Nonprofits Facing 2009 Challenges Head On!

The ever changing online landscape with new services, a smarter, more demanding online population, and fewer donors, will leave many nonprofits behind.

The financial service crisis, tighter budgets and higher accountability standards are the offline reality for others. Most nonprofits will face both, and it's not for the faint of heart. There plenty of challenges lying ahead for nonprofits in 2009.

The following articles give you a head start on the tool sets available to face them:

• Survival Guide by Fundraising 123 - 45 pages full of concrete action items to better an online presence, be it a web site, social media, e-mail newsletters and donate buttons. There are no silver bullets, but if you do only half of the suggested actions, you might do much better than 80% of the other nonprofits that compete for the fewer monies available. [Read more...]
  
  
• Strong Led and Under-managed -The Bridgespan Group writes about the apparent rift between leadership and management, and take you on a quest to learn how these leaders have been working to overcome it. They outline the triangle of 1) clarity of strategy, 2) meaningful measurement, accountability and change management, and 3) the barriers and hurdles to overcome, and how to overcome them. The article is remarkable, as it describes plenty of nonprofits I worked with. Board members and Executive Directors, in particular, should read it carefully and find a mirror. [Read more...]
  

Think of the Nike Way: Just do it!

Kids To Kids: About Drugs, About Texting, About Creativity

Jennifer Marquis-Muradaz has been working with groups of kids as part of the 2008 Artists Visiting Kids program, sponsored by the City of Marco Island Department of Parks and Recreation, The Art League, and Marco Island's Center for the Arts. Each of the following shorts are public service announcements created by kids based on themes that were important to them:

Jennifer Marquez-Muradaz is also the US Director of ESC Films, and the producer of their latest Movie, "Mickey B"

Mickey B won the 2008 Roger Graef Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film, part of the national Arthur Koestler Awards. Mickey B was the first UK feature film to be made with prisoners in a maximum-security jail.
ESC = Educational Shakespeare Company

Posted by email from BlueYellowPepper NetJourneys (posterous)

Journalism Tomorrow: A Conversation About Media Bias, Ethics, the 1st Amendment, and the Future of the Press in a Wired World

Phil Lewis, editor of the Naples Daily News, shares his 'Perspective', at a community event coming up in Southwest Florida: The Centennial Forum Celebrating 100 Year National Press Club. The event will be held Monday, December 8th, 2008, at 7 pm, Sugden Theater, 701 First Avenue South, Naples, Florida. Free admission to the public. Reservations needed. Call the Sugden Theater box office: 263-7990.

More information at Naples Press Club site

Apart from the facts about who, what, where and when, Lewis wrote:

Our own Naples Press Club scored quite a coup when it was selected to host the 10th and final National Press Club “Centennial Forum.” Other forums have been held in Washington, D.C., and Denver and at the University of North Carolina and the University of Missouri. This coming week forums will be held at the University of Indiana and at the Gerald Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Mich

(...)

Today, the club [ National Press Club] has the reputation of being the world’s leading journalism organization, having survived two world wars, a depression and the early stages of a digital revolution. The club hosts 70 or more luncheons a year featuring history makers and world leaders. The list over the years is eye-popping: Krushchev, deGaulle, Yeltsin, Mandela. The club has hosted kings and queens and every president since Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s quite an honor that Naples gets a chance to help the club celebrate its 100th year.

Posted by email from BlueYellowPepper NetJourneys (posterous)

Local Governments Should Use Social Media To Promote Tourism, Columnist Writes.

http://www.governing.com/articles/0812techtalk.htm

From the ICMA News Briefing this morning:

Local Governments Should Use Social Media To Promote Tourism, Columnist Writes.

In an article for Governing (Dec. 2008) magazine, Ellen Perlman asks, "Tourism marketing departments of America: Are you working with bloggers, vloggers and podcasters to help promote your state, county, city, park or campground? If not, why not?" She advises "state and local governments...to take lessons on what we'll call 'Online Community 101.'" While having an online presence is a good thing, it "is not the same as building tourism visits by courting the people who write, talk and video about travel digitally." Any local government "tourism bureau that woos and works with these people will likely get some ink. Or pixels, in this case," she writes. For example, "marketing people in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, teamed up with a local group to host a 'pod camp,' a social media get-together for businesses and residents. They showed them around the city in the same way they would a writer from a traditional magazine or newspaper. That night, many bloggers went back to their hotel rooms to write about what they saw and did."

 

 

Posted by email from BlueYellowPepper NetJourneys (posterous)

Introduction to CRM & Salesforce.

Introduction:
CRM = Customer Relationship Management = Lead Management

Nonprofit: who are the Customers? Donors, Members, Volunteers, Community , Beneficiary = Constituents.


Structure of Project: Moving/Changing Software.

1. Creation of a project team
2. Analysis of existing data systems
3. Requirements identification
4. Software analysis
5. Work with software vendor on implementation and customizations
6. Implementation and training
7. Use analysis and change request management
8. Documentation

Short list of available CRMs

CiviCRM www.civiccrm.org
Pro: Free, reasonable user-base
Con: Setup is difficult, UI poor, needs tech resources to get the best from it, works best if using Drupal

Salesforce.com www.salesforce.org
Pro: Free for 10 users, well established, many resources available, feature rich, SAAS & offline facility, powerful free APIs available
Con: $$$ after 10 users, SAAS only

MPower Open www.mpoweropen.com
Pro: Free, mature product, designed for NPO
Con: OS licence has catch, newly OS, requires .NET/SQL Server, no SAAS option, fat client

SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com
Pro: Free, LAMP stack, GPL
Con: Sales orientated (rather than relationships), feature rich, good user-base

NTen.org

Techsoup.org - TechStock

For a more comprehensive list look at

2007_NTEN_CRM_Satisfaction.pdf
Free for Members: CRM Vendor Satisfaction Survey 2007
$50 for Non-Members.

More articles on topic can be found: ie: idealware.org: On low-cost database systems
TechSoup: Comparing Lower-Cost Online Integrated Applications
======================================================


Screen shots of Trial Start:

1- Apply for Trial

2 - After Registration

3- Check e-mail and follow link

4- First Login - create password

5- Add more users

6- First View of the system

Enter the live system.
www.salesforce.com<

This week Google Apps and Salesforce announced their cooperation model. Watch the published Video and learn more on this web page
http://www.salesforce.com/products/google/apps/

Google Grants

http://www.google.com/grants
Google allows qualified nonprofits to use Google Adwords for free.

Organization can use the Google Adwords to drive more traffic to their web sites and therefore raise awareness of their cause and solicit online donations. Google Adwords are the small text ads on the right site of their search results pages.
Google quotes that example organization have increased their donation revenue by 43% or another organization increased their volunteer base by 60% to 70%.

Even if the potential for increased donation might not as big for area non-profits, it still would be worth the effort, as you set it up one time, and then monitor it so you can tweak it to your needs.

To take advantage of this offer, apply for the Google Grant at http://www.google.com/grants through Google's easy online application. Please spend some time reviewing the site to learn more about the program, eligibility, grant details, etc. Google also plans to partner on education initiatives for the nonprofit community, and will be developing these efforts over the next several months.

Better donor administration with Salesforce Foundation

http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/product

Try to manage your donor database, volunteer contact database and other list of contacts, that hooks directly into great online mass mailing tool? Want to better organize fundrasing events and track RSVPs as well as donations? Always tried to compile a donar contact history? With Salesforce you can do all that and more. The most popular CRM online system vendor offers 501(c) 3 organizations a 10 user Enterprise license for free. IF you have tried to use it couple of years ago, you might have found it to be a little overwhelming? That definitely has changed. The foundation's team has created a genuine nonprofit template which stays within the nonprofit language and offer specific forms and reports gear to nonprofit needs. The number online tutorials and videos to almost every aspect of the system is impressive as they are easy to follow. Get rid of your excel spreadsheets, Works databases and Access databases and use an online tools that allows you to grow and use the feature much more efficiently! You will make a much better impression on your donors, because you will know more. And then your organization is set-up to grow it's donor base rapidly.
"Salesforce is currently used by over 2700 nonprofits around the world to manage a wide range of organizational needs including managing constituent relationships, fund raising campaigns, volunteer opportunities, program delivery, and much more."

To learn more about this program and what you can do with it, join me for a hands-on demonstration at their Headquarters on April 25, 2008 9:30am to 12:30pm at the Naples Free-Net Headquarters. Sign up for this course at http://home.naples.net/education.
Later this year I will set-up more sessions as my time will permit.