To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Is For-Profit the Future of Non-Profit? – Amy Schiller – The Atlantic – “Charity is for patsies. If you really care about making the world a better place, buy a trendy bag. That was the logic Lauren Bush Lauren articulated in a 2013 interview about FEED, a for-profit entity she founded that creates simple, eco-friendly tote bags whose price covers the cost of donating school meals to children in Rwanda via the UN World Food Program”
• What Solutions Are Hiding In Our PDFS? : The Rockefeller Foundation – “The World Bank recently published a noble and important report with answers to the question Is anyone reading our reports and publications? They note that nearly 50 percent of their policy reports have the goal to inform and influence the social impact sector, yet more than 31 percent of these reports are never downloaded, and 87 percent are never cited.”
• Google’s Ray Kurzweil: The Business Of Extending Human Life Is Going Into “High Gear” | Co.Exist | ideas impact – “Over the last many centuries, human life expectancy has very gradually lengthened with improved health and medical technologies and research. In the next 20 years, we can expect our expected life spans to be extended at a far more rapid pace than in the past.”
• Facebook Manipulated User News Feeds To Create Emotional Responses – “Facebook conducted a massive psychological experiment on 689,003 users, manipulating their news feeds to assess the effects on their emotions. The details of the experiment were published in an article entitled “Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks” published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The short version is, Facebook has the ability to make you feel good or bad, just by tweaking what shows up in your news feed.”
• Which Social Networks Are Growing Fastest Worldwide? – eMarketer –

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Rise Of Women In Tech | MBA Online – “It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …The benefits for women who enter tech are hard to deny. They experience smaller wage gaps due to gender than women in other industries. But the relationship between women and tech companies isn’t one-sided – the companies get some nice perks, too. Companies whose boards of directors contain 3 or more female members had higher returns on sales, returns on investments and returns on equity. The infographic below delves deeper into how the phenomenon of women in tech is on the rise.”
• Social Media for Social Good [Infographic] – “In our new Social Media for Social Good infographic, we profile several successful grassroots and nonprofit campaigns, explain tactics that increase the impact of a message, and explore emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering.”
• A new study asks: Should the nonprofit and charitable sectors engage in political activity? : Bright+3 – “Should nonprofits engage in political activity on issues that broadly impact the nonprofit sector? That’s one question posed by a new study, Beyond The Cause: The Art and Science of Advocacy, and the conclusion is, well, inconclusive. It turns out that there just isn’t much consensus across the sector on this very basic – if difficult – question.”
• It’s official: News consumption is all about social and mobile — Tech News and Analysis – “New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network.” Where do you get your news?
• ROI: How Infographics Can Help Your Business [Infographic] | Social Media Today – “With the infographic craze in full-swing, you might ask: Are infographics just a pretty way of displaying data, or will they actually benefit my business? Earlier this summer we published a Sensible Social Media Checklist for Business. The first version of the infographic was published on June 15th and included Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. The popularity of the graphic prompted us to publish a second version of the checklist to include even more social media channels – specifically Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+. The second version of our infographic went online on July 19th, and was even more successful! Hundreds of bloggers posted our checklist on their own blogs, and over 2000 people downloaded the checklist as a reference to use in their own social media strategy. To showcase our results, we decided to create an infographic to demonstrate the ROI (Return on Infographics) and results we experienced.”

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• How to Prepare Your Community for a Major Change « The Community Manager – "Change: it’s the one constant in life. Whether you’re introducing a change in ownership, new staff, policy change, technical update, or something else, community members sometimes resist change. Usually, they’re afraid of repercussions that could affect the community they care so much about—so, it comes from a “good place.” That being said, their fears and frustrations can create chaos, and part of your job as community manager is to make transitions as smooth and drama-free as possible. Follow these steps to turn your announcement from a sign of the apocalypse into a community-building win they thank you for."
• Interactive: How America Gives – How America Gives – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The Chronicle of Philanthropy has launched a great new tool: an interactive map of giving data in the US. You can look at total contributions, contributions by household, discretionary income by household, and percentage of income given by household at the national, state, county, and local level.
• Survey says: Most noprofiteers blend their personal/professional brands | Big Duck – "Last week I had the joy of presenting a workshop with the fabulous Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation at the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference in Washington, DC. To gear up for our session on "Mixing Business and Pleasure: Managing Your Personal Brand in Social Media," we asked nonprofiteers (readers like you!) to respond to a quick survey about their own behaviors. We heard from 209 nonprofit staff, consultants, and the people who love us–and some of the results suprised us. While not scientific, the survey offers some interesting insights and we highlighted the key findings in our presentation (included in the slides below and online here). Here are some of those insights…"
• e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » How a Twitter Rapid Response Campaign Helped Susan Sarandon ‘Get’ Paid Sick Days – "A coalition of diverse organizations in New York City has banded together to escalate the conversation regarding paid sick days for workers, with an emphasis on getting the NY City Council to pass legislation mandating paid sick days. So far, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not called for a vote on this issue. But now, it just may happen — after the coaltion (with a little help from their friends) gave us an impromptu course in how to run online rapid response."
• Direct Energy | Direct Energy Contest | Reduce Your Use for GoodReduce Your Use – "Nonprofits, you know it: small changes can make a big difference. At Direct Energy, we’re committed to using our energy expertise to make a difference in people’s lives — so we’re donating up to $100,000 to nonprofits like you to help reduce energy use. Just make a short video of two minutes or less showing us the good work you do in your community. Acceptable submission formats include Windows Media, Quick Time and MPEG (files ending in .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mpg or .mp4). Be passionate. Be creative. Be concise. Tell us about your organization and its vision, how the small things you do make a big difference and why it’s so important that you continue your mission."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Dear Community Managers, don’t be hard on yourself, it’s your company culture that’s not ready to be “social” – The Buzz Bin – "In my ten years of working with corporate communications and marketing pros across Fortune 500, small to medium sized organizations, I have come across two specific types of organizations: i) organizations that have a culture of learning, collaboration and hence find ways to increase efficiencies and ii) companies that have the same beliefs but those beliefs never made it past the MISSION STATEMENT.  I have no problem against the latter as long as you are positively affecting the company’s bottom line and meeting your goals but I do have a few things to say to social media strategists who have been hired to do their job but end up spending more time just wrestling within their office corridors to go “social.”"
• Microsites for Nonprofits: Your Questions Answered | NTEN – "What do you do when you want to give extra publicity to a specific cause or campaign? Featuring one campaign too prominently could distract from other things. If you don't feature your campaign enough, it could get lost in the mix. So what's the solution? One proven method quickly growing in popularity is the microsite. A microsite is a mini-website, generally two to four pages, focused on a specific topic or campaign. These mini-websites are usually graphic-heavy and have very straightforward, action-oriented copy. Actions can include making donations, social media sharing, signing a petition, and more. Microsites can also promote dynamic content."
• Why Being Good Enough Is Never Enough on the Internet – Forbes – This is an important post I think everyone should read! Thanks to Deanna Zandt for being so thoughtful and smart in her analysis: "Let’s break down why the meritocracy myth is both so pervasive and problematic. The Internet is indeed a blank canvas in many ways. The egalitarian nature of the web as platform — for example, technically, no link or traffic is prioritized over another — makes it easier to connect people and ideas that were previously isolated. In the early days of the web, it was stunningly clear to most of us that we could do whatever we wanted, and that freedom was intoxicating. What we weren’t paying attention to was how we brought the advantages we carry in our offline lives– often defined by race, gender, class, and now, technological access and skill– to that blank canvas."
• Ushahidi and the Long Tail of Mapping for Social Change | TechPresident – I couldn't agree more with David's post and analysis of DeadUshahidi, a directory of "dead" installations of the open source Ushahidi mapping platform. Read the full post to hear both David's take, and suggestions for success from Patrick Meier. "DeadUshahidi’s mocking tone towards maps it deems ineffective, without any understanding of the goals of the groups behind them, is problematic. Moreover, mocking people or organizations whose maps don’t succeed hardly seems noble, and could even deter experimentation. In Silicon Valley, they say they celebrate failures and their lessons as key to a culture of innovation and success. While its intentions are ultimately good, it is hard to see how DeadUshahidi fosters such a culture in the world of crisis management."
• Millennial Presence in the Media | Mobilize.org – Did you read the list from ABC4.com of 8 characteristics of Millennials? I think Nathan has a great post here highlighting how off the mark some of those "characteristics" are, especially the idea that all Millennials would be considered Socialists! What do you think?

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Co-operate App | Co-operatives UK – Co-operate is the first mobile application I've seen focused on enabling people to find co-operatives for all their needs, wherever they are (based in the UK). "We are encouraging everyone with a passion for co-operative and ethical business across the country to download the app and push it up the listings. Together we can bring the co-operative economy, during the International Year of Co-operatives, to a wider audience." I'll be keeping my eye on it to see how people use it and how it evolves over time. Great idea!
• The Feast Presents : The World’s Fare – "For four years, The Feast has gathered remarkable people bringing their talents to the table to make the world work better. In addition to rethinking our annual conference, we’re opening up the dialogue this year to move people to action like never before. Join in on The World's Fare and host a dinner for six or more friends at 7pm local time on October 5, 2012 (last day of the Conference). Break bread and by the end of your Feast, collectively decide on one thing to collaborate on that’ll improve the world. We’ll compile all of the ideas online, and akin to the original World’s Fair, it'll all be capped off with a giant celebration of innovation at a public pavilion in NYC the next day."
• A Meet & Greet with Your Favorite Social Archetypes [Infographic] | NetWitsThinkTank.com – "The question today is not whether you should use social media (the 901 million Facebook users answered that for us), but how you should use social media to engage with your supporters, advance your mission and make your fundraising efforts more successful. The answer to the question lies in understanding your  nonprofit social media supporters and identifying which ones are the most well-connected, influential, and, in a word, social. It’s a tricky task, but someone has to do it!"
• The Internet has become a spontaneous, grassroots fundraising tool – Small Act – "Philanthropy has turned on its ear. Where previously people mainly donated to reputable charities who sent them donation requests, or in response to a disaster, now people are spontaneously giving to ad-hoc fundraisers online. Why is this happening? People give because they have an emotional response to a story, and because they’re asked to give."
• Facebook Reporting Guide Shows How Site Is Policed (INFOGRAPHIC) – "Facebook Inc offered a rare peek on Tuesday at one facet of the elaborate system it uses to police its 900 million-user social network, as it attempts to keep it free of content it deems offensive, illegal or just plain inappropriate. The company said it employs "hundreds" of staffers in several offices around the world to handle the millions of user reports it receives every week about everything from spam to threats of violence. A detailed, and somewhat confusing, chart published by Facebook on its website on Tuesday depicts how reports of various infractions are routed through the company and lays out all the potential outcomes, which can range from an account being disabled to Facebook alerting law enforcement."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Semphonic Web Analytics Consulting: The X Change Non-Profit Analytics Challenge – "The Non-Profit Analytics Challenge is a rare opportunity for the brightest analysts in the digital measurement field to collaborate & assist non-profit organizations to optimize their websites. The Analytics Challenge is a ½ day event at X Change conference on September 13th. Semphonic President and Conference Founder Gary Angel says " What a gift to have the best minds in the industry to work together and the big bonus is helping 2 chosen non-profit organizations."" Apply today!
• Twive and Receive Reveals the Top 20 Most Generous Cities & Who Would Win In A Fight Between the Hulk and a Kitten | Razoo Media Room – "Julie Nations, the Executive Director of The Ellie Fund said “It’s been the best communications outreach program we’ve ever done. Like every nonprofit, we wanted that prize money, but this was a bigger opportunity. It got us using social media in a way we hadn’t before, and our supporters loved it. This was a real chance to harness social media across all platforms. We reached out to people we’ve never met and got them onboard. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can give.’ I say everybody can be great because everybody can Twive!”"
• What Are We Accomplishing and How Do We Know? | NTEN – Here's a great run-down from Amy Luckey of the process to use in exploring and evaluating your organization's impact. And she uses NTEN as an example so you can see all the work we've been doing to figure this out for our strategic plan, too: "What does your organization do?" That is a question most nonprofit folks can answer pretty easily. We have our elevator pitches ready to go. "What is your organization accomplishing?" Now that's a different question, one that's not as simple to answer for most of us. It's also one that is increasingly being asked by potential donors big and small.
• 7 Social Media experiments we tried with the 99% Power Coalition | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Joe Solomon does a great job sharing the tools, tactics, and mini-campaigns used in the recent 99% Power Campaign. I don't necessarily agree with all the tactics, but I SO appreciate him sharing their work! What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
• 75% of Young Adults Gave to Charity Last Year, Study Finds – News – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The new Millennial Donor Survey is out! "Charities rarely make deliberate efforts to solicit young adults because they think people in their 20s and early 30s are unlikely to give. But a new survey of more than 6,500 people ages 20 to 35 shows they are inclined to give—and are more than willing to ask their friends and relatives to do the same—when they feel passionately about a cause. About 75 percent of young people who provided data for the 2012 Millennial Impact Report said they gave money to a nonprofit in 2011, while 70 percent said they have helped solicit donations by encouraging colleagues and others to support a cause."
• Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator | Call2Action – Great case study about Feeding America's recent multi-channel campaign: "Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action. Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Salesforce Acquires Buddy Media for $689 Million – “Salesforce has entered an agreement to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for approximately $689 million, the company has announced. The price is lower than the recently reported $800 million figure, but still a formidable investment from the enterprise software giant, which is on a seemingly never-ending acquisition spree. Salesforce had acquired collaboration tool company Stypi in May 2012, as well as social media monitoring platform Radian6 in March 2011.”
• 4 Results from Crowdsource Experiment at #12NTC: Nerd, Geek and Gear Herding « Sage Words – “At the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#12NTC) in San Francisco, California, we led a session called Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding 2.0. Building on last year’s session, we were pleased that this year we had the opportunity to introduce the “crowdsourcing” experiment to collectively solve our nonprofit technology problems.”
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings | Official Google Blog – “Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons. But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user. So today I’m really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph, which will help you discover new information quickly and easily. Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words. But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
• The Identity Spectrum – Identity Woman – I love this spectrum map of the various kinds of online identity! Such a great resource for understanding and planning for community engagement. “The Identity Spectrum gives a understanding of the different kinds of identity that are possible in digital systems. They are not exclusive – you can mix and match. I will define the terms below and discuss mixing and matching below.”
• Current.org | Evaluating social media efforts, May 2012 – “Now that most public media stations have become active on social networks — with some combination of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs and YouTube channels — staff members at many stations are struggling with the question: Are we getting the most bang for our social-media buck? After all, building and maintaining a meaningful social media presence requires a significant investment of time — and it’s not always easy to measure the return on that investment. What does social media success look like, anyway?”
• New Study: Donations Decline for Nonprofits – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – “Of the different trend-spotting and benchmarking resources, few are as important and authoritative as the “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance” published quarterly by Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud. Yesterday in Washington, DC, Target’s senior fundraising analyst Paige Grainger gave a terrific “state of the nonprofit industry” talk, which summarized key findings from Target’s latest, 2011 Index. The full report is here.  Paige spoke at a luncheon that Care2 sponsored of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). Target’s data this year was drawn from 80 different nonprofit organizations, 38 million donors, 79 million gifts and $2.5 billion worth of donations revenue (although it excluded any donations worth $10,000 or more). Channels covered included online, direct mail, telemarketing and canvassing.”

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Attention Data Nerds: Nonprofits Miss Out on the Power of LinkedIn: Learn How to Tap It | Beth’s Blog – Geri Stengel has a great guest post on Beth's blog. "Whether connected or cold calling, you can build long-term, valuable relationships using LinkedIn. Find out how easy it is. LinkedIn isn’t some stodgy place where people post their resumes. It’s a no- to low-cost database that is a rich source of information about potential major donors, board members, employees, and strategic allies." Would love to hear what you're doing on LinkedIn and how your organization has or has not found LinkedIn valuable!
• Blackbaud and Convio Now One Company – "Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLKB) today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Convio, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand constituent engagement solutions. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Blackbaud paid an aggregate purchase price of approximately $325 million. Blackbaud financed the deal through a combination of cash and borrowings from its credit facility. “This is an exciting day for the Blackbaud and Convio teams. Together, we can build better solutions for nonprofits, and that’s what drives us,” said Marc Chardon, Blackbaud’s chief executive officer. “Convio’s strengths in online and social marketing, and subscription and cloud-based offerings complement ours, and will accelerate our ability to deliver more to the nonprofit sector.”"
• Charities May Soon Get a Way to Seek Bigger Text Gifts – Prospecting – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – "Donors who give through mobile text messages could soon have the options of giving a larger donation and setting up repeat text gifts, say the leaders of two of the organizations that oversee text giving in the U.S. and Canada. Jim Manis, chief executive of the Mobile Giving Foundation, and Bernard Lord, chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada, said in an interview that they are working with some cellular service providers to allow $20 donations—double the current $10 limit—and recurring donations, though they gave no timeline on when those features would be available."
• Get more donors with free fundraising lessons and ideas – I love this new free series from Causevox – get a video a week filled with great information and actionable tips to help improve your fundraising right away. I don't even primarily focus on fundraising and I'm finding it really valuable!
• The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That’s Changing the Rules of Business | Epicenter | Wired.com – This is a terrific case study in the power of a/b testing on your websites – be it organization site, microsite, campaign pages, or even fundraising pages – to question everything and find what really works. Every time I do testing, I see the same thing that they note here: my instincts are wrong. We over-think things and the best way to stop is by testing!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Mattel to manufacture bald Barbie doll – HealthPop – CBS News – "Big news for the campaign for a bald Barbie: Mattel has agreed to manufacture a hairless doll. Mattel company spokesman Alan Hilowitz told HealthPop that the company will produce a friend of Barbie that will have wigs, hats, scarves and other accessories to give children "a traditional fashion play experience." The kids will have the option to remove the wigs and head coverings. The company stated that they will not be selling the dolls at stores, but instead will donate them to children's hospitals and other hospitals, as well as the National Alopecia Areata Foundation."
• Care2 Impact Prize | NTEN – A group of inspiring, talented people! Please help us select a winner for the Care2 Impact Prize! "We invite you to cast your vote to help pick this year's winner of the second annual Care2 Impact Prize, which recognizes individuals in the nonprofit sector who have made an outstanding impact on the field of online advocacy, online fundraising or both. The winner will receive a cash award of $1,000, plus $1,000 to donate to their favorite charity. The prize will be awarded on Thursday, April 5th at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, during the awards luncheon. The deadline to vote is noon (Pacific Time) on Monday, April 2nd. Any member of the NTEN community is welcome to vote, but only one vote per person, per IP address will be counted."
• Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations : Social Media 4 Good – "Many non-profits, NGOs and International Organizations are of two minds when it comes to sharing photos on the internet. On the one hand, they want their material to be shared as widely as possible, on the other hand they want to have total control. The decision matrix in below will help you decide which photos to share and how."
• 2012 Top 100 Best NGOs by The Global Journal | The Global Journal – "The Global Journal is proud to announce the release of its inaugural ‘Top 100 Best NGOs’ list. The first international ranking of its kind, this exclusive in-depth feature will no doubt stimulate debate, while providing academics, diplomats, policymakers, international organizations and the private sector an insight into the ever changing dynamics and innovative approaches of the non-profit world and its 100 leading actors. Recognizing the significant role of NGOs as influential agents of change on a global scale, The Global Journal has sought to move beyond outdated clichés and narrow conceptions about what an NGO is and does. From humanitarian relief to the environment, public health to education, microfinance to intellectual property, NGOs are increasingly at the forefront of developments shaping the lives of millions of people around the world."
• UNICEF Uses Social Media Monitoring for Annual Flagship Report « Radian6 – Social media monitoring tools, social media engagement software and social CRM and marketing from the industry leader in social analytics. – "UNICEF dedicated the 2012 edition of its flagship report, The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World, to the situation of children growing up in urban settings. Almost half the world’s children now live in urban areas; the report calls for greater emphasis on identifying and meeting their needs. The goal of the communication strategy was to raise general awareness of the issue and offer information and facts for grassroots advocacy. Social media has become an integral part of UNICEF’s outreach strategy for main publications and campaigns."
• Simple Nonprofit Donor & Volunteer CRM & Email Marketing | Wishery – "Running a non-profit is hard work. With good tools and techniques, however, you can greatly magnify your impact – this post describes how to combine two great tools into a powerful yet easy-to-use donor and volunteer management system. While there are a variety of purpose-built donor and volunteer management systems available, they tend to either cost a lot of money, be complicated to implement and use, or both! The set-up described below is nearly free and refreshingly simple."