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Upcoming Email Newsletter Marketing Briefing Sessions

We offer a growing range of online professional briefings, but our most popular remains our series on Email Newsletter Marketing, which will be delivered next on September 13 - 15, 2005. We have some surprises in store for this series related to forthcoming publications and tools. As we exit the American Summer doldrums, now would be a great time to take these workshops! Posted: 8/10/05; 5:43:42 PM #

How Citizens' Groups Destroy Themselves

Charles Dobson's take on How Citizens' Groups Destroy Themselves accurately reflects my own experience with dysfunctional organizations over the years. His key contributors to organizational demise are: (1) too little fun, (2) too much of an inward focus, (3) too many people (interesting one), (4) the wrong people, (5) too little contact, and (6) objectives outmatch resources. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:04:03 PM #

Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom
	The distinctions between Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom are often useless cliches. So I was very pleased to run across Bellinger, Castro, and Mills practical and pithy explanation of the differences. Best of all, these are distinctions that you can apply. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:54 PM #

Build Your Business With Open Source

Infoworld has compiled a truly daunting special report entitled Build your Business with Open Source. If you harbor doubts about the viability of non-proprietary platforms for your work, I highly recommend that you take a look at this report. Rather than touch on only a single issue or skim the surface with an optimistic overview, this report goes into useful detail in several areas, including: constituency relationship management, resource and business process management, telephony, content management, and much more. There is also a "buyers" guide and links to a huge array of resources. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:46 PM #

How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces
	Last year, Roland Tanglao wrote a short piece on How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces. If the mechanics, vocabulary, or the information flows of the world of weblogs are at all unclear to you, I recommend this piece. It takes the form of an excellent content flow diagram that's well annotated and explained. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:36 PM #

Craigslist Nonprofit Boot Camp
	The Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp looks like a great event for people looking to start an organization. It has an engaging attitude and a wide range of very practical sessions. It's only $50 and it looks like a lot of fun. It's on October 8, 2005 in San Francisco. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:19 PM #

Ten Things That Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know About Information Technology

Deborah Elizabeth Finn has listed Ten Things That Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know About Information Technology: (1) Very little technical knowledge is required of you. (2) Your board of directors should participate in your technology planning. (3) High-quality planning resources are available at no charge. (4) You can follow innovations in IT, without a technical background. (5) IT will probably never save your nonprofit organization any money. (6) You need an in-house IT committee. (7) Administrative staff should be the lynchpins of your IT infrastructure. (8) In the long run, IT training and support will make up about 70% of your IT budget. (9) Donated hardware, software, and services can cost a nonprofit more than purchased products or services in the long run. (10) Most strategic IT problems are actually organizational development problems. I don't entirely agree with #4 (I have plenty of cost savings examples) or #8 (I believe that planning and evaluation should have a meaningful chunk of the tech budget), but this is still a list worth talking about. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:02:20 PM #