Nonprofit Online News

Outsmarting the Facebook Lobster Trap: Three Worries, One Guideline, Seven Principles

For years, I put off doing anything that might contribute to the Facebook hype. Today, I think it's a medium to which we should all pay attention and from which we may well benefit, but my criticisms of it are as strong as ever. I describe them, along with some ideas for mitigating them and getting the most out of Facebook, in my new article, Outsmarting the Facebook Lobster Trap: Three Worries, One Guideline, Seven Principles.

The Voice of Your Organization: Making CEO Blogging Work for Everyone

Does your CEO want to blog? Or more likely, does someone else think your CEO should be blogging? They could be right. If you need a clear way to determine if they are, or if you need a clear path toward CEO blogging that suits your organization's circumstances and (importantly) resources, then you might want to consider our newest workshop: The Voice of Your Organization: Making CEO Blogging Work for Everyone, which is a live, ninety minute workshop that will be held on July 22, 2009.

Building National Campaigns: Activists, Alliances, and How Change Happens

Oxfam International has tremendous organizational experience in supporting campaigns around the world. They are also doing their best to share that experience with others. On Building National Campaigns: Activists, Alliances, and How Change Happens (cover page for 115 page PDF and hard copy order, Dave Dalton describes and analyzes five campaigns in Colombia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Among other things, he digs into the practical aspects of building and maintaining alliances in the face of hardships and developing sustainable strategies. Too many case studies barely scratch the surface of replicable lessons and insights and that's often why I don't like them as a teaching tool. But in this case, it's all organized in terms of those lessons and how they can be generalized. I highly recommend it.

Glossary: A Quick Reference for Consultation and Dialogue

I throw around a lot of terms in Nonprofit Online News and I expect readers to know what they are or be willing to look them up. Words and phrases like asynchronous, blog, content management, engagement, and stakeholder. I'm rather pleased to see a good many of these words collected and defined in one place in a glossary of consultation and dialogue terms (9 page PDF) produced by DialogueCircles.

Competition or Collaboration?

Several years ago I had a discussion with a well-known nonprofit technology funder who argued that large results from online nonprofit projects could best be achieved through a winner-take-all model. This was important enough that he even funded an excellent report in support of the argument, and I wanted him to consider funding an alternative point of view: that open standards, open APIs, good business models, a little arm-twisting, and visionary (but not necessarily substantial) funding could accomplish much larger results through nourishing open information ecosystems, innovation, and win-win collaboration. The example at hand at the time was interoperability (or rather lack thereof) between the major online volunteer opportunity databases. So it's with great interest and the investment of years of my own passion for this topic, that I direct you to a conversation on Competition or Collaboration at Social Edge. It's being hosted by Peter Dietz of Social Actions and the trigger once more is interoperability of volunteer opportunity databases! It's already a great discussion.

Hype, Anxiety, and Hope: How To Do Social Media Wrong

We did it with Web 1.0 and we're doing it again. We're told we're falling behind and that we need to catch up with the flock. We're adrift when it comes to meaningful metrics and tangible guidelines. We're looking at social media and framing our strategies in terms of hype, anxiety, and hope. In How To Do Social Media Wrong (and How To Do It Right), I get even more blunt about it. And I offer three symptoms of our errors, four recommended practices, and five ways to get started on a better path.

Beyond the Email Blast Seminar Now Available On Demand

Despite the hype of other media, email is still the single most powerful online communication tool we have. But most of us have managed to treat it like another broadcast tool and then wonder when our open rates and clickthrough rates decline! Why are we surprised? It's basically the same thing we did to postal mail, but it doesn't have to be like that. I am very excited about my seminar entitled Beyond the Email Blast: Tapping the Full Power of Email Marketing. It's now available on-demand, which means you can watch it whenever is most convenient to you. As with all our on-demand seminars, it also includes a 30 minute consultation.