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Why Nonprofit Managers Must Use RSS ... And How to Start

Democracy in Action has a great little article on Why Nonprofit Managers Must Use RSS ... And How to Start. Although the pitch is a little on the information-overload anxiety-laden side for my tastes, I agree with their essential point and believe that leaders who figure out how to aggregate their personal information flows will do well. This article lays out all the basic steps. Posted: 3/24/08; 8:19:05 PM #

Synergos Knowledge Base: Partnership-Building Processes

Synergos is an international anti-poverty organization focused on leadership networks and systemic, lasting change. As you might imagine, they are sitting on a vast amount of learning that they have accumulated in their twenty years of existence. The Synergos Knowledge Base collects some of this learning, focused on the topic of philanthropy and partnerships. I was particularly interested in the section on Partnership-Building Processes, but I recommend you scan it yourself for items of interest. There are gems buried in here. Posted: 3/24/08; 8:14:13 PM #

The Codebreakers
	The 2006 BBC documentary The Codebreakers is a great place to start if you're interested in seeing how organizations in developing nations are using free and open source software to get around U.S. corporate monopolies on computing. Posted: 3/24/08; 8:00:28 PM #

A Good Name Dragged Down: The Terrible Reach of the US Watch List
	In A Good Name Dragged Down, Ellen Nakashima looks at just how out of control the U.S government's terrorist watch list is. I would love to see U.S nonprofits poll their activists and donors to see how many of their own stakeholders have been caught in this appalling dragnet. Posted: 3/24/08; 7:58:10 PM #

Google for Non-Profits

Much has been made in some circles recently about the launch of Google for Non-Profits, the nonprofit-centric layer of language on top of Google's many excellent ad-supported services. It's a fine idea, of course. However, I wish there were a section entitled Is Google for Nonprofits Right for You. For example, if you have even the slightest bit of worry about the privacy of your users from government spying, I would be highly cautious about this. Google has been more cooperative with both China and the Bush administration than I think is appropriate for the smaller, more vulnerable activist organizations that might gravitate toward the Google platform. Posted: 3/24/08; 7:55:21 PM #

Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out

A recent article in the New York Times on the sad state of many municipal wireless projects in the U.S. is entitled Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out. It describes how commercial ISPs (primarily EarthLink) that were partnering with cities to provide access are now pulling out of these projects because they don't see them as profitable. What the article fails to reveal is the heavy-handed political pressure the ISPs put on cities to make sure they got a piece of the action in the first place. Maybe now these cities can finally get on with the business of creating public utilities and nonprofit projects for this purpose, rather than trusting these so-called partners. Posted: 3/24/08; 7:49:32 PM #