What We’re Reading, Week of 1/25

From Beth’s Blog…
Ashoka’s Use of Twitter
Tom Dawkins of Ashoka pens this interesting guest post on Beth’s Blog about how his organization has used Twitter and what benefits they’ve seen.

From Kivi’s Non-profit Communication Blog…
Integrating Your Website, Email Newsletter and Social Media Sites
A great post from Kivi about making sure all your electronic efforts are working together, something MOST organizations could benefit from!

From AFP Blog…
Flickr for non-profits – 8 lessons learned
A couple lessons from AFP blog on how to use Flickr to your advantage for your organization.

What We’re Reading, Week of 1/18

From A Small Change…
How to Make Your Fundraising Efforts Go Viral
Jason at over at A Small Change discusses “the holy grail” of online marketing…getting your efforts to go viral. In this post he has some times for getting your content spread by virtual word-of-mouth.

From Beth’s Blog…
Are Online Vote-for-Me Contests A Good Idea?
Beth’s Blog takes on the interesting topic of the growing prevelance of “vote-for-me” contests on sites such as Facebook  and their effectiveness.

From AFP Blog…
Simple Passwords Remain Popular, Despite Risk of Hacking
A great reminder from AFP blog that we should all take our online security seriously and make sure our passwords are updated and as strong as possible!

What We’re Reading, Week of 1/11

From Kivi’s Non-profit Communication Blog…
2010 Predictions: Number 1 is I’ll Keep Referring You to Beth
Kivi shares her predictions for non-profit marketing in 2010, and her #1 prediction? That she’ll keep referring us to Beth of “Beth’s Blog” (one of our other favorites).

From A Small Change…
Eyes on the Party
A brief reminder from Jason at A Small Change on how to get the most from networking at your events.

From TechSoup…
Text Message Donations for Haiti Reach $8.5 Million
TechSoup takes a look at the revolutionary fundraising effort made by the American Red Cross using text messaging to raise more than $8.5 million dollars for Haiti releif and counting!

ASIers around the ‘Net

Robin and I have been writing a few things on other sites also. I thought our blog readers would find these interesting.

• The Nonprofit Market: A Look Back and a Look Ahead by Robin Fisk on Fundraising Success Magazine
• The nonprofit scene: looking back and ahead by Robin Fisk on Canadian Fundraiser
• 10 ways to motivate employees to use your CMS by Anne Gentle on Fierce Content Management

What We’re Reading, Week of 1/4

From ASAE…
Having the social media talk with your board
It has to happen at some point. You have to have the conversation. It may be uncomfortable, but it has got to be done. To help you out, Acronym from ASAE has this great post to help you discuss the use of social media with your board.

From TechSoup…
New Year’s Technology Resolution #1: This Year, I Will Upgrade My Hardware!
TechSoup wants you to start off the new year right by upgrading your hardware. To that end, they give you several options on ways that you can update your technology.

From A Small Change…
Online Campaigns
A great post to kick off the new year! Jason shares advice he has collected from fundraisers about the use of social media and how to get the most out of all your online campaigns.

Can a non-profit fail early, fail often?

You’ve heard the advice to save early, save often, when working on a computer. But how about advice to fail early and fail often? Seems counter intuitive, but there are good reasons to push yourself and your organization to its limits, actions which sometimes will result in failure. For example, a new social media strategy could involve failure. With the new year upon us (welcome, 2010!), all of us are looking for areas to improve, invigorate, and invent. Who knew that looking for ways to fail is part of that journey?

Studying failure

Failure is problematic for many people, from the perfectionist to the over-achiever, but it seems especially disheartening for non-profits. While every organization needs the space and time to learn, and failure is part of learning, real people and the general public and society are affected by failures. So how do you ensure that the failure is educational and not harmful? Wired magazine has a great article titled Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. With complete access to all areas of researchers’ work, Kevin Dunbar is studying the way scientists try and fail. He gets a little overwhelmed even. As the article reminds us, Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once said, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

Despite the scope of the task, Dunbar learned along the way that science is, in summary, a frustrating pursuit of explanation. And sometimes a failure is the answer to a different question, which is described in the story of a “failed” radio telescope in the full article.

How to learn from failure

Wired contributing editor Jonah Lehrer, author of the article, offers ways to learn from failure. I think these how-tos are valuable to all of us, whether trying out a new social media technique for the first time or expanding services. Let’s walk through the Wired How-To list with a non-profit perspective.

1. Check your assumptions - ask yourself and your team, why does this result feel like a failure? Does it contradict something you’ve always thought to be true? Maybe the initial guess failed, but trying something new did not fail.
2. Seek out the ignorant – explain your mission to someone outside of your organization who are unfamiliar with the typical client you serve or haven’t heard of your organization. Talk in simpler terms than you do every day with your peers.
3. Encourage diversity – Be sure to include people outside of the problem you’re solving. This technique expands or contracts your set of assumptions.
4. Beware of failure-blindness – realize that your brain will filter information that contradicts your preconceptions. Remind yourself not to cling to your beliefs at the expense of ignoring failure.

Success!

Now that all the failure-hunting is out of the way, how about a success story? The power of Twitter to help homeless families is described so well in this blog entry, Magic of Twitter Brings Miracle to Homeless Family. I’ll just link to it and leave you to read it and enjoy the spirit of the season. Enjoy!

(Update: Be sure to read Beth Kanter’s guest post on Conversation Agent: How To Fail Your Way To Social Media Success. Wow, spooky same wavelength stuff! She discusses Avinash Kaushik’s new book and the chapter about the F-word, Failure.)

Happy Holidays!

We here at i On Nonprofits want to wish you all a safe and happy holiday season. We will resume our regular postings after the new year. See you all in 2010!

- The i On Nonprofits Team

What We’re Reading, Week fo 12/14

From A Small Change…
Organizing Your Donors
Jason at A Small Change takes an interesting look at how different organizations seem to organize their donor pools.

From ASAE…
Innovation with boundaries
Acronym from ASAE continues their “big idea month” with this thought: “What if associations put aside a percentage of their budgets to try out some offbeat ideas?”

From TechSoup…
Report: Orchestras and Social Media
TechSoup takes a look at an interesting report examining orchestras and the use of social media.

What We’re Reading, Week of 12/7

From Acronym…
What if associations promoted all of the lowest-ranking staffers to VPs for a week?
It’s “big idea month” over at the ASAE blog Acronym and here comes a thought-provoking post which makes you stop and think about organizational hierarchy.

From Beth’s Blog…
Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media To Achieve Mission
A great post from Beth Kanter in which she hypothesizes on the future of networking events and her predictions of the melding of online social networking and in-person events.

From Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog…
How Many Thank-Yous Will I Get This Year?
Kivi blogs about a great experiment she conducted testing the gratitude and donor follow-up of organizations to which she donated through the Capital One No Hassle Giving site.

From A Small Change…
Fundraising Generalist or Practitioner
Jason at A Small Change muses on thoughts that, even if you’re not in fundraising, have occurred to all of us. Is it better to be a specialist in one section of your chosen field (he speaks specifically to fundraising)? Or is it better to have some knowledge about everything?

What We’re Reading, Week of 11/30

From Small Change…
Want to vs. Need to Hear
I brief but thought-provoking post from Jason at A Small Change about how we all view and receive criticism.

From AFP Blog…
Top 10 Ways to Boost Online Giving at Year-End – Resource Center – AFP
AFP blog has a post from Fundraising Consultant Gail Perry. Definitely worth a read since (as she points out) about 40 percent of online giving happens in December.

From Beth’s Blog…
Social Media in the Board Room
A great post from Beth at Beth’s Blog about social media and how to turn regular social networking done by the employees of a company into a powerhouse.