What We’re Reading, Week of 7/27

From Frogloop…
Taking Advantage of Wikipedia
Millions of people look to www.wikipedia.org as a starting point when they are searching for information about specific topics. Allyson Kapin of Frogloop encourages nonprofits to bear this in mind, and to create or update their organizations’ Wikipedia entries. She writes that Wikipedia can be a powerful promotional and educational outlet. As Wikipedia becomes ever more fixed in the internet culture, nonprofits should be aware of its potential uses.

From the Nonprofit Communications Blog…
The First 100 Hours: Turning Media Spikes Into Fundraising Leads
Kivi Leroux Miller’s post discusses the importance of turning media coverage into fundraising leads. According to Kivi, media coverage of an organization will lead to a window of roughly 100 hours of increased traffic and search engine hits. This time frame represents an opportunity to raise funds and increase interest. Kivi recommends using customized search ads, a strong landing page devoted to the issue that brought media attention in the first place, and social media. It is important for nonprofits to strike while the iron is hot, and media attention represents a prime opportunity to generate awareness and bring in revenue.

From AFP: Nonprofit Technology Blog…
Twittering for a cause: Web 2.0 and its philanthropic impact
Linking to a post from The Daily Tell, the AFP Blog discusses the impact that Web 2.0 has had on philanthropy. In particular, the post discusses how Twitter has become a fundraising avenue. Through campaigns such as “Tweetsgiving” and “tweet4good”, Twitter users have proven that they are generous to charitable causes. As the use of social media for charitable causes spreads, nonprofits that are not currently taking advantage of social media ought to find ways to get into the game soon.

Fundraising with wikis

Having read a lot of buzz lately in the blogging community about the potential for fundraising with wikis, we wanted to open up the topic for discussion among readers. We asked Chris Dworin, VP of Business Development for GoLightly, a provider of collaborative online communities, for his take on it:

I have a feeling that a lot of that buzz in the blogging community would find its origins in companies that offer only wiki tools.

Remember:  when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail!

I’m not at all convinced that wikis are the best, or even a great fundraising tool, and haven’t heard any specific examples of successful use of wikis for this purpose.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that there aren’t any.  But, few of our clients are using the community tools specifically for fundraising, and I haven’t seen any demand for wikis for that purpose.

So now we open up the question to you, readers: Have you worked with organizations that are successfully using wikis as part of their fundraising strategy? Could you share strategies, practical advice, or ideas beyond the basics? Do you think this is an area that will continue to grow, or where you see large innovative strides in the near future?

What we’re reading, week of 7/7

It’s been a wiki-good week in the blogs. Sorry, couldn’t resist! Lots to talk about with wiki’s but here are the two best:

From CauseWired…
Wanted: Development Ideas for Online Social Activism by Tom Watson, talks about a new wiki that collects ideas on around what applications, mash-ups, and tools that will aggregate giving and volunteering opportunities from 19 different online activism platforms, including Kiva, DonorsChoose, ChangingthePresent, and Change.org. This is an interesting read and quite an offering from Social Media Labs (worth looking at for inspiration if nothing else!).

From Beth’s Blog…
WeAreMedia: Reflections on Working Wikily by Beth Kanter, highlights a fascinating concept of collaboration, wiki’s and good insight on people and their willingness to participate in a project. Lots to discuss here, but would love to hear an interesting use of a wiki (beyond the info storage idea we all know about). Anything innovative or strategic here? Credit to NTEN for their WeAreMedia project!