 More of Beaconfire Bloggers' photos
|
Beaconfire VP Michael Cervino gives his five New Year’s resolutions for non-profits. This is the first in a new series of video blog posts (vlogs!) we will be bringing you.
Next month hear CEO Lynn Labeineic talk about her biggest failures as a consultant. You do not want to miss that one!
… You really won’t want to miss THIS.
Remember back in August when we asked for your help to get our panel ideas accepted to South by Southwest Interactive? Well, this last week we have been dying to share really exciting news with you, but have been sworn to secrecy .. til NOW!
Thanks to the hard work, brilliance and tenacity of own Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino, “Will Kiva Kill Your Non Profit: Donations 2.0″ has been chosen, featuring Skylar Woodward from Kiva.
From sxsw head honcho’s email:
“We received more than than 2300 outstanding proposals via the SXSW PanelPicker — so being selected for the event means that your idea represents the best of the best of the best. Congrats!! And, thanks again for putting together such a great proposal.”
Does it get any better than that? See you all in Austin!
Today, I had the honor of speaking on a great panel sponsored by Google and the Ad Council along with Jane Kirchner from American Farmland Trust, Andrew Marshall fromthe Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) and Carley Graham Garcia from Google.
Huge props to Kate Emanuel of the ad council for pulling it all together and inviting me to join the assembled rockstars. For anyone playing the home game who would like to see my part of the presentation, enjoy!
A couple of months ago, I was frustrated with several academic journal websites which did not have the necessities of web 2.0 sharing features which can make their site useful to the new generation of scholars. The suggestions I gave centered around adding “share this” or “add this” functionality that would allow site visitors to add a link to their delicious bookmarks, share it with their friends on facebook or twitter, or possibly send to a friend via email.
These changes are institutional and my message mostly fell on deaf ears. One did get back to me and asked if I could help them as part of their student volunteer staff. We’ll cover that in another article.
The problem of adding such functionality is that it can be a chore if the content itself is not ready for sharing. For example, PDFs are never good material to link to on facebook, because they won’t create a nice looking story feed item. Pages that don’t have images won’t look nice either. Apart from cosmetic errors which can be a hurdle to success in implementing these simple tools, time and effort are always a problem for busy organizations.
There is an easy solution provided by wibiya. They offer a way for anyone that publishes content to add an interactive web 2.0 toolbar which sits at the bottom of your webpage no matter where a user is on your site. Similar to the “Start” bar in Windows and the “Apple” bar in Mac OS, this utility is very useful.
Although it integrates with Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and any website well, the best feature I believe is in it’s ability to create a Facebook community.
What does Wibiya say about itself?
“Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars.
Our platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via facebook connect,
enabling twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.”
I hope you have time to evaluate if this is a useful tool for your organization. It could save you more time and money than you expect.
I’ll never get tired of saying this. The envelope please – Beaconfire just won four Web Marketing Association 2009 Web Awards including:
Free The Slaves, Outstanding Website
Share Our Strength, Non Profit Standard of Excellence
Wildlife Conservation Society, Non Profit Standard of Excellence
Huge thanks to all our project teams for the great work, and to our award-winning clients for being such Rockstars!
Odds are, you have heard about all the amazing Non Profit panels being proposed for South by Southwest interactive 2010, and your vote has been courted over and over again. After 2 weeks of this (with one more to go), odds are even higher that Panel-Picker fatigue has hit an all time high and the last thing you want to see are the letters s-x-s-w in that order.
Rather than hear from us about our amazing panels yet again, we thought we would share some comments from the sxsw community. The people are talking, and we invite YOU to join the conversation. Panel picker voting ends on Friday, Sept 4th so don’t delay – time is running out to weigh in on these great panel ideas, like these folks have:
Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0
Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society
Definitely an interesting set of questions. Do people need or even want most/many organizations when there are local and/or highly focused or short-term projects out there and ready made ways to raise $ for them?
Sundeep Ahuja, The Extraordinaries
These days I see a lot of non-profits and cause oriented organizations borrowing pages from Kiva.org – from fundraising to marketing, Kiva.org has almost become an example of a “next-generation” non-profit. There’s something about the way Kiva.org embraces transparency, operations, and engagement which has made it a phenomena. WRT fundraising specifically, in a way Kiva is doing what Radiohead did when they launched their album for free and asked fans to pay what they wished; at the point of transaction, Kiva says “hey, we’re offering this service for free, but if you wish to help us do what we do, please pitch in” — and it’s working. I for one am very curious to see if this model (and the associated transparency and required operational efficiency) might work for other organizations as fundraising is one of the biggest challenges non-profits face.
Skylar Woodward, Kiva
I’m really looking forward to this discussion! We spend so much time engrossed in our model we don’t often get to step outside of Kivaland and consider how this is affecting online philanthropy at large. The intimacy and transparency of a Kiva loan certainly comes at a cost. To what extent is it reasonable to expect other organizations to correlate every dollar to good done in the world? Are we setting donor expectations too high or is this the reality of technology-enabled world driven by postmodern values? If this is the future, how do we scale operations, especially on a non-profit budget, to keep accurate data flowing between donors and recipients?!? At Kiva we’ve certainly had to find the balance between perceived impact and explaining what’s actually going on under the code and on the ground.
Cynthia Greenwood
This is a great idea for a panel. One of my concerns about these new online giving models is whether big donors will now choose to go online to fund loans to entrepreneurs of their choosing versus giving donations that can be used at the organization’s discretion to support the most needed programs and operations. Perhaps this could be addressed by the panel.
Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
This discussion proves to be an interesting one because it raises important questions about the ethics of direct-to-beneficiary fundraising when the human lives are involved. It’s one thing to make a gift to cover the costs of snacks for children in a New York City school (as is possible through orgs like DonorsChoose). But it’s a different proposition to ask someone to make a contribution in order to get a specific political prisoner released from detention in Iran.
Joe Baker, Care2
This should be an interesting panel. It is fairly straightforward to see how the Kiva/DonorsChoose models of micro loans and direct donations can apply to/possibly supplant organizations that primarily serve as bundlers, vetters, and conduits for individual projects and direct assistance. I’m curious to see how the panelists feel the model can apply to other spheres such as advocacy groups.
Can Double-Clicking Change The World? Slacktivism 101
Robert Rosenthal,Volunteer match
Have to say, there’s a delicious irony to a bunch of people in a room watching other people talk about other people slacking. Causes in Facebook ($10 million from 240,000 causes, or $41 per cause) has been a convenient target for slacktivism charges because it’s big and they’ve been open about their numbers, but I think it’s clear our communities need a better model than “click for change”. At some point, individuals need to donate either real time or real money in order to make a difference. Should be a good panel.
Jean Russell, Nuture.biz
Really great issue to debate. i hope we can talk about what has traction without a lot of action and what looks sexy, but doesn’t get much traction – from both an activist org view as well as a contributor/slacker view.
Kiva Wilson, Kaboom.org
I’m stoked to see that SXSW has finally decided to take on this most worthy of topics. Slacktivism opens SO many doors for causes and volunteer/service opportunities. I’m eager to hear what the panelists have to say on the matter.
Michael Cooper
This is a great topic. Non-profits are doing some of the best work in the social media sphere – experimenting where others fear to tread. Big projects have big barriers to entry. If non-profits are to generate mass action, they must use these forms of media to have low barriers of entry to start and encourage folks to take the next step. Should be a great discussion.
Kathryn Lusk
I love this topic – it’s exciting to think about the potential for “slacktivism” to inspire real live activism!
Data, Data, Everywhere: Drowning in a Sea of Analytics
Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation
I think it’s really important to pick the data you track carefully! There is so much to choose from. I hope this panel gets picked!
Jason Cooper, Kaboom.org
As someone who used to compile monthly reports in excess of 50 pages on everything you could imagine related to analytics, I’m very interested in hearing about Question #9. (“What stats can I ignore? “)
Joseph Kelly, Infochimps
Beaconfire does great work. Learning about actionable metrics is a metalesson that can be applied in all sorts of other fields. It will be interesting to see what you guys come up with.
Yoga For Social Networkers: Striking The Right Pose
Renee Hamilton, Operation Smile
I love this idea and the yoga tie in–it seems like it will benefit both newbies and experienced social media geeks who are always look for ways to stretch our time and talents and new positions for us to get into!
Ed Schipul, Schipul: the Web Marketing Company
Great to see Beaconfire, a strong supporter of the non-profit community and a firm that walks-the-talk, representing at SXSW. Not sure I can do the interactive portion of the presentation…. oooooh shiny! … oh wait, what was I writing about? Oh ya, I am in favor of any panel that helps us naturally limit our ADD tendencies and gain focus. This is timely for non profits, for businesses and for ourselves during the Great Recession!
It’s Not All About You: Respecting Your Users
Raffi Darrow, Rdesign inc
I wish everyone knew this: your site isn’t there for you, it’s there for your users!
Thank you for your support! Panel selection decisions will be made in October so watch this space – hopefully we will have some good news to report.
If you’re an avid follower of this blog, you may have noticed that the people at Beaconfire are full of great ideas, and not shy about lettin’ em loose on the world. From social media to design to web metrics to just general non profit tech guru-ness, we leave no stone unturned. But there is one thing we have not yet accomplished – and for that we need your help, dear readers.
Driven by our desire to share what we are most passionate about on a larger stage, we have submitted five innovative, thought provoking and exciting panel ideas for consideration at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, TX this coming March. Among the overwhelming landscape of 2210 other great ideas in the sxsw panel picker (a crowdsourcing approach to selecting conference content, which counts for 30% of the overall decision-making) we bravely stand toe to toe, competing with the rockstars, the uber geeks and other movers and shakers in the tech world. South By, we are Beaconfire! Hear us ROAR!
Helen Reddy-inspired bravado aside, in order to be able to present these great ideas anywhere outside of our own conference room, we desperately need you, our dedicated community, to help us. So now we humbly ask that you not only cast a “thumbs up” vote for our panels, but also post your insightful comments on each entry to let the sxsw “deciders” see how timely, thrilling, brilliant and ya know, really cool , our ideas are. You will have to make an account first, but we know that won’t hold you intrepid souls back. Forge onwards, brave readers, and let your voice be heard! Without further ado (or any additional hyperbole) – our panels:
Yoga for Social Networkers: Striking the Right Pose
Organizer & Speaker: Amadie Hart
There are hundreds of social networks, but only one you. Instead of overextending yourself, you need to bring focus on the important things and let go of the rest. Learn how to center your social media practice and balance your online activities. Bring your yoga mat! (don’t miss the video preview!)
Will Kiva Kill your non profit? Donations 2.0
Organized by Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino
Speakers: Skylar Woodward, Director of API development at Kiva; Ian Scott Haisley, OptINnow.org, Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
Connecting donors directly to the beneficiaries of contributions is a game-changing fundraising strategy. Will traditional nonprofits need to adopt new technologies and fundraising models as donors demand greater accountability for their funds? This vibrant, moderated discussion will include representatives from Kiva, OptINnow, and 2 national advocacy organizations.
Can double-clicking change the world? Slacktivism 101
Organized by Eve Simon & Ali Cherry
Speakers: Jacob Colker, CEO of The Extraordinaries; Premal Shah, President of Kiva; and Jason Cooper, Online organizer for Kaboom.org and at least one other rockstar “surprise guest” to be named later.
Sl’ack-Ti-vism. Noun. Taking action for social change without lifting a finger. As the latest technology allows people to “engage” from their computers/phones rather than getting their hands dirty IRL, will this impact the future of volunteerism? A panel of experts will debate the pros & cons of couch potato activism.
Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics
Organizer & Speaker: Marissa Goldsmith
A Web site gives a nonprofit access to data that makes old school direct marketers salivate. But many organizations find themselves getting bogged down in producing graphs every month, obsessing over drops in pageviews, throwing their hands up on the air, and deciding they don’t have enough resources to maintain this kind of analytics analysis. Stop obsessing about the small stuff, and start learning about creating a goal-oriented, actionable analytics plan that can help your Web site thrive.
It’s not all about you: respecting your users
Organizer & Speaker: Jo Miles
Google practices it with AdWords. Facebook learned it the hard way. The truth is, your site isn’t there for you or your board; it’s there for your users. All the clever marketing tricks in the world won’t win their loyalty if you don’t give them a little respect.
Of course, not to be all “Me me me” about this, we also kindly ask that you share some panel picker love with these other great sxsw sessions, proposed by non profit tech rockstars, social media visionaries and really, really smart people:
Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog
Non-Profits and Social Media: Not the Usual Suspects
David Neff, American Heart Association
The Real Housewives of Social Media
Jordan Viator, Convio
Advanced Brand Monitoring: Let the Haters Hate
Carie Lewis, The Humane Society of the United States
Competition > Innovation > Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change
Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared
Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?
Panelists include: Amy Sample Ward, Danielle Brigida and Stacey Monk
Evolution, Creation and Extinction (of the organization)
Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society
Handheld Awesome Detectors: Sustainable Apps
Rachel Weidinger, Rachel Weidinger Consulting
Building an Employee Platform for Social Change
Patrice Thramer, Nike, Inc
Doing More With Less: How Not-For-Profits Leverage Technology for Change
Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.org
Digital Marketing for Non-Profits
Amy Seidenwurm, LA Phil
A Different Documentary: Online Storytelling & Social Change
Boyd Neil, Hill & Knowlton Canada
The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doin’ Good
Leif Utne, Zanby
SMS And Social Change: Lessons From Senegal
Terra Weikel, UNICEF
We all look forward to representin’ the non profit sector in Austin this spring, and can’t wait to see everyone in The Beacon: Lounge with a Conscience again. (details to come – watch this space!)
SXSW Panel Picker Page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0“
Kiva has been connecting donors with low income entrepreneurs since 2005. Their model of microlending has proven meaningful, effective (they have a current repayment rate of 98.7%), and popular (over $80 million in loans have been made so far). They’ve been such a game-changer in the nonprofit fundraising space that we want to bring Kiva together with other national nonprofits at SXSW Interactive 2010 to talk about the future of online fundraising.
Kiva creates a one-to-one relationship between donor and recipient. Donors know exactly where their money is at all times and can see the tangible effects of their dollars – if desired, they can completely avoid a general fund, symbolic gift, or representative success story. It’s also a gift that keeps on giving – as recipients pay back their loans, donors can reinvest in new ones.
One question that both traditional nonprofits and startups are facing is whether this model poses a threat to the status quo of fundraising appeals. Will donors demand more accountability for each dollar? Will they expect a personal relationship with the end beneficiaries? How do the principles of Kiva apply to advocacy-based organizations?
If “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit” is chosen for SXSW’s program, Skylar Woodward of Kiva, Ian Haisley of OptINnow, and others will tackle these questions in a vibrant conversation moderated by Beaconfire’s own Michael Cervino.
SXSW wants to know what you think about the panel idea before setting the program.
Does this topic sound intriguing? If so, drop a comment and place your vote on the panel picker page: “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0.“
The question one finds asking themselves before taking any task of considerable effort is whether they really want to do it. This past weekend, I exerted some effort to get myself from Washington D.C. to Cambridge, MA to attend a conference. The topic of discussion was Elgg. What is Elgg and why did I go to Cambridge? Read on and discover why.
Last week, it was brought to my attention that Elgg–an open source Social Networking Platform–was holding a conference on Social Media for Education, and a more specific conference on Elgg. I know and understand the needs of Education that the promise of Social Media can bring. I was very glad someone decided to bring people together to talk about it. Since it was on Friday and I was at work that day, I couldn’t make it. Thankfully, I did make the second conference on Saturday.
At ElggCamp Boston 2009, I was able to see the need for the "Social Networking Platform".Speakers made it very clear that Elgg was not for the person that needed to put up a generic social network to link people together. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter do that just fine.
Elgg did not want to be a content management system because that market is well over saturated. Elgg did not want to be yet another blogging or discussion board tool, especially when there are excellent tools for both. The purpose of Elgg was to allow people use the basics of a social networking platform and extend it to do other things.
Some of the various uses which I saw at the conference which made sense were exhibited by people from different industries.
FuseFly.com : The Homeschool Social Network
Brett showed the group how Elgg was extended with a combining a mix of plugin development, and a singular purpose of bringing together the Parents and Children in the home schooling community of the United States.
Hedgehogs.net : The Social Application Platform for The Hedge Fund & Investment Community
Ken showed the group how Elgg was extended with a combination of pure brilliance, financial market know how, and high end programming to provide a digital marketplace for especialized financial data and applications that utilize it.
GeoChronos.org : The Social Network Enabling the Earth Observation Community
Roger showed the group how Elgg was extended with super and virtual computing to bring together scientists from around the world to share research data, computing power, and their results in a collaborative environment to conduct Earth Science research.
The aforementioned websites are highly customized instances of the open source social networking platform. They are not what most of the thousands of current downloads probably end up as. Most websites that are running Elgg are probably like Free Vermont Radio which brings together people appreciate and broadcast Vermont independant music and radio.
Bringing up an Elgg site is not that complicated and there are many different hosting providers including GoDaddy which support Elgg hosting in one way or another. After bringing up a Standard Elgg site, there are a few suggested plugins which are useful and as the research from Ed suggests, very popular. The Events plugin was the one which seemed most mature, however not complete. The community of Elgg is young and not many substantial plugins exist, but it is possible to build whatever you want on the PHP platform. Other plugins such as the Twitter and Facebook plugin allow users to sign into an Elgg site without creating another user account and use their existing accounts on those respective websites. If your users use Google, AOL, or any other OpenID providers, new users to an Elgg site can use their login information as well.
Many of you reading this probably didn’t get a chance to catch up with the Elgg team or the people using it in Cambridge this past weekend because the effort was probably too considerable to pull you away from more important tasks. I personally justified the trip because we are able to deploy Elgg for a large non-profit client and because I hadn’t seen Boston in a while. None the less, if you do have an interest in Social Media in your organization, please review the slides in the embedded presentation before you make a decision. If you are a non-profit, we at Beaconfire are more than happy to guide you through the process through our Software Evaluation service line.
The iPhone is arguably the most advanced piece of technology commonly found in people’s hands these days. It has a GPS to tell you where you are. It has a phone to let you communicate with people. It has a multi-touch LCD screen that lets the user use the device with no more and no less than one button. The iPhone is a computer … with the Internet. Ten years ago, try to imagine describing to someone what an iPhone does and they’d think that you were talking Sci-Fi. Well, folks, as much as people like to deny it, Science Fiction becomes reality every day in our world.
Jules Verne could see us going to the moon, and John F. Kennedy actually pushed our country to do it. Star Trek could see us using tri-corders, and Motorola created it as the first cell phone. In my opinion, the iPhone, it’s market of applications, and growing user base is the best way to gain access to and interact with information. It also helps you get in touch with people, but I think face to face is the best way to interface with other humans.
Over the course of my trip to New York City this weekend, I realized exactly how valuable my iPhone is. When I got off my bus at 31st Street and 7th Avenue, I wanted to use my gym membership at the sports club. I went online on my iPhone, looked up the nearest 24 hour gym in their network, and copied and pasted the address into the Google Maps application. In about 2 minutes, I was on my way. After I arrived and couldn’t get into the side of the building which was advertised, I looked up the phone number online, gave them a call and got in. That’s convenience.
The sports club’s web site is not optimized for the iPhone, but since the built-in Safari Browser is a full-fledged browser, I was able to navigate with some effort and get what I needed. If the web site was actually created for the iPhone, it would have saved me some time from zooming in and out, panning left and right to get around. If they had an "app" for that, I might have been able to log into it with my account and it would have been geo-location aware of where I was and tell me the nearest branches of the club. Why don’t they create an "app for that"?
This is all possible and contradictory to popular belief, the functionality that I just described doesn’t have to be developed as an iPhone Application. Much of the functionality can be created in HTML as a web application and placed on the Internet. Google has done a great job by making all of their applications as iPhone friendly "webapps" which behave like iPhone applications.
Recently, some plugins have been released to make your WordPress blog iPhone friendly. Available at Brave New Code, the WPTouch Mobile Theme and Plugin for WordPress takes your standard WordPress blog and makes it look, feel, and behave as an iPhone application with nice transitions.
Many organizations have also released informational web sites in a handy, iPhone friendly format. Their sole purpose is to disseminate information. Web Apps such as the Athens Tourist Guide : and Pocket Cambridge : are basically lists and tables of static HTML that look nice on an iPhone or an iTouch. Do you have information that can be useful to iPhone users? There are some really easy ways to get it out there.
1. iWebKit – “Iwebkit is the revolutionnairy kit used to create high quality iPhone and iPod touch websites in a few minutes and is based on an LGPL license. In the first 4 months of it’s existance the pack has greatly evolved from a basic idea to a project that has reached worldwide fame!”
2. iUI – It has the following
Do you have programming ability or resources which you can utilize to push out your content from your organizational and institutional databases? You can probably use the aforementioned tools in conjunction with dynamic server side languages, but you might want to look into the following options to make your life easy.
1. ComponentOne iPhone Studio – ComponentOne’s studio is a rich set of ASP.NET Server Controls which is beyond compare when it comes to giving you a competitive advantage in creating dynamic applications fast. Some of the included server controls are : Calendar, ViewPort, CoverFlow ( Like the iTunes record browser ), and MultiView ( like the Photo explorer in the iPhone Camera application ).
2. iWebKit for Grails – This plugin provides integration with iWebkit, a powerful User Interface Library for Safari development on iPhone. By using this plugin, the grail developer will have an iphone web app skeleton (CSS and javascript) but also a extended tag library helping in creating iphone web pages in an easy,clean and fast way. If you are a Java developer or your company has them, and have gotten the hang of Groovy, this might be the path for you.
3. iUI with Asp.NET – iUI is very simple and some people have taken some steps to create their own integration for ASP.NET and iUI. This page points you to some third party resources which may be helpful for you in creating dynamic iUI applications.
How can you capitalize on the iPhone and iTouch user? Here are some ideas which may work out for you.
1. If you have a Calendar of events, you can add iCalendar format links which can let users download the event data and add it to their iPhone Calendar.
2. If you have a location or event search which requires an address or a zip code, you can use W3C’s Geolocation API which is supported by the built-in Safari browser on iPhones.
3. If you have a member’s only directory, you can create an interface which can list people’s information as well as publish their contact info in the vCard format so that they can add it to their contact lists.
Recently, whenever I see an article start out saying “in these tough economic times…”, I get the urge to go find a cave and hibernate until the recession is over. I can’t deny it, though: economic downturn is still seriously impacting nonprofits, and likely to keep doing so for some time. This year, a lot of nonprofits are facing budget cuts and even layoffs, taking “doing more with less” to a whole new level. If you’re doing online fundraising or communications for a nonprofit, chances are you’re being asked to raise more money with even fewer resources – and this year’s budget may be even tighter than last year’s.
In spite of the gloomy outlook, there are a lot of things you can do fight the effects of the recession, and make your organization even stronger as it comes out the other side. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing a series of posts on the many ways you can make smart use of your limited resources.
Here are some quick tips – but check back (or subscribe to our feed) for a deeper look at these ideas and more.
This morning, I read an email with an interesting question from my colleague Jo:
I don’t get this.
http://summerofsocialgood.com/
It looks like this is a huge, well-funded, well-organized program. It also shows that someone (say… Mashable) is really, really invested in showing that you can do fundraising with social media.
But aren’t they going about it backwards? I thought “social media for social good” meant rallying people on social media who care about your particular cause, not rallying people who care a lot about social media and then challenging them to support “social good” in general…
They’ve got the big name organizations, but the campaign’s not about them at all. Or am I missing something?
Very astute question. What is going on here? What is Summer for Social Good really about?
After our well-flavored and succulent presentation at NTC in April, The Iron Chefs are on the road again, this time at the Bridge Conference in the DC area. You now have NO reason to miss it!
To refresh your memory: Using just one secret ingredient (a small nonprofit), three web teams will compete in the heat of battle, offering up exceptional tasting ‘menus’, each featuring a delicious new homepage design, a well-seasoned fundraising campaign and a perfectly balanced social networking plan. Only one team can prevail – who will it be? Come see how this unique project brought together a dozen web pros from competing firms, created amazing work for a very special organization, and taught us all the true power of our industry. We promise you won’t leave hungry.
Beaconfire’s own Ali Cherry and yours truly will be moderating this unique session at 3:30 on July 23rd and Susan Finkelpearl of Free Range Studios, Andrew Cohen of Forum One Communications, and Maureen Wallbeoff of Firefly Partners will round out the panel’s incredible talent.
Don’t miss it!
Confession time. When I started designing for the web nearly 14 years ago, I pretty much made it all up as I went along. Brave souls all, we ventured out bravely into the wilderness, hoped for the best and called our mistakes “lessons learned”. Most of us survived to tell the tale, emerging stronger, smarter and a little more acclimated to this brave new world. Others just grew gills, but that’s a story for another time.
As the web industry has matured, it fascinates me that processes and best practices have developed to the degree that all of us are singing a similar song, even though we may not have all gotten the same memo. Working in the web these days feels like spending time on the Galapagos Islands. Evolving to fit our environment, we have somehow still retained the elements that make us all unique without sacrificing forward progress and growth. I always knew Darwin was a designer at heart.
So combining the passion I have for design with my desire to share what I have learned the hard way about the ways of the web, on occasion I stick my hand in the lion’s mouth and go talk to people about it.
Sharing the stage at OneWorld.net’s Web Design for Non Profits workshop with Mckenzine Lock (Senior Communications Manager, Communications and Outreach at Women Thrive Worldwide) and Shirley Sexton (Director of Interactive Marketing & Fundraising at See3 Communications) was further proof that we have learned how to speak the same language without sacrificing our own point of view. Exploring the challenges facing non profits on the web these days, we tackled the same subject from 3 different angles: as a designer who creates visual environments to support an organization’s complex ecosystem, a client who just survived a redesign rooted in best practices, and a marketing evangelist who lives and breathes this stuff every day.
And wouldn’t you know, without comparing notes or peeking at the other’s presentation ahead of time, we shared a cohesive message with our audience. Amazingly, we empowered these non profit professionals in their pursuit of a great new website for their organization, transformed their ability to achieve their goals, and left them excited to take their mission to a larger audience online.
Ain’t evolution fun? Check out my presentation here and tell us what you think!
On June 24th, I will be speaking about a topic that I could wax rhapsodic about for DAYS: Killer design. So sign up now for One World’s “Web design for non-profits” 2 day workshop on June 24-25 and hear what we have to say on the topic. Just don’t heckle me from the peanut gallery. That always throws me. :)
Hope to see you there!
Online video has become an increasingly popular tool used by non-profits to raise awareness. If you’re using video online and need some inspiration, or just want to see what others are doing, take a look at these non-profits who are educating and getting people involved through the use of video.
Interactive Campaigns
These campaigns encourage visitors to get involved by recording and contributing their own videos or photos:
I was having a conversation the other day with a friend of mine about “robots that tweet for you” when I mentioned that our company Beaconfire Consulting had successfully 
mastered the art of Tweeting without actually Tweeting. Please note that I didn’t say “robots that sweep for you”, but then again, someone is probably working on that in Japan or the MIT Media Lab.
For better or for worse, since the global tipping point of Twitter was reached, everyone wants to be part of the action. If Twitter hasn’t come across your online radar, it’s probably because you are living under the proverbial rock and are a Luddite battling online reality. On second thought, if you are on the internet reading this blog post, then you probably aren’t a Luddite, just a Twitter Luddite. That’s ok. The Twitter sphere of knowledge is small and can be transferred from one person to another in usually a few sentences similar to the 140 character tweets.
Below, I’ve elaborated substantially to show you that there is a way that individuals and organizations can use this tool to keep their relationships better informed. I recognize that the audience for our blog here at Beaconfire mostly consists of individuals in the non-profit industry. This knowledge however can be used by most anyone in any industry which uses the internet to interact with their customers, clients, constituents, or partners. Businesses and Governments, please utilize this knowledge wisely and don’t be evil. (That means you Google!)
Who couldn’t love NTC? Great times spent with colleagues, excellent sessions from which to learn, and great conversations on what’s possible for nonprofits and technology. The three days at the conference were invigorating for me. And guess what? No one was disappointed to not receive a Beaconfire chachka. Instead, we had more than 100 deserving organizations recommended by the NTC community for Beaconfire’s Chachka Grant.
This year, instead of spending our marketing budget on stuff no one really needs anyway, we decided to give the money we would have spent on chachka’s to 3 organizations nominated and voted on by the NTC community.
And the winners … (more…)
Beaconfire is proud to be selected as a 2009 Webby Honoree in the Activism category for Free The Slaves.
From the Webby’s Site:
“With nearly 70 categories, Website entries make up the majority of Webby Awards Winners, Nominees and Honorees. Some are beautiful to look at and interact with. Others are a testament to usability and functionality. And a handful excel across the board. To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise — and perhaps a little bragging.
As a result of the superior quantity and quality of sites entered, the 13th Annual Webby Awards recognized sites and teams that demonstrated a standard of excellence.
Of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted to the 13th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree. This honor signifies an outstanding caliber of work. Congratulations to all of our Official Honoree selections!”
Wow. Just Wow. And yay! We’re very excited to be included with the other 11 fabulous projects in this category, and must thank Gravitate Design Studios for their partnership in creating this amazing site.
If you are one of the record number of people attending NTC in two weeks, there is one session you will not want to miss: This is Iron Chef … Battle Non Profit.
Using just one secret ingredient (a small Bay Area nonprofit), three web teams will compete in the heat of battle, offering up exceptional tasting ‘menus’, each featuring a delicious new homepage design, a well-seasoned fundraising campaign and a perfectly balanced social networking plan. Only one team can prevail – who will it be? You be the judge, NTC! Come see how this unique project brought together a dozen web pros from competing firms, created amazing work for a very special organization, and taught us all the true power of our industry. We promise you won’t leave hungry.
Beaconfire’s own Ali Cherry and yours truly will be moderating this unique session at 3:30 on April 27th and Susan Finkelpearl of Free Range Studios, Andrew Cohen of Forum One Communications, and Maureen Wallbeoff of Firefly Partners will round out the panel’s incredible talent.
For more info on the session, listen to this podcast interview. Hope to see you there!
