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).

• 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).

• Vivanista Hosts Question Session « Vivanista | Living Well. Doing Good. – "Have you ever wanted to ask a fundraising expert a question you just can’t get your arms around? Like ‘how many times can I invite my Facebook friends to a fundraising event before it’s considered spam?’ Or ‘do I really need spend the money for a back-up venue if my outdoor event falls on a date that it rarely rains?’ Well, now’s your chance! Starting  August 5th Layne Gray, Vivanista Founder, is going to answer 3 questions per week – submitted by you, and reply directly via video response. Ask her anything (it should probably relate in some way to fundraising or Vivanista, although she’ll most likely answer any questions about pugs whether you ask her or not). If she can’t answer it she’ll find an expert who can!"
• Facebook gets into texting game with Facebook Messenger — Tech News and Analysis – "Facebook has already started to supplant traditional email providers as a dominant way that people communicate online. And now the social networking giant is poised to delve even deeper into users’ messaging activity with a new mobile app with SMS-like functionality."
• KnowHow’s impact — Knowhow Nonprofit – Here's a great example of how you can reinvent the way your organization reports it's impact! And it doesn't have to cost a ton: this video is made with basic tools that are free to use. Have you made a video like this? Would love to see your other examples of annual reports that break the mold!
• Wikipedia Rolling Out Article Rating System – What Do You Think? – "Love it or hate it, you can't say Wikipedia is slow to innovate. The giant encyclopedia site announced this weekend that it will now roll-out site-wide an article rating system that allows page visitors to rate an entry on a scale of 1 to 5 on trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and quality of writing. Article raters have the option of self-identifying as a subject matter expert for whatever article they rate."
• The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function | NTEN – "If you're considering revamping your website to include social elements like the Facebook Like button, streaming from YouTube, or adding information from a social site through its API, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. There are many ways to “get social,” and so many reasons for doing so. Primarily, it's about creating a fundamentally engaging experience for the website visitor that brings them closer to your organization."

Redesign wrap-up: What you said, Where we’re going

Last week’s posts had three topics: Content, Comments and Extras.  The comments and feedback really helped clarify thinking, confirm ideas I had, and make clear the opportunities for improvement. Here are some of the high-level key points. If I’ve missed something, I hope you’ll let me know!

• Categories and Tags: Using content categories like (presentation, case study, opinion and so on) can help people find the type of content they are after, as well as categories and tags that indicate topics, conferences and tools. We’ll be using these to a much higher degree to help surface and sort content much more effectively.
• Diverse Content: Most people noted that they come to the site for case studies and presentations as well as more opinion-style pieces. But I also took note that there’s a great opportunity to diversify content further by sharing short updates, news or reviews to jump start conversation. Look for that!
• Where’s the Action: There’s lots of opportunity to improve the real-time-ness of the site. Many folks recommended/requested ways to see what posts were most popular/read/commented on. I have a worry there about the cycle of because a post is listed as popular, it then gets more visits, which then makes it to the list of popular posts – but I trust we can work on that.  And focusing on where the action is also means highlighting posts that are getting a lot of comments so folks can find conversations that are taking place. Definitely something we’ll be sure to tackle!
• The RSS Connection: A comment from Emily got me thinking about the different experience readers have when they follow the blog via RSS opposed to visiting the site itself. There are a lot of RSS subscribers and I want to make sure that the redesign tackles not just the design of the site, but the way content can be more valuable to all readers. This means brainstorming ways to integrate changes to the content so readers anywhere find it even more valuable.
• More than Posts: Many comments touched on the fact that this site is about more than the blog posts so there’s great opportunity to bring other spaces and resources into the spotlight, whether it is the public NPTech RSS dashboard, books, or other resources – or content and conversations on Facebook and Twitter.
• Ability to Navigate: Right now, the site really operates with stock WordPress options, but from the feedback last week I know there are a lot of readers interested in being able to navigate the site/through content in a much more elegant way. For example, being able to connect to similar content types or topics from post to post, using suggestion widgets to generate the “you may also like” recommendations, and so on. I’m excited to try some of these options out!

This list gives an overview of some of the issues and ideas Matt and I will use as a point of departure for redesigning this site. I’ll keep you posted as things develop and let you know in advance before the new site appears. But, you can always leave feedback either in the comments or in email – any time.

Thanks again to everyone who provided feedback last week! I’m really excited for making this a more valuable space

How this works:

This week, there will be 3 (yes, 3!) blog posts asking for your feedback, each with a specific topic and options. Hopefully that means it’s really easy to weigh in and you’ll give lots of feedback After all, this process is designed to make it easy for you to get even more of what you want from me!

Redesign topic #1: The Content You Want

For today’s topic, I want to talk about the kind of content that is interesting to you and keeps you coming back for more. Figuring that piece out means that Matt and I will be able to highlight content for you, design the site to feature what you’re after, and even help me write more of the interesting stuff! There are two focus areas below and some options for answers – please note there’s an “other” listed for both as I’m sure there are things I haven’t thought to include and hope you’ll feel open to listing them!

Focus: What is the content you come here for most?

• blog posts and conversations
• presentations or speaker slides/notes
• case studies or examples
• other resources (please describe)

Focus: What elements would make content easiest to find?

• search for tags or categories
• search for titles or conferences
• search for organization names or case study topics
• other (please describe)

Please share your responses in the comments – that way others can respond/reply to your feedback as well as leave their own. Matt and I will be both be responding, asking questions, and participating as well! Please share your ideas and feedback!

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).

• Transformative Collaboration « Alison & Associates – Alison Rapping has a terrific, comprehensive blog post today all about jump starting collaborations. It's a must-read! "Collaboration. It was the hottest “buzz word” of the last decade — And if you ask ten people to describe it, you could get ten very different answers. Collaborations are going to be a driving force in building stronger relationships and stronger communities. In the new decade we are in the “perfect collaboration storm:” energy around our “community visions”, enormous critical community needs, myriad of new nonprofit organizations, and desire for greater impact. This can only happen if we work together. Our community is whole and interconnected; we can’t create a powerful vision in silos."
• Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Congrats to Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston and Kami Watson Huyse on the launch of their new adventure: Zoetica! "Zoetica serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with top-tier, word-of-mouth communication services. A social enterprise, Zoetica provides superior communication consulting, training, and strategy to help mindful organizations affect social change."
• GreatNonprofits: Find non-profits and charities to review, donate, or volunteer. – "GreatNonprofits and Guidestar want to hear about the great nonprofits providing job training or job placement in your communities. Tell us about YOUR experience – how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need improvement? Participate in this campaign to recognize the top-rated nonprofits developing your community through job training or job placement." Deadline: January 31, 2010
• Surprise! Only 5% of Websites Have a Twitter or Facebook Link – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Factual, an “open data repository” analyzed 4 million websites via data from Common Crawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use." Check out the stats highlighted by Allyson Kapin in this short but interesting post!
• Nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 announced – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns – "Osocio is happy to announce a list of ten nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 award. Osocio has started selecting best campaigns featured on our blog, because we want to put the most creative and innovative social ads into spotlights. So that non-profit organizations can learn and benefit from these best practices. This is the Top 10 list of the best social campaigns featured on Osocio in 2009. One of these campaigns will become the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009."

We are still working to get nonprofit organizations online and to move websites from ‘electronic brochures’ to a more modern presence, but the main bulk of organizations are there though struggling to get to the next level. They have a website that’s more than a carbon copy of an event handout, they have members who want to subscribe to something and funders who expect them to be resources to the sector. How do they meet those expectations?

Quality content drives traffic, increases value and in turn can increase the number or engagement of members, visitors, potential donors. So, how do they create the quality content, then?

1. Hear It: There are a lot of ways to listen to your members and your field. Subscribe to RSS feeds from organizations working in the same field, funders, members’ blogs, etc. Listen for topics of interest, questions that come up and conversations that are ongoing for tips as to what people are looking for more information about. You can use Twitter to listen to your community as well and pinpoint conversations that are important to focus on. Don’t feel bad about asking, either, because your community is probably waiting for an opportunity to tell you what they want/need.
2. Write It:  Blogs are expected to be updated often but everyone has experienced the strain of either too much work to do or nothing to write about. If you are listening to your community, your list of topics should be more than you have time to cover. If you have too much other work pulling at your time, enlist another team member or two to share the blogging responsibilities. The best thing to do, especially when starting out, is to create a blog schedule so you can work it into your larger work schedule and not push it down the list.  But, blogs aren’t the only things that should stay fresh—your website should stay up-to-date and pertinent as well!
3. Aggregate It: An easy way of ensuring that your website has new information is to create a page, or parts of pages that are fed by content from an RSS feed. This could be a feed from a Del.icio.us tag that you and your organization uses, or it could be from a news website, a funder’s site, or a sector-specific site. Pulling information in from other places on the web means there is more information available for your website visitors and with less work by you or strain on your time.
4. Share It: Be sure that you are allowing people to subscribe to your information, on your website and your blog, with RSS. Just because your website is the (if you’re doing everything right) go-to spot for news, information, and resources in your field, doesn’t mean people want to visit your URL to get that information. More and more people are using RSS and will expect to be able to use it with your website, too. Be sure to include your information in other outlets as well, so people who may not know it’s there can find out: include links and highlights in your e-newsletter, alert people to new content via any social media outlets you use (such as Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, etc.).

Read the rest of the post at Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Opinion Blog here.

Roger laid out a story plan for organizations to use when a disaster strikes:

1. Breaking news and details (can also include stock photos of the area or maps, etc.) – Day 1
2. What the organization is doing (include stock photos or any photos coming out of the area) – Day 2
3. From the field reports (include personal photos/videos from place of reports) – Day 3
4. Updates (includes news stories, organization involvement and field reports with any photos and videos that accompany) – Day 4 and beyond
5. Real-time field journals/blogs (great ways to send out short stories, updates, photos from the field with organization staff and partners working in the field) – Day 4 and beyond
6. Beneficiary stories (help tell the story of those the organization is serving/helping) – Day 4 and beyond
7. Community fundraising stories (help tell the story of local people and organizations working to fundraise themselves) – Week 1 and beyond
8. Partnership stories (explain how the organization is partnering with other organizations and individuals) – Week 1 and beyond
9. Milestone stories (1 month, 3 months, 1 year, etc. are great time-based milestones for reporting on the situation and progress) – Month 1 and beyond

It is important to create a place on the organization’s website for those looking to donate, a button that is clear and obvious and does not navigate the user to more stories or content but to the donation form.

Sending out emails to your membership is a great way to keep them informed of the above information, but keep in mind the balance of information and asks (asks = fundraising calls).  You gain loyalty from your membership (new and old) and create a presence as an information agent by providing quick and truthful news that isn’t tied to fundraising every time.  Try separating your emails into news-information and updates-fundraising, where the first may include news updates, links to more information, and firsthand reports from organization staff, while the second includes information about what the organization is doing to help, how it is partnering with other organizations and individuals to be more effective and ways the membership can help (which includes donating).

Has your organization responded to a disaster either locally or internationally by integrating the website, email notifications, and staff reports?  What did you find most useful in fundraising?  What did you find most useful in connecting users to information?