NonprofitEye

Technorati Tags: NPTech , Nonprofit , Web 2.0 , NPTech Series

Nonprofit Eye - Backstage Pass - New Feature A Letter from the Editor It's a new year and in lieu of resolutions, we have turned our "Eye" inward. The result? An examination of focus of the Nonprofit Eye. Looking out to the audience, two posts continue to grab a huge share of our readership (one on (of all the arcane topics: revenue recognition) and the other on Job Hunting). Readership takes a dive when I turn to self-exploration, technical topics, philosophical musings on nonprofit identity. I have to admit that even my own interest was waning as I've swum thru the waters of all things related to the Nonprofit World. So get ready for a new spin in 2008, and very soon...a new website and domain name. Such a move means a new start, appropriate for the beginning of a new year. And such a start demands a new theme. Time for audience participation here dear readers. Two themes call strongly to me and I'd love to hear your comments on them (both as to mark...

New Feature! Nonprofit Trend of the Week Nonprofit Innovations disclaimer: this is NOT a plug - please read to end of article for pro's and con's! A friend introduced me to a for-profit product that dovetails well with nonprofit values. Produced by GiveWell.com , the product itself is called the "Healthcare Gift Card". There are pros and cons (discussed below), but first, what is it? Givewell bills itself as: ...a new way to help employees cover health and wellness costs. It is designed to encourage healthy living and staying well. Employees can use it to cover a variety of healthcare costs including co-pays at doctor’s offices and pharmacies or for vision care, dental care, health club memberships and elective procedures at businesses that accept Visa debit cards. Pros Giftwell tells us that Because the Healthcare Gift Card is targeted to work only with health and wellness providers, you can be assured your gift card will be used as a “gift of health.” Better t...

One thing that's great about my recent unemployment? Time to read. And reading means exposure to new ideas. And new ideas mean inspiration. Hurray. Take two articles, the first David Brook's article "The Organization Kid", from way back in April, 2001 (remember when that was the science fiction future?) and another, Andrew Keen's article " Web 2.0 The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think. " from February, 2006. Isn't it great when information converges over time? First, credit where credit's due. These came to my attention from two blogs I read regularly (thanks to RSS!), the penny for your thoughts blog " 1cent talk on nptech " and " Urban Community ". They are two great reasons to keep browsing the blogosphere! "The Organization Kid" paints a frightening picture of a new generation so conformist and content that they have become complacent, obedient even bland. Compare...

The short answer? Yes (now you don't have to read the rest of the article!). In search of the holy grail of blogging (search engine optimization), I employed techniques suggested by the experts and, voila! I: Decreased my bounce rate Increased my stickiness Increased my unique page visits Achieved a better goal conversation rate (more on that later since I'm not converting anything to sales) Got more subscribers Got a higher Google Page ranking moved up in the Google search results In essence, everyone who's questing after SEO's dream. So what's the problem? Sigh. I killed my joy of writing, I left my own goals (not Googles) in the dust. First, I narrowed my focus. My analysis showed most visitors were coming to read technical articles on accounting and compliance. I added more paths: from these frequently visited pages to other similar articles from the home page to a directory of similar articles from the home page to specific follow-up pi...

Working in the nonprofit sector it's easy to forget about the resources in the for-profit world. So today, I'm going to recommend poking our heads out into the sun once in a while. I sat down to read a copy of CFO magazine. I figured it wouldn't have a lot to relate to, but was I wrong. Keep in mind no endorsement received, I love this rag! One article in particular, Finance in History: Here's to the Bean Counters: A slur to finance folks and accountants, the term has a noble past by R.G. Voorhee s captured my imagination. I won't quote it away, but just give you the opening paragraph (emphasis mine): "Bean counting" has long been an insulting term for what finance professionals and accountants do. Often, it's been used to tar CFOs as transaction processors—a role largely relegated to the back office . What's more, people like to use the phrase to ratchet up the pedestrian aspects of finance by tagging practitioners as "mere"...

Last week, in MISSION WITHOUT I.T. IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE I set out to write  ROI, but before I'd finished my first paragraph, I had revealed my own flawed organizational paradigm. Allan Benamer contributed a critically important comment: IT is actually responsible for all the other departments you mentioned (accounting, marketing, etc.) in the best nonprofits? You really can't do accounting, marketing or fundraising without IT. ...you could try but you'd have a heck of a hard time scaling. Think of IT as an umbrella that keeps all the other departments from getting wet. In the best nonprofits, it should be integrated into every department and not be a standalone. The only way to effectively address complaints about ineffective organization? Offer a solution. How about this: replace our world of the three overlapping sets: communications/ operations/accounting--with a new world---mission/community/investment. The catches? If your giving is an investme...

How do you achieve your mission without infrastructure? What is your mission? Help underserved youth get jobs? To get to that mission you'll need to: Tell others about your story? Marketing Ask for help (especially money)? Fundraising Keep your government funding? Accounting Answer an email? IT Congratulations, now you need $100,000 to carry out your mission (not counting your salary of course). Will the purpose, the appeal, the grant request and the communication advance your mission? Sure, but it has to make more than $100,000. Enter the business measurement: Return on Investment or ROI. This is a measure that profit making companies use to determine how much money they make from how much money they used. In other words, if you invest $100,000 and make $500,000, that would be a pretty good return on your investment. Now, what place does ROI have in the no...

Deloitte & Touche and the Points of Light Volunteer Foundation conducted a study that challenges nonprofits to consider whether time is, in fact, money. They make an observation: (that) while a majority of nonprofit leaders think the greatest contribution companies can make to them is financial, corporate contributions represent only about one percent of the total operating budgets of nonprofits, indicating an extremely limited resource and then asked 200 non-profit leaders and 750 white-collar workers about the value of workplace skills to nonprofits. What do you need to run your company? The universal answer: money. The challenge: Aren't skilled management professional volunteers just as important (or more important) than money? What if (and this will be a shocker) there isn't enough money to go around? They concluded that "Despite the fact that nonprofits and volunteers both place a very high value on workplace skills, neither are capitalizing on them t...

Many a nonprofit staffer has looked around and not liked what they saw. We've all heard the complaints, perhaps we've been the one making them. The techie's complain that our leaders "don't understand today's technology"; the accountants complain that "they're kidding themselves about the fundraiser being a success"; the program staff complain that "the performance measures are BOTH impossible to meet AND meaningless"; the staff complain that "they aren't paid enough" AND "that they don't have an adequate budget to run an effective program". We all complain that we don't have the government and public support we require. The stats say the baby boomers are about to retire. Who will take the reigns? How will be meet the challenge our leaders leave us? There really is no other answer, we'll have to put our money where our mouth is. The challenge is not then, but now. Why wait? Let's lea...

I took a break from blogging for the past few months. It was not really a summer vacation. It was just that I got the blogging blues. Because I was getting wrapped up in the Wiki-RSS-SecondLife-Web 2.0-Social Media maelstrom. I was afraid my philosophical musings couldn't compete. In short, I lost my way. What is my way? I’m here to provide a philosophical examination of the issues underlying our nonprofit ways. Sometimes it’s accounting or compliance and yes sometimes technology or meta-tech. Unfortunately, I’m a generalist lost between the hot topics with the great "take aways". My message isn’t clear (or clear enough) and I only reach 39 unique visitors. Yes I’m RSS-able and search optimized and post regularly (at least I did for 14 consecutive months. So why bother? Because there are things that I need to say and I’m compelled to say them. In addition, because I have found myself among a community--one that I never had before. A group of nonprofit bloggers I’...

I don’t want to be a buzz-kill, but I hate buzz words. I hate take-aways. I love take-out (at least I did before I moved to LA which doesn’t have great take-out). I hate social networking. I’m anti-social. So sue me! I hate anything with “tube” in the name. I hate Face Book as much as I hate Flckr. I hate information overload. I love information. As long as it is not about the latest buzz words. Where am I going with this? Remember the Rolodex? the Day Timer ? Anybody? Buhler? Buhler? [1] I had some sweet Rolodex shareware. How about the Palm Pilot? And when am I going to get my flying car darn it! Carving in stone gets you close to eternity, even paper has a shot if it stays cool and dry. But where is anybody going to get a 5 ½ inch floppy drive in 2010? For that matter where is anyone going to get one today? I have one! But I don’t have a cable to connect it and I don’t have a suitable port on my teeny computer (they don’t call them PC’s anymore do t...

Last November, in a post called " The Limitations of Dashboards " I wrote about my disappointment with the promise of electronic "dashboards". But when I was about to waive the white flag, I found him. Who? The Dashboard Spy , that's who. And who is this spy guy? Nobody knows, and nobody has to really care either (see spy bio at the end of this article if you really want the scoop). The point is, he introduced me to some very inspiring applications of what a dashboard can do for a nonprofit (or the community in general). Let's get down to specifics. Whatcom County's Community Dashboard uses red-yellow-green gauges as indicators of everything from Annual voter turnout, to Suicide Rates. They have gauges for women owned firms, violent crime, domestic violence incidence rate, rental affordability, releases of carcinogens into the air. And more! A girl who loves data might find her match here. The site does offer the raw data, and drills down to...

It was back in April, 06 that I first got "blog-itis". Finally a technology that conformed to my need. I don't know why, but I've always "choked" when I try to write; but a blog post let me capture an insight without overwhelm (after all, you can always write another post). I started out with a copycat approach. I used my friends blog as a template. I took the easy road with Blogger. And then the fun began. I covered this journey in Birth of a Blog way back when. So today I just want to give props to the bloggers that gave me that critical guidance, resources and inspiration to get me going: Beth Kanter's Beth's Blog Allen Benamer's Non-Profit Tech: Confessions of an IT Director Michelle Murrain's Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Blog Michael Stein's Non-Profit Technology Blog Technorati Tags: Blogging , MetaBlog , Nonprofit , NPTech

Nonprofit Series: Burnout, Tech & Fraud Detection by pam ashlund Just finished a rant on "blogging about blogging". Took a look at the topics I write and found close to 10% of my posts on blogging & tech. Sigh. On Blogging and Tech: THE TEMPORALITY OF DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE I WILL NOT BLOG ABOUT BLOGGING... ANTI-SOCIAL BLOGGING CARVING OUR WAY TO DISASTER RECOVERY TAG YOU'RE IT: NONPROFIT TAG SYSTEMS I BLOG THEREFORE I AM BIRTH OF A BLOG NONPROFIT OPEN SOURCE DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE? ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: ERROR 404 FILE NOT FOUND Burnout & Balance: NONPROFIT BURNOUT: IS YOUR ADVENTURE WINDOW CLOSED? DYSFUNCTION & NONPROFIT BURNOUT OR A BALANCED LIFE? NONPROFIT BURNOUT? NONPROFIT HALL OF SHAME APPLYING KARMA YOGA TO THE NONPROFIT WORKPLACE Accounting: JUST THE FACTS MA'AM: ALLOWABILITY, REASONABLENESS & ALLOCABILITY! OH MY! NONPROFIT IMAGE PROBLEM: FLAWS IN FRAUD DETECTION DEVELOPMENT & FINANCE: A BROKEN MARRIAGE? ...

I was so steamed I forget to include my most fundamental complaint about blogging in my last post ! I publish a post You write me a comment I'm notified of your comment by email I respond to your comment Question: How do you know I've written a response? Answer: You don't! (unless you come back again and again until you see the reply and who has time for that????) How could it be that in a Social-bookmarked-Wiki-Folksy-World that our most popular tool (the Blog) isn't social? ????????????????????????????????????????????? Good, now that that is off my chest, I think I'll go listen to a podcast on podcasting! Technorati Tags: NPTech , Blog , blogging , Folksonomy , Podcast , Podcasting , Social Bookmarking , Wiki , iPod

Read an exciting article on disaster recovery the other day (I know, I know, proof that I have NO life!)...I came across info on the life expectancy of various digital storage media... average life of a diskette - one year, average life of a CD - ten years - average life of magnetic tape - tops 50 years. All of these involved storage in ideal conditions (temperature controlled, stored vertically, dust free, etc. Since the advent of the digital age, more and more knowledge is stored electronically, often with no physical counterpart. We take photos with digital cameras, save them on unbacked up hard drives or worse still leave them on the tiny cards that come with our cameras. We write novels and store them on flash drives. We leave these flash drives dangling from our key chains or stuffed in our backpacks. By way of example, a friend stored all the family photos on a server and in the time it takes to say "power surge" they were gone. No more baby pics. His wife learned ...

Ask And Ye Shall Receive: Error 404 File Not Found by Pam Ashlund Before my fingers had left the keys...my prayers were answered. If only I could tag a webpage and know it would still be there when I returned! While I've been tagging used Del.icio.us for a few weeks, I came across another service: Ma.gnolia. I finally got around to importing my bookmarks to Mag. today and was just browsing around, reading the FAQ files, and what did I find? This: When you add a bookmark to Ma.gnolia, we rush around in the background to save a copy of that web page for your future viewing. Never again will you be lost if a web page moves or gets deleted. Ma.gnolia's saved copies have got you covered, so that what you find stays found. Would I be pushing my metaphor if I said 'I was lost but now I'm found'? Okay, okay...so how did Ma.gnolia handle the legal/ethical dilemma? How does Ma.gnolia treat controlled content when making saved copies? Ma.gnolia only makes a saved cop...

The Temporality of Digital Knowledge by Pam Ashlund The nonprofit community has a wealth of information online. Advice from Fundraising to Finance. Whitepapers, ToolKits, Articles. A collective knowledge that could never be found in one book (or ten books for that matter). What worries me is that the owners of each piece of this databank have no commitment, responsibility nor mandate to leave this information on line. When a website closes, the data goes with it. When a newspaper archives its free material, it is either gone or pay-to-play from that point forward. At the moment this information is all available at a click, but it is not centralized and its very existence is oh so tenuous. As anyone who has bookmarked or tagged a reference URL has discovered, upon returning to the link, the site is no longer there, the article has been moved, or resides behinds a closed door. These broken links are a fact of the electronic age. The ethical dilemma: make sure this data doesn't dissap...

The Limitations of Dashboards By Pam Ashlund I first heard the concept of an electronic dashboard introduced in March 24, 1999. There it was, within the 496 pages of Bill Gates’ book Business at the Speed of Thought . It was so exciting to me that I ran back to the office determined to implement. I attended a Microsoft’s Dashboa rd training and found out that I was sold on an idea that didn’t technically exist. The back-end programming was available, but there wasn’t a commercial product; there wasn’t even a commercial engine to customize. So I waited. It was 2001, with this visionary Dashboard in mind, that I converted from Fundware to Financial Edge . There were other features that met our conversion requirements, but it was the promise of the Dashboard feature that was number one (two and three were: Integrating FE and RE; and Integrated Assets Software). But when we launched, there was a problem. An electronic dashboard may be live, but accounting isn’t—it’s accrued after the fac...