Released April 3, 2012: The 4th Annual "Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmarks Report." While you're welcome to scroll down to read some key findings, we recommend you click on over to download the complete report, right now. It's free!

> Download the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report

More than 3,500 nonprofit professionals filled out this year's survey, conducted by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, providing another year of valuable benchmarks about nonprofits' use of -- and success with -- social networking platforms.

You can now download the 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, released at the 2012 NTC by M+R and NTEN.

New this year and particularly interesting to us is what we learned from the study participants with mobile programs:

• roughly a third had optimized their emails for display on smart phones
• a third had not
• the remaining third plan to optimize their emails within the coming year

That's just a taste of the insights you can get from this year's study.  You should download the  complete report. It's free!

A high unsubscribe rate is bad, right? Not necessarily, according to the 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, released by M+R and NTEN.

As it turns out, a high unsubscribe rate correlates directly with high fundraising results. People unsubscribe because they read your message and decide your cause isn't interesting to them; people donate because they read your message and decide that it is.

The key here: people are reading your message.

That's just one of the fascinating drops of knowledge in the "2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study". We recommend you:

> Download the Report. It's free!

More than 11,000 nonprofit professionals filled out this year's Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Survey, sponsored by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, generating a veritable cornucopia of data.

One of our favorite stats: more than half of nonprofits have no formal budget for commercial social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, making it all the more impressive that 30% of the organizations that have raised more than $100,000 on Facebook have budgets under $5 million.

> Download the 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report

Other highlights:

The second annual Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report, a joint project of Common Knowledge, thePort, and NTEN, has hard data and insights on the trends surrounding social networking technology as part of nonprofit organizations' marketing, communications, fundraising, and program services.

As it turns out, Facebook and Twitter really do count as work. That's right: the survey found that 86% of nonprofits have a presence on Facebook, and 60% are on Twitter, increased percentages over 2009 for both commercial social networks.

> Get the Full Report (for free)

According to a survey conducted in March 2009 by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and ThePort, social networking has become an integral part of nonprofits’ online strategy. Of the 929 respondents to a survey, nearly three-quarters (74.2%) have a presence on Facebook, and 30.9% have one or more social networking communities on their own web site.

> Download the Social Network Survey Report

You'll also learn:

• Besides Facebook, which commercial social network sites are nonprofits using most?
• How many members do nonprofits have on their social network communities?
• How are nonprofits marketing their social network sites?
• Are nonprofits successfully getting revenue from social networks?
• How are nonprofit peers resourcing social networks efforts?

But don’t take our word for it. Download the report and read it yourself. It's free!

NTEN and MobileActive.org have released the third MobileActive Guide profiling strategies and civil society organizations using mobile phones to fundraise for their cause. The guide features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in fundraising, and a how-to section for organizations considering using mobile phones to generate support for their work.

Download Strategy Guide #3.

A joint project of NTEN, Green Media Toolshed, and MobileActive and funded by the Surdna Foundation.

Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. This five part series looks ways nonprofits have used mobile phones in their campaigns and the effective strategies deployed, and shares lessons learned.

MobileActive Guide #2 Released

NTEN and MobileActive.org are announcing the second MobileActive Guide, profiling strategies and civil society organizations using mobile phones in their work to make the world a better place. The second MobileActive Guide focuses on using mobile phones in issue advocacy. The guide features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in advocacy work, and a how-to section for advocacy organizations considering using mobile phones to advance their causes.

Download the MobileActive Guide #2

Look for other guides in the Mobile Active Strategy Guide series that will focus on fundraising, using mobile phones in the Global South, and a step-by-step how-to guide for setting up a campaign in the United States.

The first guide in this five part series examines how mobile phones are being used in electoral, voter registration, and election monitoring campaigns.

Internationally mobile phones have been used for systematic election monitoring in Macedonia and Kenya, among women voters in Saudi Arabia, and in a number of popular uprisings in the Ukraine and South Korea. In the 2004 U.S. election, almost 10,000 people started their voter registration process through a mobile campaign. This year the U.S. based group Mobile Voter aims to register 55,000 young people to vote via their cell phones.

While the use of mobile phones in elections and voter registration campaigns is still in an experimental stage, a lot has been learned about the characteristics of successful campaigns. In this guide we share these findings with you, along with case studies, and other information organizations can use to run their own mobile campaigns.

Download the guide (PDF).