nonprofit
NTEN Member on the Record About Getting Started with Social Media
Continuing my recent theme of sharing the advice NTEN members have for nonprofits who are wary about jumping into the seas of social media for their causes, I want to point out Michele Martin's post on her blog, The Bamboo Project.
It offers initial steps an organization can try within the comfort zone of its own network: its staff.
Evolving Tools for Your OrganizationIt makes sense that the best reason anyone has for learning and using a new tool is that it makes his/her life easier or better.
When organizations look at social media tools as a new obstacle rather than a tool, they're naturally going to be wary of them. If they can turn those perceived obstacles into useful components of their professional lives, they'll end up leveraging them for their causes with confidence -- and maybe even gusto -- rather than with fear.
Michele not only explains which tools (blog, wiki, a social network) an organization can employ internally, but great applications for them like project management and staff training resources. Check it out!
Do You Know Some Great Nonprofits?
Perla Ni, former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, has launched a new site that aims to be the Zagat guide for Nonprofits. Great Nonprofits has already been profiled in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, where Ms. Ni says, "When's the last time you bought a book from Amazon and didn't read the customer reviews? This site provides that: peer reviews, from honest people, about whether [the charities] are making an impact."
Customer and peer reviews have contributed greatly to the success of Amazon and Ebay, but have been arguably less successful detached from actual products: according to Alexa, epinions.com has a traffic rank above 2000, whereas Ebay and Amazon are both in the top 50. It will be interesting to see if the focus on nonprofits will enable Great Nonprofits to succeed.
Currently, Great Nonprofits has a limited number of reviews on fewer than 100 organizations, but Ms. Ni is aware of the challenge ahead: "This is going to be a long process. It takes time to build people's awareness of this, especially in the nonprofit sector, where you're serving people that are hard to reach."
Perhaps you can help them grow.
Read/WriteWeb is running a series this week on how nonprofits use the web and the tools available to them. The first in the series, titled "