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If you work for/with a nonprofit and your success is dependent on technology, the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference should be on your calendar. And don’t think this is just for techies! The agenda is still being formed, but you can count on sessions for nonprofit leaders and folks from communications, marketing and fundraising, as well as the technology staff. We’ll come together to talk about tools and strategies that are reshaping how we go about our mission focussed work. The 2008 conference is in New Orleans March 19-21st and you can learn more at www.nten.org/ntc. See you in New Orleans!

Full disclosure: I’m the Board Chair of NTEN and think the world of the good work they do…

Three of Beaconfire’s online campaigns and marketing clients are coming together this holiday season to change the way people think about giving. Conservation International, Heifer International and Share our Strength are asking people to take the Better Present Pledge to make at  least one alternative gift this year instead of a material present. A gift to end hunger, save the environment, and lift a community out of poverty will make you feel great and look great at the same time.

Beaconfire is managing the groups’ partnership, built the Better Present Pledge microsite (http://www.betterpresent.org/), and is producing the email communications stream that introduces new donors to the three organizations, then asks them to give. We’re also working with exciting media partners, like MSN Shopping, to promote the Pledge to entirely new donors.

The microsite includes cool features like a widget that automatically updates with a count of pledgers and how much they’ve pledged in alternative gifts.

We also built an Alternative Gift Calculator that lets people tabulate their total holiday spending, and suggests a possible alternative gift in their price range from each of the three partner organizations. Try it out on the Better Present Pledge homepage.

Conservation International also put together a fantastic overview video about what the Better Present Pledge is all about - you can check it out on YouTube.

We’re really thrilled to be working on such an exciting campaign for the holidays - in addition to our work with the Better Present Pledge campaign, we’re also working on a lot of other exciting holiday marketing with Heifer International, Conservation International and Share our Strength. Be sure to sign up for email with all three groups if you haven’t already.

Congratulations to Jenny Bowen, Executive Director of Half the Sky. She has been selected to carry the Olympic Torch in Beijing.

Jenny was selected through an online election. She was the top vote-getter.

Half the Sky offers nurture and enrichment programs throughout 36 orphanages across China.

We applaud Jenny and Half the Sky for all their good work.

Beaconfire welcomes INFORMS and the American Federation of Teachers as two of our newest clients both of whom were looking for Beaconfire to gather user input to guide improvements to their respective sites.

We began work with INFORMS in the past week to prepare for interviews with their members as they begin the process of improving their Website. User research is an important step in any project and for INFORMS offers an opportunity to explore user needs, validate findings from market research and begin to prioritize areas for improvement. As the association for Operations Research professionals, INFORMS knows the value of research and is wisely leveraging it to guide their Website improvements.

Just last week, we learned we had been selected by AFT to conduct a usability audit of their intranet/extranet tool for local union leaders, not surprisingly called LeaderNet. This project will include user interviews which provide a change for key stakeholders to share perspective, feedback and desired changes. We will combine this input with our Expert Review of the site to identify specific areas for improvement and recommendations. The idea is to identify fixes that AFT can implement quickly as well as make a case for longer term changes. Once those changes have been further flushed out, we’ve recommended user testing to validate and refine.

We’re excited to get started with both clients.

This month we kicked off with our newest client, Share Our Strength. Their mission of “No Kid Hungry” is one we stand behind and their 10 point strategy for ending childhood hunger in America is smart and effective.

We are excited to be at the table with them to redesign their Web site and assist in their holiday online marketing. Share Our Strength has just finished redefining their brand. The new Web sites for Share Our Strength, Great American Bake Sale, Operation Frontline, Taste of the Nation and Great American Dine Out are all part of the fun work we’ll be doing in the next few months. In parallel, we’re helping out on their holiday fundraising, which for the first time will include alternative gifts to fight childhood hunger in the United States.

Keep an eye out for most posts on what we’re learning and the “great reveal” of the new sites in January.

We’ve been talking a lot about Facebook lately (well, actually John Brian has been talking a lot about Facebook lately), and now YouTube seems to have noticed that it’s system may provide some unique possitilities for Nonprofits.

Available only to 501(3)(c) Organizations YouTube - Broadcast Your Cause is a new offering allowing you to create your own “Nonprofit Channel” with:

• Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
• Rotation of your videos in the ‘Promoted Videos’ areas throughout the site
• The option to embed a Google Checkout “Donate” button, and fundraising without transaction costs.

Sounds pretty good up front. There’s not a whole lot of information available on the site right now, but it’s probably something worth keeping an eye on.

http://youtube.com/nonprofits

While the news of Katrin Verclas’ resignation as Executive Director at NTEN was distressing, you couldn’t ask for a better successor than Holly Ross. Under Katrin’s leadership NTEN has grown in all the ways the Board envisioned and we’re pleased that she’s accepted our offer of a Board seat.

As NTEN’s Board Chair, I’m really excited to see Holly take the reins. She’s been a true champion for the organization since the beginning, most recently as Program Director. Holly’s well positioned to lead NTEN’s next phase and build out from the great progress made so far.

Hopefully, as an NTEN member, you’ll join me in congratulating Holly — and if you’re not an NTEN member, why not? It’s the membership organization for anyone even remotely interested in the intersection of technology and nonprofits. Join NTEN today!

One the challenges nonprofit PR staff have faced in recent years is the challenge of responding to news online. If an inaccurate story appears on Google or Yahoo! news, there’s no editor to call to set the record straight. If a thousand bloggers swarm around bad news for your organization, what do you do? Manually posting your own reply in the comments section of thousands of blogs is overwhelmingly labor intensive.

Google News now allows organizations and individuals that are quoted in the stories it indexes to post comments in reply. This has the potential to be a much more efficient way to respond to online news than most others we have experimented with.

And although it’s been a long time since I took a reporter to lunch, I remember they used to tell me they often used Google News to research what other journalists had written about a topic before starting their own stories. This suggests that’s it worth your time to respond to stories when you can.

Here’s an example: a story about a study that suggests that McDonalds’ advertising and branding practices have unfortunate consequences for children. Two organizations profiled in the story have elaborated on the points raised in the piece.

Very interesting. Hat tip to Lost Remote for this one.

OMB Watch has released a report called How Nonprofits Helped America Vote: 2006 which “describes nonprofits’ electoral engagement during the 2006 election and their preparation for upcoming elections.”

The report, which is only 16 pages long, briefly describes some of the actions non-profits took on behalf of voters and voter rights across the county, and then summarizes the types of actions non-profits can take to help ensure fair elections in 2008:

In summary, nonprofits can ensure the integrity of our elections by:

1. Registering voters
   Voter registration is a common non-partisan activity for nonprofits than can make a big difference on Election Day.
2. Prepare voters for election day
   Getting voters prepared for Election Day will minimize confusion and disenfranchisement at the polls.
3. Get-out-the-vote (GOTV)
   Nonprofits can legally engage in get-out-the-vote activities that can have a real impact on voter turnout on Election Day because of the special relationship nonprofits have with many disengaged voters
4. Educate voters on candidates and ballot measures
   While nonprofits cannot work on behalf of or against candidates, there are a number of voter education activities they can legally engage in to ensure voters are fully informed when they cast their ballots.
5. Recruit poll workers and election day observers
   Skilled poll workers are in demand and nonprofits can help the democratic process by being a part of poll worker recruitment.
6. Debunk the myth of voter fraud
   Voter fraud â?? purposeful corruption of the election process by voters â?? is rare. Claims of voter fraud are used to promote laws that restrict voting. Nonprofits can raise awareness that voter fraud is a myth.
7. Fight voter suppression
   Nonprofits are leading the charge to protect votersâ?? rights and the integrity of the electoral process. State and local groups have partnered with national organizations to challenge new laws and regulations that inhibit peoplesâ?? ability to register and vote.
8. Protect the integrity of elections
   Ensure the vote of every citizen is counted by advocating for reliable voting technologies that produce paper records and can easily be audited, as well as lobbying state and local governments to comply with all of the regulations in the Help America Vote Act.

Direct link to the Report (318K PDF)

Online fundraising strategies and tactics have their roots in the direct mail world, where fundraisers view individuals’ behavior in aggregate and carefully scrutinize campaigns for small adjustments that can lift the overall return.

But as the field matures, online fundraising is taking on characteristics all its own — as Conservation International’s Vinnie Wishrad (disclosure: a Beaconfire client) and Krista Harte Sassaman of Epsilon discussed at the Bridge Conference in Washington DC earlier this month.

Fundraising Success was on hand to cover the event, and shared many nuggets of wisdom, including these:

• Direct mail is more predictable than online fundraising
• Online donors are more likely to respond to direct mail fundraising than the other way around
• Online giving really surges in the aftermath of high-profile crises
• And no surprise, trends point towards a larger role for online fundraising future in the future

More wisdom in the full article over at Fundraising Success.