The Nonprofit Matrix is an online directory and guide to Application Service Providers (ASPs) and portals offering web-based services for nonprofits and charities.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 07:46am
Idealware has released a well-resesarch guide to help nonprofits make decisions about using social media.
Social media can be useful to your organization… but how useful? For what? What tangible results are people seeing from it? Created in partnership with the New Organizing Institute, the Decision Guide walks you through a step-by-step process to decide what social media channels make sense for your organization via a workbook, guide, and the results of more than six months of research.
> Download the guide
April 15th, 2010 at 05:58am
Updated from idealware, their popular guide “A Few Good Broadcast Email Tools”
“Email newsletters, action alerts, or fundraising emails can be a very cost effective way to communicate with your supporters, but it can be complex to send and track thousands of emails. We talked to eleven nonprofit technology experts to find out what eNewsletter tools have worked well for them.“
This handy one-pager offers essential advice on selecting a Broadcast Email vendor. Topic covered include:
- Tools You Already Have
- Online Mass Emailing Tools
- For the more Technically Inclined
- How to Decide
> Read idealware: A Few Good Broadcast Email Tools
June 9th, 2009 at 09:46am
Nonprofit marketing gurus Katya Andresen and Kivi Leroux Miller have published a free guide “Nonprofit Email Marketing Guide: 7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising & Communications”. The guide is downloadable in pdf format and uses a powerpoint-style layout that is accessible and easily digestible – covering an impressive amount of best practices and learnings from the front line.
From Katya Andresen’s blog:
At Network for Good, we’re troubled by the high volume of bad email in our sector. Just the other day, we were dismayed to get an email newsletter sent via bcc on Outlook as a PDF attachment. A triple bad! So we wanted to do something about it. With Kivi Leroux Miller, we put together an eBook on good email. And made it free. To you. Because you have a great mission, and so you need great email.
It covers:
Step 1: Get a Good Email Service Provider
Step 2: Get Your Mailing List into Shape
Step 3: Figure Out What Your Readers Want
Step 4: Compose Email Works of Beauty
Step 5: Make Your Microcontent Even Better
Step 6: Design Your Email Messages
Step 7: Track Your Results and Improve Your Program
> Download the guide here
June 5th, 2009 at 10:38am
Andy Beal at marketingpilgrim.com has compiled an impressive list of tools for monitoring your company or organization’s presence in social media (i.e. online). Good chance that there’s something new in here for everyone.
There are a lot of companies that will happily relieve you of your dollars, in exchange for buzz monitoring services. While many large companies will enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having a company track their reputation for them, the rest of us need something a little less expensive–or better yet, free!
We’ve compiled a list of twenty six buzz monitoring tools that are free of charge. Use these tools to keep track of your company reputation or even spy on your competition! Take a look at Trackur.com if you need all-in-one social media monitoring tools.
> Read the full post
June 1st, 2009 at 11:22am
Frank Barry at NetWit’s Think Tank summarizes recommendations from NTEN’s recent eNonprofit Benchmarks Study.
According to the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study released by NTEN, Email is still the “killer app” we all thought it was when it came out!
That said, we know that Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others are growing at astonishing rates. Facebook reached 200 Million users according to Mark Zuckerberg. Twitter grew by 1382% in February of 2009 according to Nielsen. YouTube shows that 14.8 billion online videos were watched in January 2009 alone according to Google Source.
So what do you do? Focus on email acquisition or focus on “joining the conversation” in social media?
> Read the full article
May 28th, 2009 at 09:31am
In a new post on Care2.com’s frogloop blog, Heather Holdridge provides some interesting notes from her session at the Women Who Tech Telesummit about understanding the ROI form nonprofits of investments in social media.
Some Basic 101 Resources and Metrics
ROI = What you spent divided by what you got out of your investment.
The metrics for measuring ROI can be extremely varied. Here are a few examples.
- an awareness study (before and after)
- what percentage of refers are coming from various sites.
- traffic to your site
- Net Promoter Score (NPS is a customer loyalty scale of 0-10 that
asks how likely you would be to refer an organization to a friend)
- number of friends/fans/followers on a particular social network
- the ever important “what your boss wants”
> Read the full article
> listen to a podcast from the session
May 11th, 2009 at 06:12pm
Philanthropy author and “future of fundraising” blogger Lucy Berholtz has kindly shared notes from her presentation at NTEN09 conference on the implications and opportunities of cloud computing for philanthropic organizations.
If history is any guide, we may not be far from the day when managing your foundation’s own data center, IT department, and desktop computers seems as quaint as having your own electrical supply. Online grants management, remote access to secure servers, easier team collaboration – seems to me that foundations and nonprofits that care about spending on mission and cutting administrative costs – might benefit from many of these possibilities.
Why might this matter to philanthropy? Perhaps only in that these tools might allow less money to be spent on managing IT departments and more to spent on mission. Or maybe there is more – sharing information – even something as simple as posting this presentation on SlideShare – matters to how we do things, where and when we do them, and with whom we do them. We can expand our imagination and our work commitment past the idea of giving a speech once or writing a paper for one-time use: they can live on, be amended, copied, re-used, packaged for sale, even serialized. Or not.
> Read the full article
May 9th, 2009 at 10:47am
TechSoup has published a handy guide for nonprofits getting started with Google Maps and Google Earth mapping tools and mashups.
The sophistication of many online maps may intimidate some nonprofits, however, especially those lacking in-house programmers or a developed Web presence. While in the past, online maps may have required high-level programming and a hefty budget, new online mapping tools from companies like Google are allowing more and more organizations to create maps with little outside help or extra funds. While some mapping applications require more specialized skill than others, some can be used by virtually anybody, making them a more viable option for nonprofits.
In this article, we’ll show you how to select an online mapping project that meets your needs and fits within your budget, and provide a detailed overview of a range of Google mapping technologies that can help your organization put its cause (literally) on the map.
> Read A Nonprofit’s Introduction to Google’s Online Mapping Tools
June 3rd, 2008 at 05:12pm
In a major shakeup of the nonprofit platform services sector, Blackbaud has announced plans to acquire the ailing giant Kintera. Kintera has been plagued with poor financial performance in recent quarters, and a buy-out deal was not unexpected.
Under the deal with Blackbaud, Kintera’s primary platform offering, Kintera Sphere with more than 4,000 subscribers, will continue to operate, and will be aligned with Blackbaud’s own online toolset, including Netcommunity, to provide a wider variety of available applications.
According to Blackbaud CEO “Expanding Blackbaud’s online offering in this way further establishes Blackbaud as the leading solutions partner for nonprofit organizations. The online solutions of the two companies have historically served different segments of the market and this acquisition gives us the ability to broaden our addressable market with proven and rich online product functionality.”
Read the press release here.
March 28th, 2007 at 12:34am
Idealware has published an updated version of one of their most popular resource documents from last year: A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools.
Maybe you want to send fancy eNewsletters, or maybe just text action alerts. Perhaps you’re hoping for a tool that can send emails to tens of thousands of people, or perhaps just a few hundred. Maybe you need something that can integrate with your offline database, customize the content for large donors, send emails to tailored segments of your list, or allow custom eNewsletter templates.
Regardless of your precise needs, you no doubt are hoping for a tool that is reliable, affordable, and easy to use.
This free online paper covers the main caegories of email broadcast tools available to organizations:
- Tools You Already Have
(such as Outlook)
- Free List Management Tools
(such as Google/Yahoo! groups)
- Host Mass Emailing Tools
(from many different commercial and nonprofit providers)
Read Idealware’s paper here
View NonProfit Matrix listings for email broadcasting.
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