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October 3, 2012, 5:51 pm
Foundation Grants Aim to Boost Civic Engagement
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on Tuesday announced $1.3-million in grants to technology projects aimed at getting people more involved in improving their communities and issued a report designed to encourage more money and attention for such efforts.
The four grants announced were:
• $590,000 to Change by Us, a project of CEOs for Cities, that gives citizens an easy place to suggest ideas to make their hometowns more livable. The grant money will help expand the site so it can accept donations, integrate with Facebook, and make the application available for other cities to adopt. The site already has versions for New York, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.
• $250,000 to Good360, an online product-donation site, to create a marketplace where nonprofits can post their needs, find products, and communicate with individual and corporate donors.
• $236,000 to
September 27, 2012, 11:04 am
What Is Keeping Nonprofit Leaders Awake at Night?
The Chronicle asked its followers on Twitter to share what is worrying them most right now in their professional lives. We asked them to reply with the hashtag #charityinsomnia. Here are some of their answers.
September 20, 2012, 3:49 pm
Are Online Philanthropy Contests Worth the Effort?
After this year’s Chase Community Giving contest closed after a troubled start, some nonprofit leaders debated the costs and benefits of participating in these type of vote-driven corporate philanthropy contests in The Chronicle’s LinkedIn group.
Some nonprofit leaders say they have had success with the contests, while others are skeptical of whether the campaigns benefit nonprofits or the corporate donor.
Here are some highlights from the debate:
“My nonprofit won a $25,000 grant via the spring 2011 Chase Community Giving contest… We are interested in a contest if there are good odds and no daily voting requirements, among other things. We did three contests spread through 2011, winning three grants, but we’ve done none this year.” —Anne Bowhay, director of foundation relations at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
“As development professionals, we need to remember…
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 18, 2012, 10:53 am
LinkedIn Offers Tool to Help Charities Recruit Board Members
LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has announced a free new service called Board Connect to help charities recruit board members who have much-needed skills.
LinkedIn offers charities a place to post detailed information about their organization and the professional and volunteer connections of its board members and other leaders.
Through Board Connect, groups can then search LinkedIn for potential new board members by listing skills that would be helpful, such as an accounting or legal background, job title, nonprofit affiliations, and other characteristics. Board Connect returns a list of people who meet those criteria and have connections to one or more board members or staff members at the nonprofit.
To be eligible for the service, an official from each charity must complete a short questionnaire, provide proof of the organization’s tax-exempt status, and…
September 10, 2012, 6:24 pm
Chase Online Contest Draws Ire for Technical Glitches
The prospect of winning a grant from the annual Chase Community Giving contest prompts many small nonprofits to aggressively encourage their supporters to vote in the online competition. Small charities that get the most votes from their online supporters are eligible to win up to $250,000, and a total of $5-million will be awarded through the competition.
But when some of those supporters attempted to cast their votes, they were turned aside.
A swell of visitors to the JPMorgan Chase’s contest on Facebook Thursday, the first day of the competition, slowed the system and made it difficult for some to vote for their favorite nonprofits.
By Monday, those issues had been resolved, said Erich Timmerman, a Chase spokesman. But many nonprofits are nonetheless using the contest’s Facebook page to post complaints about the competition and raise questions about its fairness, which has…
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…
August 10, 2012, 11:26 am
Humor Site Aspires to Be ‘The Onion’ for Nonprofits
John Suart wants his humor Web site to be The Onion for nonprofits. But first he must grapple with the earnestness of nonprofit workers trying to save the world.
Mr. Suart, a nonprofit marketing consultant in Ontario, is marking the first anniversary of the site Non-Profit Humour. In past months, he has tackled the inanity of social media (“Charity Can’t Understand Its Own Tweets”), pressures facing fundraisers (“Young Major-Gifts Officer Confident She Can Get Donation From Family of Man-Eating Trolls”), charities’ ineptness with technology (“IT Guy Calls Social Media ‘Magic’ to Explain It to Dumb Charity Colleagues”), and the quixotic and absurd nature of some organizations’ missions (“Charity Created to Prevent Sky From Falling”).
Mr. Suart’s site received 65,000 page views in the past year. Roughly 300 people have signed up for his e-mail alert. And once in a while, someone…
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…
July 19, 2012, 10:58 am
YouTube Adds Tool to Hide Identities in Sensitive Videos
YouTube has released a new feature to help nonprofits and activists protect the identities of people who appear in their videos with the push of a button.
The new tool allows people posting a video to blur all of the faces appearing in their work, making it much more difficult to identify people.
In a blog post Wednesday, YouTube cautioned that the technology is still new and may have trouble detecting the faces that are supposed to be blurred, particularly if they are partially covered or at certain angles. It also warned that the system could miss a frame, which would make it possible for viewers to figure out who was in the blurred image.
You can learn more about the new tool on YouTube’s blog.
Is this a useful feature for your organization?
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