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The first week of April was like an annual family reunion for the nonprofit technology community as the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) converged on San Francisco. The annual conference from NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network brought together 1,800 nonprofit professionals, technologists, and service providers for three days of sessions, panels, and workshops covering the gamut of topics related to technology and social impact. With more than 150 sessions and twice as many speakers, plus all of the additional social events, there were countless conversations and ideas buzzing through the airwaves and Twittersphere. Three topics rose to the top with the most interest.

Email isn’t dying, it’s evolving!

A blog post with the proclamation, “Email is dead!” comes around every year or so, reigniting some debate and sparking long comment threads on blogs (and, always ironically, email list servs). But at this year’s NTC, the conversations about email were much less about its impending departure and more about exploring its evolution. Email is still a major component of organizational communication and a channel used by nonprofit supporters and donors; it is critical that it grows and develops to match the changing ways we use it and share messages.

Segmentation (dividing up your list to target specific groups of people with different messages) and tracking aren’t new, but the tools are becoming more sophisticated—and so are we. Lara Franklin of TechSoup Global and Upwell’s Rachel Weidinger started with a presentation about the basics—how organizations can begin segmenting and using email marketing clients to track and manage messages and campaigns. The session by Jeff Shuck of Event 360 took the conversation to the next level, honing in on how to successfully use member data in your communications. Cameron Lefevre of M+R Strategic Services and Lindsey Twombly of the Human Rights Campaign discussed how to optimize email messages for mobile phones in their session, since more and more, we are using email while we’re in line for groceries and otherwise away from our desks.

Drawing is the new Elevator Pitch

Take a minute and go look at your organization’s website, printed materials, and other promotional items that you use to tell people—as quickly and effectively as possible—just what it is that your organization does. Do you see a lot of text? If so, you aren’t alone. At this year’s NTC, the role of “the picture” emerged as a force to reckon with. Dan Roam suggested in his keynote that creating pictures and images that effectively explain our work could be important to gaining more funding. He asked attendees to draw their ideas in lieu of taking traditional notes in later sessions, and we saw people move from thinking in text to thinking in graphics in just 48 hours.

Attendees were also talking about infographics this year. Beth Kanter, a thought leader on technology for nonprofits, presented a great session on data visualization and shared some low-cost tools for organizations to use. The conference also had graphic faciliators, who captured conversations and takeaways visually. (You can see them on the Rally blog.)

Socializing isn’t just for Facebook

I had a few conversations with NTC regulars who remarked that the social media frenzy seemed to have finally calmed. They were happy that it didn’t center stage at the conference and that sessions covered other tools and strategies more equally. But there actually wasn’t less conversation or excitement about social media; it has just been around long enough now that gets folded into other conversations, such as social fundraising.

Marketing experts Katya Andresen, Mark Rovner, and Alia McKee, came at the topic of social fundraising with a scientific lens during their session, exploring human behavior and options that nonprofits have for effectively communicating and fundraising. Blackbaud’s Steve MacLaughlin shared data and trends in online fundraising, as well as how to integrate both social media and mobile into fundraising efforts. Similarly, Common Knowledge’s Jeff Patrick tackled highlights from recent research for online fundraising and social network use by nonprofits. Coming straight at the topic, Cheryl Black of Convio and Margaux Mennesson of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance talked about specific tools and strategies for social fundraising.

In addition, two reports were released during the conference: the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report and the 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study. You can download them now for free.

Fellow attendees: What other popular topics or interesting conversations would you add to the list? For those who didn’t attend, what are some of the nonprofit technology topics, tools, or case studies on your mind lately?

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).

• Why Your Infographic Is Evil (And Three Ways To Fix It) – “Blogger’s confession: I can spend a couple of hours interviewing sources and crafting a post several hundred words long and get a couple of thousand hits. Or I can write a pithy introduction, repurpose an infographic that has already appeared on several other sites and most likely was created by a public relations firm or a company looking to push a product and service and end up doubling or tripling those traffic numbers. I’ve done both. But I’m not necessarily proud of succumbing to the infographic trend. I’m not bashing infographics. Some of my best friends are graphic artists who design infographics that are eye catching, smart and tell stories better than my words ever could. But this latest visual Internet fad of telling almost every story with a dense infographic is something that I’m hoping will soon be played out.”
• Red Cross Opens Social Media Center For Disaster Response – TheNonProfitTimes – “The American Red Cross (ARC) has launched a digital operations center and digital volunteer program to coordinate response efforts during disasters, particularly when storm victims are huddled in a basement away from other forms of communication. The Digital Operations Center demonstrates the increasing importance of social media in emergency situations. The launch of a Digital Volunteer program will help Red Cross respond to questions and information from the public during disasters.”
• Crowdraising | Heath Wickline – “Advertising can be a great vehicle to make a real, emotional connection with our audiences and to raise the visibility of a campaign or organization. But the expense of buying ad space can be a barrier to many nonprofits. Ads aren’t worth a thing if no one seems them, and ad prices are based on the number of eyeballs that will see them. That’s why Super Bowl spots are obscenely expensive while you see ads for local furniture stores in the middle of the night. It’s how the system works and it’s a conundrum. Social media may now provide an answer. A new online platform calledLoudSauce is looking to change that difficult advertising equation by introducing a simple way for individuals to amplify ideas they like.”
• What can local websites offer the BBC and other public service providers? | Networked Neighbourhoods – “Networked Neighbourhoods has been working with the BBC to test the potential contribution of an alliance of London neighbourhood sites, using the forthcoming digital switchover as a catalyst. With representatives from a number of London local networks and heritage media groups, gathered in the council chamber at Broadcasting House yesterday, we explored the ways in which neighbourhood websites could be used as part of a two-way public service information network.”
• Facebook Fan Gates Are Dead: How Do I Get Fans? | Brian Carter – “A stunning change with the new Facebook Timeline is that you can no longer have a landing/welcome tab for your business page. Everyone is going to land on your Timeline Page with the big cover photo. You’ll still have apps (tabs) but they’ll be even harder for people to find. Few people were going to Facebook pages already, fewer were clicking on the tabs, and now it will be nearly zero.”

A Thousand Words Without a Photo

We know the old saying that a photo is worth a thousand words. But, when it comes to Pinterest, a social bookmarking site exploding with attention lately, it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand words or not, without a photo, you can’t save your favorite sites and pages. For example, like many on Pinterest, I’m a female that has a board for fashion I like. Many of my favorite online stores have cute dresses I’d like to save to my board (obviously, that’s why they are my favorite stores); unfortunately, Pinterest isn’t able to identify the image when I provide the page URL. As such, I’m out of luck: I can’t pin the dress and share with my friends on Pinterest.

Alternatively, all I need on Delicious is the URL and I can save it. Not only can I save it privately or publicly (like Pinterest), I can also save it to any tags or keywords that I choose in addition or instead of saving it to a stack (the term used on the platform in the same way Pinterest uses “board”). And, whether or not the page even has an image I can still save the link and I can even add context or notes.

Sharing is Caring

On Pinterest, the sharing aspect of content hinges on repinning something to your own board, and, unless you create the board as one that allows contributors, you are creating content in your own silo. You can “like” and comment on pins, or automate your pinning to post to Facebook, for example, but that is the extent to the social capabilities of the network.

On Delicious, your stacks can be created by yourself or with contributors in a similar way, but even if they are closed to only you, others can still suggest links to be included, helping you crowdsource content without losing control, so to speak, of the content itself. You can also comment on individual bookmarks or on the stacks as a whole – something I am consistently wishing I could do on Pinterest. Because Delicious is built on a history of many years as a social bookmarking platform, it has great resources for the social sharing built in, including:

• View all other users who saved the same link and the comments or notes they left about it to their own accounts
• Find other users based on content tags or stacks
• Share specific bookmarks or stacks via Facebook or Twitter, or even email

Browsing is the new Reading

One criticism I’ve seen consistently from new Pinterest users is that it is visually overwhelming. You look at a board that is filled with wedding dress options, for example, and it’s hard for our minds to sort the maybes from the yes as there’s just so much going on.  I really appreciate the more streamlined user experience that Delicious offers as well. It even provides options to view the bookmarks that are multimedia or video separately, to view all bookmarks just as links and notes, or in the full view. Here is an example:

This is my Delicious stack for Nonprofit Technology Infographics:

And here is Beth Kanter’s Pinterest board for Nonprofit Technology Infographics:

And for one last example, here is a stack that isn’t image-centric, my stack for Nonprofit Technology Case Studies:

I do think Delicious could improve with custom URL options, for example, but overall I think it is a much better platform for the goals of content curation and social bookmarking. What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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Inevitably, January is filled with predictions and resolutions. We ponder the innovations and evolutions that may unfold in the technologies we use, and consider the issues we want to tackle in our work and communities.

Me? I’m focused on data. This year will, I hope, be the year of data. I see more organizations looking for ways to be data-driven in decision making, communications, campaigning, and marketing, and I see a growing interest in and understanding of the value in sharing data. The more we share our data with each other inside and outside of our organizations, the more data-driven we can be in our work collectively.

If you’ve been waiting for an invitation to dive into data, this is it. You are cordially invited to start tracking, measuring, evaluating, and sharing! Here are a few ways to get started:

Data for Promotion

Many organizations use selected statistics, data, or other information in press releases and calls to action, but we may not look at those numbers or statistics as stories that compel us to share, respond, and take action. There are ways, however, to use data to tell a more active story. Here’s an infographic that Points of Light shared during the ramp up to its 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day service events. Looking at the cumulative impact of volunteers is really powerful when it’s presented in this way:

Data for Engagement

Using real-time tools to engage people through data can help increase both the time people spend on your site and the amount of information you can convey quickly. Mapping is one of the most-used and easily recognizable options. It’s easy to see and understand a map right away (especially using something like Google Maps, which most people have seen before or even used themselves). One great example is the wayEpic Change uses a map as the main interface for its To Mama With Love campaign.

The To Mama With Love site encourages visitors, without any written instructions, to click locations on the map, read through the user-created word, photo, and video dedications to moms (or, “heartspaces”), and engage with others’ stories by sharing or donating.

Data for Reporting

Organizations are also sharing data in many ways. Some if it is visual, such as in this terrific infographic that illustrates trends for where we are giving our time and money:

This year, I would love to see nonprofit organizations, service agencies, and local groups working together to share their data in the effort to more accurately map our collective impact and to identify new opportunities for partnership and collaboration. Imagine if you could see a map of hunger in your city that included a broader set of data than what Share Our Strength, Feeding America, or your local food bank has collected. What if the map included information from service providers, schools, and other local organizations? You would get a clearer picture of the issues causing hunger in your community—and be that much clearer about how to tackle the problem. Maps can reveal things such duplicated efforts and can help us understand where to invest. I would love to see that map! And I would love to help.

What are you looking to do this year with your data? What are you working on now? I would love to see or hear about any examples you already have.

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 Revolutions Were Tweeted: Visualizing Prominent Information Flows during the Tunisia and Egypt Revolutions – This is a very cool visualization from danah boyd pulling together twitter accounts and displaying tweets, reactions, and much more. Really interesting to see the combination of various kinds of information sources – from traditional media outlets to individuals.
• Too Many Messages and Only One Facebook Page: April 6th Movement in Post-Mubarak Egypt | technosociology – Check out this great guest post by Susannah Vila on the technosociology blog! "This post draws from over 30 in-depth, semi structured interviews conducted with coordinators of and participants in the Egyptian revolution between March and August 2011."
• A Roundup of Valuable Twitter Tools – Noupe – A great round up of Twitter tools – some great long-time favorites and some newer tools. Any others you'd add? "It is hard to argue against the value of Twitter these days, especially for businesses and professionals looking to network and stay ahead of the curve. Like the throngs of designers and developers that have flooded this social media outlet’s streams and sapped its API since its inception. And with so many amazing tools available to expand on, and enhance the overall user’s experience, Twitter is becoming even more useful and handy than ever before."
• How Much Money Do Americans Give Online? [INFOGRAPHIC] – "Everyone says it’s hard to measure social good success. Well, non-profit consultancy Convio begs to differ. The firm recently put out an infographic showing that the Internet is the fastest-growing channel for non-profits. The graphic compares money raised, awareness gained and a variety of other factors across a three-year period. Since 2008, non-profits have cracked the $1 billion mark for online fundraising. In 2010, the average online gift jumped up to $91.94."
• Five Ways for Human Service Nonprofits to Reset their Funding Models – "…most nonprofits have in effect two customers— the beneficiaries they are supporting, and the funders who are paying for the work. In most instances (unlike business) these are not the same parties. … But this is a balance that very few nonprofits manage to strike; the lion’s share of their energy and focus goes into their program model, not their funding model. The big empirical finding runs counter to the conventional wisdom that nonprofits need to diversify their funding across multiple funding sources— foundations, high net worth donors, small individual contributors, corporate philanthropy, government, etc.— in order to grow and become more sustainable. What we have found instead is that for the vast majority of large nonprofits, especially for those with budgets of $50 million and up, it pays to focus, not diversify across different sources."

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).

• Openness or How Do You Design for the Loss of Control? | Blog | design mind – "Openness is the mega-trend for innovation in the 21st century, and it remains the topic du jour for businesses of all kinds. Granted, it has been on the agenda of every executive ever since Henry Chesbrough’s seminal Open Innovation came out in 2003. However, as several new books elaborate upon the concept from different perspectives, and a growing number of organizations have recently launched ambitious initiatives to expand the paradigm to other areas of business, I thought it might be a good time to reframe “Open” from a design point of view."
• The internet: is it changing the way we think? | Technology | The Observer – "American writer Nicholas Carr's claim that the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains has sparked a lively and ongoing debate, says John Naughton. Below, a selection of writers and experts offer their opinion."
• Emergency Social Data Survey Results – americanredcross's posterous – Check out the slides and data from the American Red Cross's survey on Emergency Social Data!
• In Case of Emergency, Update Your Facebook Status | Beth’s Blog – "In January, after the Haiti Earthquake struck, if you were participating on social networks, you couldn’t help but notice the many, many Tweets and Facebook status messages about the Haiti Earthquake. The messages included pleas for support or retweeting the news, but beyond that the stream included pleas from people on the ground in Haiti asking for emergency assistance or letting loved ones and friends know they’re okay. A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies—and they expect first responders to be listening."
• Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS » Most Significant Change (MSC) – "The most significant change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation. It is participatory because many project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the sorts of change to be recorded and in analysing the data. It is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the program cycle and provides information to help people manage the program. It contributes to evaluation because it provides data on impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program as a whole."
• Transparency: Where the Stuff on the Internet Comes From – Transparency – GOOD – "Every day, thousands of stories are passed around the internet on blogs and via Twitter. A new study by Journalism.org has examined the source of those stories. It turns out, most of them come from old-school media. We may like to share information via Twitter, but the information we share comes from the morning's newspaper. This is a look at where blogs and Twitter users are getting their stories, and what kind of stories their users are most likely to link to."
• Marshall Ganz: Why Stories Matter « Friends of Justice – "Learning skills and practices is not like learning a formula; it’s more like learning how to ride a bicycle. You can read 10 books about it or listen to someone lecture about it all day, but how do you really start learning to ride a bicycle? You get on. And you fall. That’s how you learn practices. That’s how you learn organizing." Thanks to Joe Solomon (@engagejoe) for the link!

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).

• YouTube Goes Fully Social And Challenges Facebook | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging."
• Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project – "Last week a reporter from the New York Times read our recent Government Online report and emailed me with a question—how did I explain the disparity between African-Americans' and Hispanics' views of the importance of government social media versus whites? Did I think it had anything to do with minorities being more trusting of the government during the Obama era? Since my reply got pared down due to space constraints, I’m reproducing my response to his query in full below."
• The new JustGiving Facebook app is here « JustGiving blog – JustGiving has a new facebook application out! It launches alongside the current JustGiving application for Facebook which was launched in 2007, which has seen over a half million users – and over 139,000 active in the past month – and over 9500 fans. The JustGiving team is always great about sharing stories, lessons, and insights – so I'll be watching to see how this new tool goes!
• Wild Apricot Blog : Make Your Own Infographic – "Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Yesterday we looked at an interesting infographic that suggested a new way to view your volunteers. Today, let’s look at infographics in general – and resources to help your nonprofit get started on making your own."
• Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right | Beth’s Blog – "The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works. It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem. In this interview, Jennifer Ford Reedy, VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management, at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success."