It’s time to review the bright spots of last week’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle.

1. The future of email delivery:  This featured a round table discussion on the new Goodmail program, which — to somewhat oversimplify the controversy somewhat — has been denounced by EFF and others as an "email tax" on political speech. AOL and the Red Cross are experimenting with the service, which aims to combat spamming and phishing by adding a "certified" icon to emails and guaranteeing delivery for those senders willing to pay a tithe on each message. Representatives from Goodmail, AOL, EFF, FreePress, GetActive, and the Red Cross made for a heated and engaging discussion. Video and audio of the session is now available on the NTC conference site.

2. Conference SMS Messages: The conference organizers sent text updates during the conference  including secret instructions on where to report for a free drink coupon. My collegue Jeff Herron commented, "I can see how that can be a powerful way to touch constituents, but seems like the circumstances would be limited to times when constituents are able to immediately take some action. Seems like it would be great during a march or protest." I’m fairly certain that Jeff is talking about the immediate reach aspect of text messaging, not the free drink coupon!

3. Mobile Fundraising: Mobile Accord demonstrated its mGive product through which nonprofits can enable people can give small donations via text messaging. In this model, a mobile phone user can consent, via SMS, to a donation of up to $10 to be added to their phone bill. The model here is Bono beseaching thousands of concert attendees to text a donation from the arena floor. Good: It’s a promising new tactic for recruiting new young donors. Bad: Phone companies currently suck out 50 cents of every dollar raised.

4. Managing technology projects: Alan Gunn, Sean Dewitt and Jeremy Wallace took a dry topic and created an engaging fun and collaborative session. They had the audience shout out project management tips, issues, and tools while live blogging them in a Basecamp topic list. A  neat discussion. Well, perhaps you had to be there.

5. Guy Kawasaki: His plenary session on innovation was the bomb. Read the notes.

Next year’s conference is in our hometown of Washington, DC. Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Total giving in 2004: $248.52 billion (increase of 5% over 2003’s amount of $236.73 bil)
Individuals: $187.92 bil (75.6%)
Foundations: $28.8 bil (11.6%)
Bequests: $19.8 bil (8%)
Corporations: $12 bil (4.8%)

Source: Giving USA and ePhilanthropy Foundation

Good news  for Beaconfire clients!

Beaconfire CEO Lynn Labieniec was elected Board Chair of the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (N-TEN) at the organization�??s annual board meeting on March 25th. As chair, Labieniec will oversee the association�??s activities to bring nonprofit organizations together with technology vendors, and consultants to advance charitable efforts to provide social services and achieve social equity and opportunity, a healthy natural environment, or the challenge and illumination of art.

�??Our entire profession is entering a period of rapid growth and evolution, and nonprofit organizations need a forum like NTEN more than ever to stay on top of their game,�?� Labieniec said. �??It�??s a great time to step up my involvement in the organization.�?�

N-TEN connects diverse constituents who share a common goal of helping nonprofits use technology more effectively. Organizational and individual members include nonprofits, technology support organizations, consultants, and vendors, who want to identify peers, connect with clients, develop professional support networks, and share information and resources. N-TEN programs include national and regional conferences, an online directory of service providers, workshops and webinars, and other online resources.

Lynn Labieniec is a 20 year veteran of the technology industry and has served as CEO of Beaconfire Consulting since helping found the company in 2001. Beaconfire is a full service Internet consulting firm, providing web design and development, interactive marketing and fundraising, Internet strategy and planning, and software evaluation service to nonprofit organizations. Beaconfire clients include charities and advocacy organizations such as Heifer International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the American Lung Association, the Trust for Public Land, and many others.

Before co-founding Beaconfire, Lynn served on Commerce One’s Nonprofit Leadership Team, as well as a leader within Commerce One’s project management skill track. Previously, Lynn was a founding partner of RivCom Limited, in the United Kingdom, a consultancy firm specializing in applying XML technologies to knowledge and information management problems. She has also held various management positions at Blackbaud Inc. and Riverside Software Inc., with a particular focus on helping corporate and private foundations effectively implement and integrate grants management software.

Lynn ’s career started at IBM’s Corporate Headquarters in Armonk,NY, with bringing operational efficiencies to the Corporate Support Programs department. Over the next six years at IBM she progressed into the programming career track and, among other projects, led the development effort of IBM’s employee matching gift program.

My Birds of a Feather (BoF) session was a success!

IA Summit BoF sessions are created for attendees who need one on one support or conversations with others interested in the same IA process or subject of discussion — BoF sessions are small and are led by Experience Design professionals.

This year Beaconfire led a session — Connecting Content Inventories to Site Architecture and Content Strategy. We had a great session!

Cheers to all. :)

What’s the buzz tell me what’s a happenin’…

Web 2.0, Flex, AJAX – Beaconfire’s right in there with the boutique design firms in diving into the waters of Web 2.0. The big questions are:

• What does Web 2.0 mean for Information Architecture?
  • Web 2.0 allows you to work within the broader spectrum of Experience Design. Now fluidity becomes your friend.
• What does a Web 2.0 design team look like?
  • Once you get over the learning curve It’s smaller and faster.

Social Interaction – This is possible because Web 2.0 sites have created a seamless social interaction tool.

Samples of Web 2.0:

• Flikr
• Frappr

Note: If you create a Web 2.0 site remember to remove the "e" in the name  :)

Cheers!

Guy Kawasaki, gave the opening Plenary at the 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference yesterday. It was titled, ""The
Art of Innovation." Guy’s
speech was inspiring and funny. More notes are in the second part of this post.

Technorati tag: ntc06

(more…)

We launched a redesigned www.beaconfire.com yesterday. With a totally new design, a Flash component highlighting our service lines, rotating success stories, and more… it’s a much more contemporary look :)

Six of us BF-ers — Jeff Herron, Kristina Kohler, Andrew Cohen, Lynn Labieniec, Usha Venkatachallam, and Michael Cervino — are off to the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle today. Beaconfire is sponsoring a contest where if you find all six of us and
give us each your business card, we’ll enter you in a drawing for a
free iPod. If you’re attending, we hope to see you there!

One of my clients recently sought my help in adding their "mission statement" to the homepage of their Web site. Any time this question comes up, I reach for my well-worn copy of Krug’s tome on usability, "Don’t Make Me Think."

Sure enough, here on page 105, Krug writes:

Don’t use a mission statement as a Welcome blurb. Many sites fill their Home page with their corporate mission statement that sounds like it was written by a Miss America finalist. "XYZCorp offers world-class solutions in the burgeoning field of blah blah blah blah blah�?�." Nobody reads them.

Yes, Krug used five "blahs" in making his point.

Instead, Krug suggests two things.

First, have a tagline on your Web site. A tagline, he writes, is a "pithy phrase that characterizes the whole enterprise, summing up what it is and what makes it great." It should be positioned at the top of the page near the logo.

Second, if your tagline doesn’t tell the entire story, use a "welcome blurb." Krug explains in this interview with Management Consulting News:

A welcome blurb should be short (shorter than you think, about 30 words maximum) and contain real content ("3,000 products," "200 locations worldwide," "24 hour hotline," "Free shipping"), not "motherhoody" mission statements ("Providing leadership and outstanding service in the world of cold weather climbing technology"). Start with your "elevator pitch," then boil it down even more. People are not going to read very much on your home page; they just want the gist in a short sentence or two. (If your message is complex, make it into a short list of bullet points.)

While Krug is speaking of corporate sites here, his recommendations apply to organizations as well. Ask yourself, "what makes my organization’s mission and activities different from the dozens of other organizations that ‘compete’ in my space?" Now, say that again in fewer words. Now remove a few more words.

When you’ve squeezed out every unnecessary word and still retained the original meaning, you have the makings of a tagline. For nonprofits, I think it’s often more important that the tagline be short and descriptive than pithy and clever. For most nonprofits’ sites, the most important thing about a tagline is to have one.

It’s less than two weeks until this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (of which Beaconfire is a sponsor). The organizers of the conference have set up several ways for attendees to connect with one another.

Attendees can:

• Add a Technorati Tag (as I am doing here) to their own blogs. Now, anyone looking up the tag "06NTC" on Technorati will see the aforementioned page listing all participant’s blogs.
• See who else is coming by looking at this Frapper map.
• Share favorite links by tagging them with "06NTC" on del.icio.us.
• Share photos by tagging them with "06NTC" on Flickr.

These examples are all free and should be adopted by any smart nonprofit interested in building community among its constituents.

06NTC