What We’re Reading, Week of 10/26

From A Small Change…
Drowning in Agendas
A great post from Jason at A Small Change that we can all relate to. He discusses the need to balance the time that we spend meeting about a topic and actually acting on it.

From AFP Blog…
Churches connect with parishioners online
AFP posts this quick but interesting tidbit about how churches are vying for younger parishioners online.

From NTEN…
Measuring Organizational Influence In Social Media
A must-read article from NTEN about quantifying the time, effort, and resources your organization is putting into its social media program.

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/28

From Beth’s Blog…
How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media To Animate Its Community
Guest blogger Brooke McMillan contributes this insightful post to Beth’s Blog, taking a look at a few tips utilized by LIVESTRONG to ensure success in the use of social media.

From Acronym…
Purpose-driven membership
What is membership? This lengthy blog post at Acronym takes a look at this somewhat existential and lofty question with some interesting thoughts.

From A Small Change…
Results Oriented Fundraising
Jason at A small Change discusses a comment left by one of his readers to an earlier post about quantifying donations and support.

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/21

From A Small Change…
Musings on the Future of Fundraising
Jason at A Small Change writes about the changing landscape of fundraising and his predictions for the future.

From Beth’s Blog…
How to translate social listening into good twitter conversation that supports your objectives
Beth Kanter takes a look at how organization’s can better utilize social listening (the practice of using social networking sites to listen to their members and potential donors) and turn that into constructive communications via Twitter.

From Acronym…
How secure is that golden handcuff?
An interesting article about how organizations should approach at their “golden handcuff” (a program or product so important to a member that it effectively binds them to the organization).

From NTEN…
Online Donors: Why They Leave and How to Win Them Back
NTEN takes a look at an interesting problem and opportunity when it comes to online donors which they have dubbed “the young and the generous” (they tend to be under 40 and their gifts are around $100).

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/24

From A Small Change…
Building Community Online
This post from Jason at A Small Change blog takes a look at how organizations should go about building their online community by, in part, creating an intentional culture that fit the various cultures of your donors.

From Acronym…
Facebook fundraising: Feeding America shows good taste
Acronym from ASAE examines the effectiveness of one of the early adopters using Facebook for fundraising. To do this they look at Feeding America’s (formerly Second Harvest) latest campaign on Facebook, a “virtual Sandwich Swap n’ Share” involving the unusual duo of Hellmann’s and Best Foods Mayonnaise with musician Billy Ray Cyrus.

From Beth’s Blog…
Seven Thoughts on Slacktivism
This guest post by Ali Cherry of Beaconfire Consulting takes a look at the growing trend of “Slactivism”, the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem

From NTEN…
The Shrinking Generational Digital Divide
Sami Hassanyeh of AARP contributes this post looking at trends in demographics of the use of technology and where these are headed. Some of the findings about current usage demographics may surprise you (they did us)!

What we’re reading, week of 1/19

From NTEN…
Managing Technology Change: Imagine All the People
Bev Magda revisits a theme we explored at iOn earlier this week: technology problems are often people problems in disguise. She offers some helpful advice for managing technology change from this perspective.

From The Fundraising Coach…
Are we playing God? Economists continue to investigate motivations of donors
Marc Pitman examines another article about “why donors give,” and raises the questions: “Is this research helpful or does it harm our field? Will it lead to donor manipulation? Or will it simply help us care for the friends of our nonprofits more in keeping with how they really want to be cared for?” Some interesting discussion (from the faith-based sector in particular) is going on in the comments.

From Beth’s Blog…
Women in Nonprofit Technology Who Rock: Adding to Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology List
Beth Kanter gives an impressive rundown of the most influential women in several sections of the nonprofit technology world. Many are already daily reading for us at iOn, but a quick look at this list is sure to turn up some brand new discoveries!