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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 �?? purposeful corruption of the election process by voters �?? 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 voters�?? 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 peoples�?? 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.

Freedom. Truth. Design.

Creating social change through design has been at the core of our society since before the first quill dared to put the notion of freedom on paper. Designers have always been a little ahead of the curve in leaving the world a better place then when we found it. We have conceived of entire cities from dust, made history from a single perfect image, changed the face & fabric of society through our work, and brought people together in one voice - all though the power of the visual.

So, in honor of our nation’s birthday, I pose this question: In a world where there is no shortage of social challenges to tackle, how can designers continue to use our power for good in order to form a more perfect union?

Here’s a few to get you started — can you add to the list?

http://www.thehurricaneposterproject.com
http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.one.org/

Here at Beaconfire, we’re as excited as anybody about Web 2.0 — but the good-old-fashioned listserv is the online community of choice for those with serious activist inclinations, at least environmental activists.

That’s the conclusion of a study we’re releasing today called Network of Networks: Email Lists, Nature Protection, and Pollution Control. After monitoring 64 environmental listservs for about six months and surveying the subscribers, we found that these groups are hotbeds of civic activism and social networking. Subscribers reported extraordinarily high participation in a wide variety of behavior such as writing Congress, calling radio talk shows, attending public hearings, and giving speeches — and they said they placed high value on the listservs’ role in helping them stay in touch with peers.

Of particular note for nonprofit organizations, concerned citizens formed many of these groups on their own initiative without any assistance or participation from a formal organization, and participants on most of these lists pay little attention to the activities of the national environmental groups. Those national organizations that figure out how to overcome this gap and successfully engage with these outspoken citizens stand reap some big rewards.

Download the report: Network of Networks: Email Lists, Nature Protection, and Pollution Control

Beaconfire’s constantly thinking about new technologies and techniques for outreach to our client’s advocates, donors, volunteers, staff, etc. Typically, though, we’re focussing on real-world consitutents. I must admit I haven’t given much thought, until today, about outreach to virtual constituents. An eye opening blog posting by Nedra Weinreich changed that. Nedra posts her interview with John Anderton, who is responsible for bringing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Second Life (the virtual world with nearly 5 million “residents”). What are other nonprofits doing in Second Life?

• American Cancer Society raised $40,000 with a virtual walk-a-thon in Second Life.
• Friends of the Urban Forest allows you to plant a virtual tree to help their program to plant real trees in San Francisio.
• Commonwealth Island in Second Life consists of a “rugged, coniferous island housing several nonprofits, including Greenpeace and ACLU”
• There’s an education campaign to help end the genocide in Darfur in “Camp Darfur”.

Second Life has a very helpful Non-Profits Wiki page with all sorts of resources that are just begging to be explored. (I can feel it sucking me in…) And TechSoup has an interesting interview with 3 nonprofits (Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, Global Kids, and Amoration) who are all operating in Second Live. So much to learn, so little time…

Web 2.0 sites and marketing techniques influence everyone�?? news experience, even those who don�??t surf the net, that�??s the topline finding of a Wall Street Journal investigative piece called the �??Wizards of Buzz.�?�

The WSJ carefully profiled Digg, Newsvine, Netscape, Del.icio.us, and other �??social bookmarking�?� sites where users sift through billions of web links and highlight the dozen most interesting for each other. Prominent placement can also yield a sharp and immediate payoff �?? one startup website�??s traffic went from virtually nil to over 50,000 hits per day after appearing on the front page of Digg. Indirectly, by influencing journalists and bloggers, these sites shape the buzz around almost everything for everybody.

So how do nonprofits crack the Digg homepage, secure tens of thousands of visitors immediately and influence discussion about their cause far and wide? There are two laborious methods that work, and one quick and easy way that doesn�??t.

The first way that works is to get a top Digger to push it there for you. That involves identifying Diggers who are interested in the topic and either pitching them (or even paying them) to do it.

The second way that works is to have someone on staff or a serious volunteer to cultivate the community credibility to put it there themselves. This approach would yield repeat payoffs, but it�??s a serious investment of time: Top Diggers tell WSJ they are spending two or three hours daily on the site.

What doesn�??t work is having a bunch of staff sign up at Digg right before they need something to get big. I once found out the hard way how easy it is to run afoul of Digg�??s efforts to prevent this kind of manipulation of their community.

Last November, I gave a workshop to a group of environmental activists on various Web 2.0 organizing techniques. The workshop was a in a computer lab, so I helped everybody create an account with Digg and vote for one of the attendees�?? websites, just for practice. Two days later, Digg suspended my account. They only grudgingly restored it after some serious groveling and begging on my part.

As with all other online communities, active members get deferential treatment and �??Johnny Come Latelys�?� who hope to get something out of the community before they contribute anything to it can expect only limited success.

GetActive, NetSquared and Squidoo released a list of what they are calling the �??smartest nonprofit organizations online�?� today. We don�??t know what criteria they used to select the list of orgs they say have �??web 2.0 smarts and a willingness to engage their constituents far beyond asking them to dig into their pockets,�?� but it�??s fine list of worthy causes that are pursuing interesting efforts that blend technology and community.

Here’s the catch: They are inviting those who view the list to vote the orgs up or down, AND you have to create a Squidoo account to do so. It’s nice that there’s a participatory angle to all this, but there doesn’t seem to be a big payoff for winning so I’m not sure how many people will go to the trouble of creating a new web account to vote.

Anyhoo, four Beaconfire clients made the list, and we think they all deserve to be #1:

Oxfam America, for a recent YouTube campaign prodding Starbucks on the company�??s treatment of Ethiopian coffee farmers

Natural Resources Defense Council, for their engaging �??Biogems�?� website

Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, for cross-channel marketing efforts

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, for their specialized constituent database management

Congratulations to these orgs and all the others that made the list.

Our heads are still reeling from last night’s announcement about the Blackbaud/Target acquisition, when news comes from Sheeraz Haji, CEO of GetActive, that they have been acquired by Convio. Is there something in the water?

These two strong competitors in the nonprofit eCRM space have the potential to be an even stronger solution for their customers. GetActive’s roots are in the advocacy space and Convio’s in online fundraising. Taking the best of both products and merging into one solution, done right, will be very compelling.

Some of the same questions I raised in my earlier post about Blackbaud & Target are relevant here too (impact to competition etc). I also wonder how both companies will fare at merging their cultures - never an easy task…

Got an interesting call last night from Chuck Longfield, CEO of Target Software, letting me know that Blackbaud has acquired Target. There’s a rather thin press release on the Target site at http://www.targetsite.com/news/index.php
This is a huge event for the nonprofit software world and a smart move on Blackbaud’s part. Target’s clients are the larger nonprofits, where Blackbaud’s tend toward the small to mid-sized. Target’s done a great job of web-enabling their tools, even more so with their V10 release (so far anyway — it’s still in development). So Blackbaud gains a quite a lot. The question is what they’ll do with it and how will that impact the market. Target will continue operating as a separate company, according to Chuck and the press release. But can they do that forever? Blackbaud’s got a lot of experience in acquiring companies (one of which was a small software company I worked for in the mid-90’s) so they’ve probably got the process down pat. But will it work with a large company like Target?

The big question in my mind is what does this mean for the nonprofit users? With reduced competition, there’s less incentive to innovate and improve. We have to hope that there’s still enough competition among the other players in the market and that the nonprofit clients themselves can exert enough pressure to keep the innovations coming.

This will be a very interesting situation to watch…

For the latest IA Podcast, Jeff Parks and I talked about Beaconfire’s participation in World Usability Day on November 14. Specifically, we discussed the challenges non-profit organizations have in creating user friendly Web sites. We discussed brand, navigation, screen allocation, and calls to action.

• Listen to the podcast or subscribe through iTunes
• Download the World Usability Day Event Post-event Notes document (PDF - 718 KB)