Chicago, IL, May 18, 2009 — The MacArthur Foundation Island opened today in the virtual world of Second Life. The island is a new laboratory for MacArthur’s two-year exploration of virtual worlds, led by the University of Southern California and the nonprofit Global Kids.
May 19, 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy — It’s official: The nonprofit world is officially a more popular topic on Twitter than swine flu.
San Francisco, CA, May 13, 2009 — The Skoll Foundation, PopTech, ideablob, and Civic Ventures (sponsor of The Purpose Prize) are pooling their data to create an open database of social entrepreneurs scheduled to launch in late July 2009.
May 15, 2009, The Philadelphia Inquirer — Living Beyond Breast Cancer has won supporters for one of its biggest fund-raisers with e-mail blasts, brochures, and personal calls to big donors.
Social networking now trumps e-mail as the most popular Internet activity, according to a report recently released by Nielsen. What's more, social networks and blogging sites account for nearly 10 percent of all Internet time. Yet, these sites are a largely unmonetized form of media, in terms of advertising and fundraising.
A recent social-media study conducted by NTEN, Common Knowledge and ThePort found that while most nonprofits are at least beginning to incorporate social media into their marketing mix, very few are actually raising money there. Click here to download the survey.
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The ask was simple: Please click here or on the image above, watch the video and then click on “Share” to add the video to your Facebook, MySpace and other networking sites! Adding this video is quick and easy. Thank you for helping to spread the word!
San Francisco, CA, April 28, 2009 — Three developers, whose web applications and widgets will make it easier for web surfers to find and share ways to make a difference, were named the winners of the Change the Web Challenge today. Social Actions (www.socialactions.com), a web-based nonprofit initiative committed to making it easier for people to find and share opportunities to make a difference, produced the Challenge. The winning applications were announced at NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco, CA.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 28, 2009 — Co-sponsors ThePort Network, Inc. (www.theport.com), NTEN (www.nten.org), and Common Knowledge (www.commonknow.com) released today results of the nonprofit industry's first-ever survey examining the use of social networking as a marketing and fundraising channel. Conducted earlier this year, the survey polled 978 nonprofit professionals about their organizations' use of commercial social networking sites, as well as their own hosted social networking communities.
Though recent high-profile media coverage suggests that a large percentage of the US population participates in online social networking and microblogging, more than half of Americans (51%) do not use Twitter or participate in either of the two largest social networking sites - MySpace and Facebook - according to (pdf) a recent Harris Poll from Harris Interactive.
