What we’re reading, week of 4/13

From NTEN…
A Five Step Program to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Web Pages
Following our ongoing discussion of getting the website right first, Avinash Kaushnik offers a five-step plan to analyze and improve website effectiveness. A must-read!

From A Small Change…
Office/Workplace Fundraising
Jason Dick writes about strategies for implementing a workplace giving program. For more, we recommend this MSNBC article, featuring ASI’s own Sarah Hoddinott.

From The Fundit…
Hugh Jackman’s $100K Twitter challenge
This week in brilliant uses of Twitter – Hugh Jackman offers a $100,000 donation to the organization of your choice, based on who can submit the best 140-character appeal. There’s still time to submit!

What we’re reading, week of 11/10

From the AFP Blog…
FT.com / Home UK / UK – Charity begins in the office
The AFP points us to this FT article concerning corporate giving – especially appropriate as we head into the holidays, and many organizations will be leveraging workplace giving programs. In fact, we had the pleasure of sitting with Sarah Hoddinott on an interview about this very topic earlier today – stay tuned for more on that!

From TechSoup…
Nonprofit Technology and Total Cost of Ownership
TechSoup gives a great breakdown of factors to consider when determining the total cost of ownership for nonprofit technology. A must-read guide for any organization making year-end budget decisions.

From Give & Take…
Are Volunteers Useless?
Caroline Preston points us to Holden Karnofsky’s GiveWell blog, where Holden discusses the net impact of volunteers on a charity’s bottom line. Karnofsky’s somewhat controversial position is that volunteers generally cost more than they are worth to an organization. What do you think?

What we’re reading, week of 10/27

Two on social networking, two on nonprofit IT staffing.

From A Small Change…
Trouble with Facebook
Jason Dick inquires about readers’ successes and failures with the Facebook Causes application. In the comments, our own Sarah Hoddinott offers her insights on the strengths of social networks versus nonprofits’ own websites.

From A Small Change…
LinkedIn & LinkedIn Groups
Earlier, Jason discusses how development professionals can use LinkedIn to cultivate relationships with colleagues and donors. We can relate, as we’ve found the site very helpful in generating ideas and contacts for iOn!

From 1cent Thoughts on NPTech…
Info on hiring tech staff
1cent discusses the unique considerations nonprofits need to take into account when hiring tech staff.

Meanwhile, from NTEN…
How Much Are You Paying Your IT Staff?
NTEN is conducting an anonymous survey of nonprofit IT staff salaries. Its hould be interesting to see the results of this!

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”?