What we’re reading, week of 3/2

From NTEN Connect…
Nonprofits and Technology: An Interview with NTEN’s Holly Ross in the Artez Digital Fundraising Podcast Series
NTEN highlights a podcast featuring Holly Ross and Artez’s Philip King – two of iOn’s most oft-quoted authorities.

From Step By Step Fundraising…
Roundup: The Economy’s Impact on Nonprofits & What to Do About It
Sandra Sims continues cataloguing reflections from around the blogosphere on how the economy will affect nonprofits – this installment includes excerpts from the Denver Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Don Griesmann, the National Council of Nonprofits, Katya Andresen, onPhilanthropy and A Small Change. A great compendium!

From Frogloop…
10 Best Web Content Practices
A great tie-in to our recent post on the importance of good website strategy and design, Allyson Kapin offers her own ten best practices in this area.

Philip King featured on Frogloop

Frogloop recently published an interview with Artez’s Philip King – someone we’re quite big fans of:
Nonprofit CRM Trends Plus How to Choose an eCRM

On choosing an eCRM, Philip’s advice is to make the following considerations:

• “Ask about [the vendor's] client retention rate: I think this is key.”
• “Understand what their total cost/dollar will be this year, and for the next few years. When I say ‘total cost’ be sure you’re getting not just the prices of the technology, but also any consulting or professional services you’ll need to include.”
• “Make sure you are talking not just to references who are using their solution, but also references who have left their solution.” [Ed. note: This is a good one! -- i On Nonprofits] 
• “Understand what happens if for any reason the nonprofit wants to switch vendors in the future.”
• “Understand who owns the data. Make your potential vendor prove they are open to data imports and exports without having to purchase expensive additional APIs.”
• “Ask about their throughput: how many transactions per second can they handle.”
• “Ask about security: are they PCI Compliant (you can look this up on Wikipedia), and if so what level?”

The rest of the interview is also a great read, in which Philip discusses how to measure the effectiveness of online fundraising, which are the biggest tech trends he’s seeing on the horizon, and more.

Has Philanthropy Seen Better Days?

A recent BusinessWeek article tells the tale of nonprofits in distress – charitable contributions shrinking, food bank inventories dwindling, and a nation of donors whose own economic prospects are looking too grim to allow them to support social service organizations. The idea for this article was suggested by ASI’s Sarah Hoddinott, and it speaks to what seems to be a growing concern in the nonprofit sector: What does the recession mean for us?

But did BusinessWeek get their story straight? I recall a conversation with Philip King on this topic that raises some doubts. Philip suggests that while the fear of a recession-spurred nonprofit crisis is a reasonable one, history doesn’t bear it out in reality. During the leanest economic times, the recorded rates of charitable giving have not suffered in the way one might expect. Philip says that there are two possible reasons for this:

1. Charitable giving is essentially different than consumer spending. Donors are not as motivated to give due to their own prosperity as they are due to empathy, agency, and a sense of community. Along with a harsh economic climate often comes an acute community awareness of local and distant suffering, and with that, an increased motivation to give.
2. At this moment, online and social philanthropy is still growing at a rate fast enough to outpace any slow-down in traditional giving… and this may well continue to be the case throughout the current recession.

Did BusinessWeek get it wrong? Is Philip out of his mind? Do you think the recession will hurt certain parts of the nonprofit arena more than others? And is charitable giving really another animal altogether, or just “one more type of spending”?