupy Wall Street began its protests, the movement has spread across the country. Nonprofits that want to create movements that take hold and spread fast need look no further than the We Are the 99 Percent Tumblr blog, says Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum. Where nonprofits often stumble in their social-networking efforts, he says, is by creating campaigns that are "a little too slick, a little too professional, a little too cautious, a little too controlled.""

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 Complexity of Scaling Up « Aid on the Edge of Chaos – "Despite increased prominence and funding of global health initiatives, attempts to scale up health services in developing countries are failing, with serious implications for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. A new paper argues that a key first step is to get a more realistic understanding of health systems, using the lens of complex adaptive systems."
• How can I organise social reporting from events? | ICT-KM of the CGIAR – "Over the last couple of years, whenever we have been involved in social reporting at the Share Fairs, conferences, workshops and smaller events we have attended, we have noticed similar challenges and successes. So, when the ICT-KM Program was tasked with organising the social reporting for the Share Fair on Agricultural and Rural Development Knowledge in Africa in Addis Ababa in October 2010, it was clear that it was high time that we document the social reporting team’s experiences and lessons learned in a generic guide. If you are going to organise an event, a conference or a public meeting, you should seriously consider organising a team of social reporters to help spread the information and stimulate conversations before, during and after the event."
• The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide – "With more than 750 million people signed up for Facebook alone, there’s little doubt that social media can be a powerful part of most organizations’ communications mix. But what can it be used for—outreach and engagement? Event management? Advocacy? How about fundraising? For many nonprofits, it’s far more obvious that such tools can be useful than how to use them. We created the Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide to help organizations like yours determine what results and benefits you can reasonably expect from social media, and to guide you through the process of identifying the right channels for different goals. To help you turn the theoretical into the practical, we included a workbook that applies what you’re learning to your own real-world needs. This year, we updated the entire guide with new research, additional sections on goals and strategies, and information about using social media for advocacy and fundraising."
• 11 Innovative Crowdfunding Platforms for Social Good – "Why crowdsource? In addition to funding, the tools below can engage new supporters, constituents and future advocates. If it’s ideas you’re looking for, collaborative thinking can provide solutions faster and with input from people with diverse backgrounds, thus strengthening the project. Also, by involving people in the early stages, they will feel more connected to the project, and likely repeat their support and advocacy. Below, we’ll look at some of the best crowdsourcing platforms on the web, along with successful campaigns funded on each one."
• The State Of Social Media 2011: Social Is The New Normal | Fast Company – "The state of social media is no insignificant affair. Nor is it a conversation relegated to a niche contingent of experts and gurus. Social media is pervasive and it is transforming how people find and share information and how they connect and collaborate with one another. I say that as if I'm removed from the media and cultural (r)evolution that is digital socioeconomics. But in reality, I'm part of it just like everyone else. You and I both know however, that' I'm not saying anything you don't already know. Social media is clearly becoming the new normal."