E-Philanthropy

Put down your iPhone, close your Facebook profile and stop Twittering for just a second. I have something to say to you, head to head and heart to heart. Technology is cool. It can be an incredibly effective way to promote your cause. But hard wires don’t necessarily create human bonds. Your social-media strategy can’t simply be a tool set — it needs to be a conduit to living beings. “Java” doesn’t inspire people unless you’re talking about the kind you get from Starbucks. Technology doesn’t compel people — people do. I’m taking this precious space to make this point because I think it

The question isn’t whether or not nonprofits should use new media and technologies to engage new members — but how. Ben Rigby’s new book, “Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth,” provides organizations and campaigns with a how-to on finding and targeting young supporters, volunteers, members and donors. The book, presented by Rock the Vote, briefly touches on fundraising, but primarily focuses on friendraising — using new media to engage young people now in the hopes of making them donors later. Throughout the book, Rigby reviews the most popular Web 2.0

On her Non-Profit Marketing Blog, Katya Andresen shares a recap of and highlights from the session “The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We’re Forgetting) about Online Outreach,” which she and Sea Change Strategies President Mark Rovner presented at the Nonprofit Technology Conference last month. The NTC in New Orleans was full of fantastic, sparkly, shiny new technology tools. And then there was our session. No winsome widgets, no witty Twittering, no Dopplr-found Doppelgangers. And that was the point. Which is this: What makes technology tools great is not the technology. It’s the people behind them. Successful technology is about

Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, oh my! While I’m not the yellow brick road to lead you to the Emerald City of social-networking Utopia, I am a real, living, breathing, Facebook-surfing, Gen Y, nonprofit professional. My goal for this column, which will appear bimonthly in FundRaising Success’ Giving 2.0 e-letter, is to help nonprofits understand the who, what and why of Web 2.0. This medium shouldn’t be viewed as a frightening, unknown forest filled with predators, but a world of opportunity to share your message with new demographics in a plethora of innovative, creative ways. By breaking down the world of Web 2.0, I

On the See3 Communications blog See What’s Out There, See3 CEO Michael Hoffman shares these tips from YouTube’s “YouTube for Nonprofits Tip Sheet.” The basics * Reach out. Post videos that get YouTube viewers talking, and then stay in the conversation with comments and video responses. * Partner up. Find other organizations on YouTube who complement your mission, and work together to promote each other. * Keep it fresh. Put up new videos regularly and keep them short — ideally fewer than 5 minutes. * Spread your message. Share links and the embed code for your videos with supporters so they can help get

From the Nonprofit Technology Conference Session “A New Tool for Online Campaigns: How to Show, Tell and Activate With a Video-centric Microsite.” 10. Make a good video — short and engaging with a call to action. 9. Video early and often — repurpose material into new pieces. 8. Create a nonprofit channel on YouTube. 7. Organize a video contest to incite enthusiasm among your supporters. 6. Comments on YouTube videos greatly enhance the video’s ranking in Google search results on related keywords. 5. Widget it! Keep control over your videos while adding features. Create your own video widgets using tools such as Sprout Builder,

There was no shortage of cyber chatter surrounding last month’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans. Here’s a sampling of some observations from bloggers around the country. For a more comprehensive list of blog entries about the conference, click here. “Observations on the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference,” posted March 26 by Kurt Voelker and Andrew Cohen, chief technology officer and project director, respectively, at Forum One Communications’ INfluence blog: Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting,

At last month’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans, nonprofit techies and professional fundraisers met up to discuss the emerging best practices for fundraising using social networks and social media. Their conversations were overwhelmed by one small detail. Few nonprofits have succeeded in raising large amounts of money using blogs, widgets and fundraising applications for social networks. Nine months since the high-profile launch of Facebook Causes and well over a year since the first articles on Web 2.0 fundraising started to appear, members of the nonprofit tech community seemed to be turning against the new-fangled tools for online fundraising. The traditional staples

Ed note: In last week’s edition of his snarky e-letter, Business Common Sense, direct-mail pundit Denny Hatch weighed in on the online political fundraising. This article is excerpted from that; to read the whole article, click here. The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and, especially, Barack Obama have discovered the Midas touch in terms of milking political Web junkies for cash. It looks as though they will go down to the Denver Convention in late August having spent zillions to bash each other, and very possibly destroy the Democratic Party’s chance to win back the White House in what should be a slam-dunk election. How

While a recent study by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council found online retailers do a great job of honoring unsubscribe requests quickly, it also found they could improve their opt-out processes, such as by providing subscribers with alternatives to opting out or at least lowering the barriers to doing so. The study — EEC’s first Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study — examines the opt-out practices of 94 of the largest online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot, EEC’s blog that tracks the e-mail marketing campaigns of e-tailers. Chad White, the author of the study and EEC’s director of retail insights, and editor-at-large and