1. HBR's Dan Pallotta thinks it's unethical that your organization doesn't spend more time and money on fundraising. Them's fightin' words to a lot of commenters.
2. We think it's unethical that this crazy yo-yo guy hasn't been worked into a fundraising campaign. He will seriously blow your mind. But we have to wonder what his parents think. Somebody find him a spokespinner job, quick!
3. A friend posted that yo-yo link to Facebook. Adina Levin thinks Facebook's not the best place for community organizers -- but it may depend on the community. If your community is into cat fashion shows, or any number of silly memes, you're golden. We have a way of finding each other.
4. For instance, we know a certain number of people will love this slideshow of hi-resolution space images. (They're quite spectacular.) Which people? Our people.
5. But you kind of have to wonder what will happen if everybody just starts listening to people they agree with. After all, if it's on the Internet, it must be true. Dahna Boyd has some thoughts.
6. Macrowikinomics.
7. Star Wars Cupcakes. We're not sure we could bring ourselves to eat these, they're so fantastic.
8. If you're looking for a new mass e-mail platform, you should check out Groundwire's precisely named "E-mail Service Provider Comparison Report 2010".
9. Wired recently declared that the Web is dead. We think they're getting ahead of themselves.
10. Regular readers of this space will know there's a growing consensus that technology is physically changing the ways our brains work. Fortunately, there's an easy way to reboot: get outside.
11. There are so many social media options these days, you may be feeling a little lost. Here's a map to help you find your way.
12. Finally, in the interest of making you feel good about the world, monkeys love kittens, too! (Also, how can you not want to visit a place called Monkey Forest?) Now, go forth and be productive!

If you're in charge of your organization's web analytics, you undoubtedly know about bounce rate -- the measure of visitors who enter your site, say "Enh" (or something ruder), and immediately leave, without viewing any more of your carefully crafted pages. Yeah, those people annoy me, too.

But unless you're a consultant working with several nonprofit clients, you're probably working in a vacuum: you know your own site's bounce rate, but you don't know how good it is compared to other sites.

That's okay, though. Around here, we operate under analytics guru Eric Peterson's definition of what your bounce rate should be: 10% better than it is now.

As luck would have it, there's an easy way you can use Google Analytics to simplify that job. Let's dive in.

William (Bill) Lester, NPOKI

It's an old problem, made worse by the tantalizing potential that technology provides: how do you collect and aggregate quality data when you work in low resource areas?

If you look at the path that information must travel, there's a point where the tools NGOs have used for data collection work well. As information moves up and down the highway, from headquarters to field offices to in-country partner organizations, to consultants, and volunteers, and to the general public or the clients or the project sites, there's a point where the structure breaks down.

That's the point where you're dealing with people and forces outside of your area of comfort – the area that you cannot control.

Fortunately, there are rules you can follow to help mitigate this problem:

Efrat Ben-Dor Erez, NPTech Israel

PresenTense, an international nonprofit organization founded in 2006, uses technology to sustain its activities, functioning as a "start up incubator for social entrepreneurs". Their mission is to engage and inspire the most creative minds, investing their ideas and energy to revitalize the Jewish community and the world. 

500 volunteers work with PresenTense each year, mainly from North America and Israel, but also from other places around the globe. With only 7 people working for them on a daily basis in Jerusalem, along with 1 in Tel Aviv and 3 in New York, PresenTense relies on technology to do the rest of the work.

Matt Berg, Millenium Villages

Voice remains the killer app.

The ability to communicate freely connects families, strengthens social networks, reduces travel, overcomes illiteracy, and provides safety. With voice, many solutions for issues like the “market price” problem can be human engineered, as that information is now only a phone call away to a trusted source in a bigger market. Access to voice has already had a transformative affect for much of the world’s poor and will only increase as the price of making a call decrease. 

Two particular SMS health projects that have convinced me of the viability of mobile phones to effect change:

Melissa Ulbricht, MobileActive.org

Bartholomew Sullivan, a regional ICT officer for the African Radio Research Initiative, was looking for something new.

“We’re looking for something that can enhance radio,” Sullivan says. “Because at this point for us, radio has been very effective in reaching people, but it’s not always the most effective for getting a feedback loop or making it interactive.”

Enter Freedom Fone. Freedom Fone leverages audio as a mobile function using interactive voice response (IVR), a technology that allows a system to detect voice and keyboard input. You’ve likely encountered it when you call a customer service number and are prompted with instructions to press numbers for different issues or service departments.

As many things are, IVR was used a little differently in Africa.

Debra Askanase, Community Organizer 2.0

NPTech is the operating organization behind the development of GuideStar Israel, a project 5 years in the making. It provides services and activities designed to help social organizations make information and communications technology (ICT) more accessible to social organizations to reach their goals.

NPTech wants to create a "socio-technological market" in which different providers offer their products for social activity advancement, internet sites encourage social action, and social organizations use these products in accordance to their needs.

I had the opportunity to ask Royi Biller, CEO of NPTech, about why it was so important to bring GuideStar to Israel and how it could change the Israeli third sector.

Jeff Patrick, Common Knowledge

A whopping 86% of nonprofits say they have a presence on Facebook or another social media site according to the 2010 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report.  

That’s astounding really, but equally astounding, if a whole lot less obvious: your site visitors are increasingly getting to your site from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Why is this important? This socially-sourced crowd spends upwards of 15 minutes per day, every day, on social media sites, 3 to 7 times more than on any other major web property. 

Increasingly, consumers define their world in this social context, and there are a whole bunch of them. Should you be considering this important demographic when you redesign your site next time around? Definitely.

Christy Van Heugten, Event360, Inc.

"What audience am I building for?" is commonly the first question people encounter when they start a redesign, but I beg to differ.

Your audience is yours because of who you are. Your online presence is not about your constituents starting the conversation: at first, it's about you having the chance to give your 30-second pitch about who you are, what you do, and why it's important.

So, my recommendation for the first questions to ask in your planning process are: "What is our 30-second pitch?" and "How can we translate that to our website in a user friendly design?"

There are 4 steps I typically recommend following as you build your site.

Kivi Leroux Miller, Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com

Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging?

We could get into a traditional marketing discussion about target audiences and personas, but let’s go at this challenge in a different way. Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time. To keep it simple, let’s group your website visitors into three categories: 

• Strangers: People who know nothing about you.
• Friends: People who like your organization or cause.
• Fans: People who LOVE your organization or cause.

What kind of content does your website need for each of these groups?