Posts from — September 2007

Wild Apricot Blog has a useful post delineating some best practice approaches to providing online services, such as a members-only area of your website, or online registrations. It’s worth reading the whole post: Online Member Services Best Practices (Part 1 of 2).

One section particularly caught my eye: the part about raising funds. The post contains a number of important points and useful strategies, but I’ve grabbed just a few here:

• Include a “donate” link in a prominent position on every page of your website
• Add a donation form on your website
• Accept all major credit cards as well as PayPal if possible
• Allow donors to specify designations or acknowledgements, make memorial or gift donations, or remain anonymous
• Encourage your supporters to spread the word to even more people online through the use of widgets and social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook
• Thank your donors!

That first point about having a prominent ‘donate’ link ties right in with the idea that we have to make it as easy as possible for people to do the things we want them to do. If they have to hunt around for how to join or how to support our organisation then we’re making it too hard for them.

Even if you’re not set up to accept donations online, you can still make sure you have the information people need in an easy to find spot. Give them a form to print, fill in and send back, with the name and address right there on the form. If you can handle credit cards by phone, then say that and list the phone number.

Accepting credit card payments online may be too much to think about for some organisations, but it’s quick and easy to sign up with Paypal, and to accept payments that way. Paypal’s very popular, so look into it.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Share this post

Hide Sites

Non-Profits Web Tool Kit by Read/Write Web is an article you absolutely must read:

We’re focusing on non-profits and charities on Read/WriteWeb this week, and with that in mind, we decided to take a look at what web-based tools exist to make running and organizing a non-profit or charity organization easier. It turns out, there are many of them.

We’ve organized the cream of the crop into the tool kit presented below.

Topics in the article include:

• Creating a Website
• Getting the Word Out
• Raising Money
• Keeping in Touch
• Meet in Person
• Finding Volunteers
• Keeping Track of Everyone
• Measuring Your Success
• All In One Solutions

Share this post

Hide Sites

Richard MacManus writes in Non-Profits on Facebook and MySpace:

Amid all the hoopla over social networks Facebook and MySpace, both major social networks have prominant sections for non-profit activity. Facebook’s is called Causes and MySpace’s is Impact. …

Currently, the 5 most popular causes in Facebook (in terms of users) are:

1. Support Breast Cancer Research (1,444,427 members - $31,277 donated)
2. Stop Global Warming (627,293 members - $9,416 donated)
3. Save Darfur (473,996 members - $35,803 donated)
4. Animal Rights (546,781 members - $9,208 donated)
5. Stop Dog Fighting Now (281,291 members - $10,761 donated)

… Facebook Causes seems to be doing more for charities at this point, although raising money via Facebook doesn’t appear to be easy - with none of the top 5 Causes having raised more than $40k. Still early days though, because it only launched in May 2007. Currently MySpace Impact seems dominated by political causes - which are non-profit, but not likely to inspire those with a charitable bent to use MySpace.

Social networks aren’t a panacea, or a golden goose for non-profit groups and community organisations, but clearly some people are directing their donations via these spaces.

Share this post

Hide Sites

The Overbrook Foundation, in New York City, strives to improve the lives of people by supporting projects that protect human and civil rights, advance the self-sufficiency and well being of individuals and their communities, and conserve the natural environment.

Recently they surveyed how the organisations they give grants to are coping with some of the new technologies:

The phrase Web 2.0 is being used to describe the next generation of wireless and web-based technologies (or social media) that will continue to enhance the ability of social change organizations to engage, educate and mobilize large numbers of people in support of their causes. The Overbrook Foundation recently commissioned a consultant, Allison Fine, to assess the extent to which our human rights grantees were adapting to the new digital Web 2.0 world. … The key findings of her report include the following:

• Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that they use the web largely as a source of information rather than a tool for interactivity.
• A small handful of grantees … are using social media in spectacular ways to engage their constituents in conversations.
• Most grantees are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. For instance, only half of them have blogs, and only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs.

Visit the Overbrook Foundation website to read the full report and further background.

[Via BlogHer - Social change, Non-profits & NGOs: Web 2.0 Adoption by Nonprofits: New Report by Overbrook Foundation.]

The BlogHer article, worth reading in full, goes on to mention:

… the report wasn’t just a series of data findings, but also include some in-depth reporting on attitudes about using the tools. Some of the key themes from focus group interviews:

• Most of the attendees were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools. “We don’t know who can translate these things for our needs.”
• Participants felt a generation gap with the new technology. “I’m always trying to catch up to my younger staff members.”
• All of the groups are using the web for donations; some to much greater success than others. As one participant said, “Money is the ultimate user generated content.”

This blog, and Webguide 2.0 (currently being written) aim to inform groups in New Zealand about the new generation of social media tools. As writing progresses we’re finding adventurous groups who are already using these tools to enhance their effectiveness.

If you’re one of those groups, please contact us, as we’d like to hear your story.

If you’re not one of those groups, then keep reading.

Share this post

Hide Sites

Internet service is patchy in New Zealand, but in general we do quite well. Some of us enjoy high-speed, relatively inexpensive broadband, while others are restricted to 56K dial-up, and some suffer from erratic, slow or non-existent connections.

Statistics New Zealand tell us in their 2006 QuickStats for Phones, net and fax — Households section:

• 60.5 percent of households in New Zealand have access to the Internet.
• Throughout New Zealand, 74.2 percent of households have access to a cellphone.

Furthermore:

• 1.011 million households had access to the Internet at home in the December 2006 quarter.
• 33.2 percent of New Zealand households had broadband access to the Internet, while 30.9 percent had dial-up access.
• 69.0 percent of individuals used the Internet in the previous 12 months; 28.6 percent made an online purchase.
• Almost 2.6 million New Zealanders (80.0 percent) had personal use of a mobile phone in the previous 12 months.

[Via : Household Use of Information and Communication Technology: 2006 - Statistics New Zealand.]

Much of our Internet access comes to us courtesy of undersea cables that circle the Pacific. See Colin Jackson’s post and links: Submarine cables — our world is wrapped in fibre:

…the main cable we rely on is called Southern Cross. … really a ring of cables rather than just one cable. It forms a ring passing through Auckland, Sydney, California, Hawaii and back to Auckland.

But that cable is a ring — it’s hollow in the centre. And while the South Pacific looks like a great big empty ocean, in fact it’s dotted with a heap of countries who do truly suffer from shockingly bad Internet connections. Slow, expensive dial-up is often the best you can hope for if you live in places such as Samoa, Vanuatu and the Solomons.

Our Pacific cousins have a tough time of it. But that may be about to change. Colin Jackson writes in Wiring the South Pacific:

Many Pacific states have been missing out on the technology we all take for granted. They have slow, expensive satellite connections that most local people can’t afford. The whole point of the Internet is that everyone joins in, but Pacific peoples have mainly been left out of the loop.

Until now, that is. PICISOC - the Pacific island chapter of the global Internet Society - has announced a project to lay a fibre to many South Pacific states.

PICISOC report a couple of initiatives:

… a ‘Pan-Pacific Satellite-based Rural Internet Connectivity System (RICS) aimed at complementing current commercial providers for Internet connectivity at rural and remote areas in all Pacific Islands.

… a sub-marine cable … that will link twelve South Pacific Island countries and territories to unlimited bandwidth opportunities. This cable network would link from the east, French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Niue, American Samoa, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and PNG in the west. … All 12 countries have expressed their interest in this new network and assuming they confirm their commitment by the end of 2007, it is likely that the new South Pacific Islands Network (SPIN) can be implemented in 2008.

Share this post

Hide Sites