What is your organization’s online personality? Susan Finkelpearl, the Director of Online Strategy at Free Range Studios, says your website if often the first impression people get of your organization. And we all know what people say about first impressions.

Get to know Susan a little here and learn how to show off your organization’s personality in her session “The Fundamentals of Storytelling in Online Communications” on Thursday, April 5, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

How did you get into helping nonprofits?

"I've always had a passion for helping organizations communicate effectively and started my career working in traditional PR, first for a relief agency and later for the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental think tank. I think the first time I was really inspired by the great potential of online communications was when I lived in Slovakia as a Peace Corps Volunteer. All over the country, tiny nonprofits were springing up. They were networking themselves together, setting up community sites and forums. Although at the time I didn’t have a word for it, that was an early example of social networking. Meanwhile, I was using the Internet to successfully connect with Slovak Americans back home who became donors of the organization I worked for. On shoestring budgets, my tiny organization and hundreds more were putting themselves online and networking together."

Why should nonprofits tell stories online?

"Your website (or the websites where your users go, like MySpace or YouTube) is you. It's your face. It's the first foot you put forward. If you are boring online or not helpful, it colors how people will think of you. If you are creative and helpful, energetic and passionate online, this is how visitors will imagine your work to be (unless of course they have some other experience that tells them differently). Across the board, we find that people want to know that their support of an organization really matters in the world. So when you tell them impact stories, they will get the confirmation and "pat on the back" that they crave."

What online trends should nonprofits be watching?

• "Allowing your members to tell your story and/or their own story online as a way to inspire others.

• "Integrating your online communications more fully with your organization's activities - not seeing your website as a tack on but an integral part of your strategy.

• "Finding ways to communicate that reinforce online and offline communication efforts - i.e. an event offline leads to an interesting web piece, which leads to an effective viral piece (See the Truth Campaign for a great example of this.).

• "Mobility. Not only finding ways to communicate on whatever websites your users are on, but to also interact with them on the go.

• "Things like Twitter. While they might not make sense to you at first, there are ways these seemingly frivolous technologies can be utilized that are really smart and useful."