Flickr: AlexdecalveloSXSW Interactive is offering 5 scholarships to attend the 2012 conference. The scholarships are open to anyone using new media channels to tackle community problems –including nonprofit leaders, grassroots organizers, individual citizens and civic-minded entrepreneurs.

Applications are due August 26th, at 11:59 PM PST. No organization doing good should miss this opportunity to learn and collaborate with other organizations using top of line technology to further their cause!

The SXSW Interactive Festival (scheduled March 12-16, 2010 in Austin, Texas) is a mega huge social media industry event. The final program is done through a combination of an open submission and community voting process. The panel picker process just opened - so you can vote yes or no for the panels you think are worthy of being on the program or not until September 4th.

The nonprofit presence at SXSW has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. In 2008, I was on one of the few nonprofit panels on the agenda. It was organized by Ed Schipul. At the end of that panel, we all hoped there would be a larger nonprofit presence on the agenda for this 2009. And yes, indeed, in 2009 there were many more panel proposals about or by folks who work with nonprofits and voting. Last year, many more nonprofit panels made it onto the agenda and there was even a nonprofit lounge hosted by BeaconFire.

So, let's get out the nonprofit vote for panels at SXSW!

We're teaming up with the folks of OneWorld to reflect on the nonprofit takeaways from the recent SxSW Interactive conference on new media.

Today, 4pm ET!

> Learn more and RSVP

Speakers include:

Four great panelists, three funny judges, and the incomparable Beth Kanter put on quite a show. Oh, and we tried to learn a few things along the way. Some of the issues our poets raised:

• Combining qualitative and quantitive data
• Proving ROI to your managers
• Using measurement as a learning tool
• Whether or not online mom communities are mean

I didn't get to capture all the great discussion, but I did get some great video of the poems, thanks to Jordan Viator. So if you missed it, here it is!

I've been at South by Southwest Interactive for the last few days. It's like Hollywood for tech celebrities! I had the chance to sit in on some very interesting and forward-thinking panels, and hear amazing folks like Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Tara Hunt, Chris Heuer, and our very own Beth Kanter say some really smart things.

Unfortunately, I missed the session where a panelist said (paraphrasing here) "Nonprofits are a pain to work with." With a little push-back in a private conversation later, the panelist went on to say that the problem was that nonprofits demand more than most clients, while expecting to pay less. In short, we want stuff for free.

Damn right we do!

I'd like to point out that nonprofits have clients, too: the people we help -- our stakeholders, donors, and funders. And they almost always demand that we work, in some sense, for free.

Most funders won't pay admin costs. Donors expect increasingly large percentages of every dollar to go straight to program. We're not supposed to spend money on rent, phones, or, god forbid, computers. We're not supposed to hire the staff that keep our nonprofits humming -- the bookkeepers and admin folks. And we're not supposed to pay very much to anyone.

That's the culture we live in. I don't like it. I wish our culture believed that nonprofits should be well-staffed and have adequate infrastructures. But that's not where we're at right now.

So yeah, we ask for free stuff -- because we're expected to work for free, too.