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Author Archives: Nicole Wallace
September 19, 2012, 6:27 pm
Nonprofits Are Excited—and Confused—About Cloud Computing
A survey of nonprofits around the world finds both great interest and significant confusion about the potential of cloud computing.
Representatives of more than 10,500 charities from 88 countries answered questions about how their organizations use software located on the Internet rather than from a hard drive or local computer network. The survey was conducted by TechSoup Global, a nonprofit technology group.
The study found that most nonprofits already have some experience with cloud computing. Ninety percent of charities reported using at least one online application.
The cloud-based services named most frequently by survey participants were e-mail (55 percent), social networks (47 percent), file storage and sharing (26 percent), Web conferencing (24 percent), and office productivity (23 percent).
But some respondents seemed unaware of which services are cloud-based….
September 5, 2012, 3:06 pm
Tweaking E-Mail for the Mobile Age
Ever since e-mail programs gave users the option of blocking images, many organizations have added short notes to the top of their messages—variations on “Trouble viewing this e-mail? Click here”—to direct recipients to online versions of the e-mails, images and all.
But while the notes make sense for people who read their e-mail on desktop computers, they can reduce the number of people who open the message when checking e-mail on mobile devices, says Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network.
She says that if someone is checking e-mail in a preview pane on a computer, they’ll usually be able to see enough of the message to know what it’s about.
“But on a mobile device, often all you see is a name, some part of the subject line, and then you see, ‘E-mail not displaying correctly?’ and that’s about it,” says Ms. Ross. “It doesn’t give…
July 24, 2012, 5:35 pm
Y of N.Y. Uses Social Media to Collect Stories—and Donors
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A story from the YMCA of Greater New York’s timeline project
To celebrate its 160th anniversary, the YMCA of Greater New York is offering free T-shirts to people willing to share their stories of how the Y has made a difference in their lives.
Within 48 hours of issuing the appeal by e-mail and social media, the organization received nearly 300 stories recounting childhood swimming lessons, triathlon training, exercise programs started after injuries, and long-ago summer camps.
The YMCA has organized the stories—some submitted with photographs—by decade and posted them on a digital timeline. All of the stories that are collected will also be buried in a time capsule beneath the organization’s new Coney Island branch, which is under construction and scheduled to open next spring.
From…
June 15, 2012, 10:45 am
Facebook Fans Increase by 70 Percent at Some Nonprofits
A new report delves into the Facebook activity of 37 large and medium-size nonprofits, including Earthjustice, Easter Seals, and Oxfam America. The organizations in the study had a median of 31,473 Facebook fans, which represented 103 fan-page users for every 1,000 people on their e-mail lists.
The report, which is a follow-up to the 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, was published by M+R Strategic Services, a fundraising consulting company, and the Nonprofit Technology Network.
In 2011, the number of Facebook fans at the charities grew by a median rate of 70 percent from 2010. Growth was highest for wildlife and animal-welfare groups, which had a median growth rate of 129 percent. And only 0.5 percent of fans opted out of receiving the organizations’ messages—either by “unliking” the groups’ pages or by choosing to hide the groups’ posts in their news feed.
The…
April 5, 2012, 2:39 pm
Online Fundraising Increased 19% in 2011, Says New Report
The total that charities raised online jumped 19 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year, and the number of Internet gifts they received climbed 20 percent, according to a new study that analyzes online fundraising and advocacy at 44 national charities.
The 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study was published by M+R Strategic Services, a fundraising consulting company, and the Nonprofit Technology Network.
The share of people who responded to e-mail fundraising appeals and advocacy requests dropped in each of the last five eNonprofit Benchmarks studies. But in 2011, organizations said the percentage who made gifts increased 2 percent and the percentage who responded to advocacy alerts jumped 28 percent.
The increases can be attributed, at least in part, to organizations’ being smarter about their use of e-mail, says Sarah DiJulio, a principal at M+R Strategic Services.
…
April 5, 2012, 11:27 am
Nonprofits Need to Think More About Mobile
The growing number of people using their cellphones to go online is a compelling reason for nonprofits to think more about how they make mobile technology a key part of spreading their messages and operating their programs, Laura Quinn, executive director of Idealware, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference here.
In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 10 percent of cellphone owners said that their phone was their primary means of getting online. For certain demographic groups, such as young people and low-income workers, the percentage was even higher.
The first thing nonprofits should think about, Ms. Quinn said, is how their current Web site appears on cellphones. She recommended visiting the Web site mobilephoneemulator.com to see how an organization’s site looks on different mobile-phone operating systems….
April 5, 2012, 9:20 am
The Dangers of an Inactive E-Mail List
Inactive e-mail lists have always posed a challenge to fundraisers, but as spam filters get more sophisticated, the stakes are getting higher, Dan Atherton, a consultant at Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey, told participants in San Francisco at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
He said e-mail providers like Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo monitor how people interact with an organization’s e-mail communication, and if not enough supporters open the messages, the providers will stop delivering the messages to subscribers’ inboxes.
“If nobody in the first wave of e-mails I send out opens my e-mail, other people won’t even see that e-mail,” said Mr. Atherton. “It will go into their spam folder.”
The Environmental Defense Fund recently ran into the problem with Gmail, said Matthew Grimm, an analyst at the organization.
“We saw our Gmail open rates plummet recently and didn’t…
April 4, 2012, 11:20 am
Balancing ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ Technology Costs
When making purchasing decisions on, profit technology managers need to think about both “hard costs,” such as the price of a new software program, and ”soft costs,” the most important of which is staff time, Richard Wollenberger, director of information technology at the Parents as Teachers National Center, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, in San Francisco.
For example, when his organization recently bought a system that allows the technology department to push out updates to software programs across its network, he took into consideration the staff time that would be saved by eliminating the need to go to each employee’s desk to update the software individually.
“You figure by the time you can get people away from their computer and can go install their updates, you’re probably talking about a half an hour per computer per week,” said Mr….
November 9, 2011, 8:12 am
The Polar Bear Revolution Will Be Televised
Every year an estimated 1,000 polar bears linger outside the small Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over so they can start their annual migration. To give Internet viewers a window onto the Arctic scene, a Bozeman, Mont., nonprofit organization is streaming the action live.
Polar Bears International has placed high-definition cameras onto a lodge and a wildlife-viewing vehicle run by Frontiers North Adventures, an adventure-travel company that organizes trips to see the migration. The cameras provide two live streams.
The Hudson Bay has usually been frozen by the second week of November, but last year it didn’t freeze until a month later, a sign of the Arctic warming that threatens polar bears, says Barbara Nielsen, a spokeswoman for Polar Bears International.
“Every week they’re delayed getting onto the sea ice, they’re having…
May 20, 2011, 10:49 am
Children’s Museum Uses Smartphones to Educate Adults
A mother watches a video she gained access to by scanning a QR code. Courtesy of Children's Museum of Richmond
If Karen S. Coltrane, chief executive of the Children’s Museum of Richmond, had her way, one of the museum’s education experts would accompany every family that walked in the door. But while she laughs at the thought that the Virginia museum would ever have that kind of money, Ms. Coltrane thinks she might have found the next best thing—with a decidedly lower price tag.
The museum has incorporated QR codes—a barcode that smartphones use to link to online information—into four of its main exhibits. And even though the organization has no technology workers, its marketing staff members figured out how to create the codes and make the idea work.
When visitors scan one of the codes…
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