undefined: Flickr: Cambodia4kidsorgThe term "geospacial information system" may cause many of us to zone out and assume "the following information will not be applicable to me because I'm not an engineer or cartographer or astronaut or whatever that term applies to." But what if I used the term "legislative district" or "elected official lookup" -- you'd pay attention, right?

Of course! That's because you already know advocacy work involves matching your grassroots members and volunteers up with the elected officials they can influence. But what if I told you that GIS and software that makes use of GIS is the technology that will make your "matching" work so much easier--for both you and your constituents? You're listening, now, right?

Well, thanks to Azavea and TechSoup Global (both NTEN members), this GIS analysis technology is going to be more accessible and affordable for your nonprofit.

If you do online advocacy work, you probably know about Social Actions. If you're interested in data, and making sure that data can move freely around the web in the nonprofit space, then you definitely know Social Actions.

Peter and Christine at Social Actions have been at the fore of a very important movement in the nonprofit sector: helping us all understand why sharing data is so much better for us than hoarding it.

You may have read about the transitions at Social Actions, and now they're ready to move forward.  

If you are interested in shepherding all or some of the Social Actions programs, they're inviting you to submit Letters of Interest -- by August 20. Let's make sure we keep the data flowing!

Flickr: EndlessstudioYou and your cause have been using video to capture and share stories about the work you do and the change you're making, right?

Now there's a venue for you to showcase your hard work and great results: a film festival designed just for nonprofits -- with the added opportunity to win cash monies for your cause!

Check out Lights. Camera. Help. This nonprofit film festival, the first of its kind, will take place at the end of July in Austin, Texas. You have until the end of this month to submit your work!

Here's some more information from the organizers:

We just released the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study with our fantastic friends at M+R Strategic Services. The report is chock full of amazing and interesting information you can use to make better decisions about your online campaigns.

To help folks get started, we hosted a release party. Get the recording to see how Children's Defense Fund and HRC use benchmarks to increase the performance of their online campaigns.

Or, for those of you who can't be bothered to open another link -- that's how I roll, so I feel you -- here are some highlights from this year's report:

There are some people in this world who just make things happen: one day, they're emailing you an idea, the next you find yourself deeply engaged in a project, without even really knowing how you got there. Charles Lenchner is one of those people!

Charles works for the Working Families Party and consults with Democracyinaction.org and Change.org. Somewhere in the midst of all that, he found time to sit down and talk to me about his session at the 2009 NTC, Online Organizing for Community Organizers:

A lot of you have probably heard about the recent success of a Toronto blogger who combined a fundraising widget from Chip-In with the networking power of Twitter to raise over $14k in about 2 days.

Well, we just heard about another great free widget that you and your organization might want to share with your community. "Ask Your Lawmaker" is a project of the Capitol News Connection, and they sum it up nicely in 3 phrases:

First, Change.org's new site design earned them a top spot in DesignM.ag's 40 Most Inspirational Site Designs. Now, they're smack-dab in the middle of the Ideas for Change contest, which they're running with the Case Foundation.

Inspired by the President-Elect's call for citizens to share their ideas for creating change, the contest drew nearly 8,000 ideas for change from community members. From now until January 15, you can vote on those ideas.

On January 16, Change.org and the Case Foundation will announce the top ten ideas, and:

Last week, I had the great pleasure of speaking at the 2.0 nonprofit event in Washington DC, which was hosted by Idealist and the National Human Services Assembly. (NTEN community participant Jon Camfield has some good notes from the event.)

The fine folks at Google were big sponsors of the event, hosting us all at their DC offices on the first day for a tour of Google services and their nonprofit programs. They had lots of staff on hand throughout the program, which is how I met Ramya. She's the new Nonprofits and Activism Manager at YouTube. She'll be working in the YouTube Nonprofit Program.

You can learn more about Ramya on her channel at http://www.youtube.com/agentchange. You can also send your thoughts, opinions, ideas or examples of brilliant uses of YouTube to her at agentchange@youtube.com.

John McNutt, a researcher at the University of South Carolina, has published an article on e-advocacy, "Promising Practices in Electronic Advocacy". In it, he identifies four basic processes organizations use to support their efforts:

• Gathering and Analyzing Information
• Educating and Developing Awareness
• Organizing and Coordinating Supporters
• Applying Pressure

After noting that research shows electronic advocacy does indeed have an effect, McNutt makes 6 suggestions to nonprofits involved in the arena, including the always key – but too easy to lose sight of – idea that ultimately, e-advocacy is about human relationships, not technology, which is just a set of tools that can help you shape the future.

You can read the full article at Third Sector New England.

Lead a horse to waterSeth Godin had a lovely little post the other day that I have been chewing on.  In More Perfect, he frames in a new way of thinking about something I think we all know, but never really accept:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.  - OR - Concentrate on the thirsty horses.

We all want to grow our networks of donors and activists.  More is better.  But where do you find that more?  I think a lot of our strategies have been focused on finding horses, and convincing them they are thirsty.  All those compelling action alerts we write.  The lists we rent and mail to.  We know that these strategies aren't super likely to find thirsty horses.  But we do them anyway, hoping that we'll convince a few they need a drink.

So here's another argument for the power of social networks.  

Your existing thirsty horses hang out at watering holes, where there are other thirsty horses.  If you can let go of your message, and let your stakeholders do the talking for you - your chances of success go way up.

This, of course, is not to say that your stakeholders in any way resemble horses.  They are all lovely people.