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Liberate Your Space, a YES! Magazine Theme Guide

The current issue of Yes! Magazine is just fantastic. The theme is Liberate Your Space, which is a slightly funky way of describing the enormous range of actions possible in the realm of grassroots activism and social change. (The title really alludes to "Do-It-Yourself Liberation".) Titles from this issue include: Compost Toilets & Self-Rule. Don’t Fall in Love With the Guitarist. Be the Guitarist! Pirates on the Open Airwaves. Building Autonomy, One Co-op at a Time. Zen, Busking & Anarchy. Schools Without Teachers. And Fine Art of Raising a Ruckus. Posted: 12/10/07; 1:15:57 PM #

Signs of Stability: Results of the 2007 GuideStar Nonprofit Economic Survey

GuideStar has released the results of their 2007 Nonprofit Economic Survey and it includes a retrospective of the preceding years' results for comparison. Their main conclusion, in regard to things like contribution trends and demand for services, is that things have held pretty steady. Some of the self-reporting might produce some funky results, but the 3,587 respondents is an interesting sample size to work with. Take a look at the PDF of more extensive survey results for some regional details and the like. Posted: 12/10/07; 1:13:09 PM #

Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns
	If you like examples of punchy, visual social action campaigns, I recommend Osocio, a blog written by a stellar group of international social marketing professionals. In essence, it's an advertising blog, but with an exclusive focus on social advertising. Posted: 12/10/07; 1:05:08 PM #

How to Run Useful, Inexpensive Focus Groups

I'm impressed with the Fieldstone Alliance's recent guide on How to Run Useful, Inexpensive Focus Groups. It's an excerpt from a book (by Judith Sharken Simon), of course, but it's a great little guide on its own. (Unlike those innumerable fluffy "articles" I end up reading, written by the staff of various nonprofit tech vendors.) They lay out a ten step process: (1) Define the Purpose, (2) Establish a Timeline, (3) Identify and Invite the Participants, (4) Generate the Questions to Be Asked, (5) Develop a Script, (6) Select a Facilitator, (7) Choose the Location, (8) Conduct the Focus Group, (9) Interpret and Report the Results, and (10) Translate the Results into Action. Some of the steps are a little lightweight, but the links to additional resources serve to flesh some of them out. The only glaring omission is the subject of how to use the Internet to conduct some or all of these steps. Posted: 12/10/07; 12:58:58 PM #