Articles

Are your online communications working?  How can you tell?  In this article, we talk through four types of measures-- Views, Followers, Engagement, and Conversion-- that help you track your efforts to see if they're worthwhile.  

Chances are, your organization has a website. Perhaps you also send out broadcast emails, or maintain a blog, Twitter or Facebook account. Is the effort you’re putting into online communications working? How can you tell?

If you are already using email communication tools and are equipped to receive online donations through your website, email fundraising is an easy step forward. For a better sense of what's involved, we bring you a look at two smaller organizations and their email fundraising campaigns.

Is Twitter useful for nonprofits?  It’s certainly been useful for Idealware. In this detailed case study, we talk through how we use Twitter, the results we’ve seen, and how it might be helpful for your organization.

When it comes to online communications, social networking has huge communities of people sharing information with each other. And its rise comes as people question email’s effectiveness—are social networks replacing email as a communications channel?

Computers and servers can consume a tremendous amount of natural resources.  David Deal and the Green IT Consortium take a look the software that can help you reduce your environmental footprint.

Data warehouses can allow larger organizations to pull information from multiple places to report on it or analyze it in a central place.  We take a look at the software and processes you'll need to create your own.

quick, easy, and you already have it.  Excel seems like it might be a great fit to manage your donor data.  But just back away from that spreadsheet – there’s a lot of reasons why it’s not a good idea.  

You’ve defined your requirements, talked to vendors, seen demos, found the right donor management software for you and worked through the contract—now you’re done, right? Not so fast. You still need to implement the system, which requires additional planning, teamwork, configuration, data migration and testing—my favorite part!

The Internet gives you access to a virtual smorgasbord of information. From the consequential to the trivial, the astonishing to the mundane, it's all within your reach. This means you can keep up with the headlines, policies, trends, and tools that interest your nonprofit, and keep informed about what people are saying about your organization online. But the sheer volume of information can pose challenges, too: namely, how do you separate the useful data from all the rest? One way is to use RSS, which brings the information you want to you.

New donor management software will improve your life, solve all your organization’s problems and make all your goals a reality. Right? And it comes with prime waterfront property in the Everglades. This last sentence is only slightly less true than the first, but we take it as common wisdom. In fact, many non-profits change systems when they don’t need to, for the wrong reasons, or in an ineffective manner—and sometimes all of the above!

Is online office software likely to fit your needs better than more traditional desktop software? Or are installed applications like Microsoft Office the reigning champs for a reason? We take a look at the differences between online and installed options in the areas that are often important to nonprofits.

Many organizations would like to foster community and information sharing using email discussion lists. What software packages can help? We asked six nonprofit experts about the systems that have worked for them.

An association management system can be a huge help in tracking your members, newsletter subscriptions, special gifts, invitations to events and workshops, discounts on products and services and more. We asked five different nonprofit experts about the systems that have worked for them.

Open source software applications are becoming an increasingly viable alternative to vendor provided commercial software. Jeff Walpole explores the differences between these types of software, and the pros and cons of each alternative.

Online surveys can be a huge help in understanding what your constituents think and how successful your programs are - without breaking your budget. We spoke to five nonprofit staff members to understand how the existing online survey tools compare.

A major software package shouldn't be chosen lightly. In this detailed guide, Peter Campbell walks through how to find software options, evaluate them, make a good decision, and then purchase the system in a way that protects you.

Do you want to create a monthly newsletter, a formatted report, thank you cards, or an event invite? You need a page layout tool. Top-end software solutions can be complex, but there are simpler solutions as well. We spoke to five nonprofit technology and creative professionals about the layout tools that have worked for them.

A Constituent Relationship Management can help track of all the ways that you interact with each of your supporters. But what does it take to implement one? Does it have to cost an arm and a leg? What changes will your organization need to make to support it? We look at four different organizations' CRM stories.

Managing all the dates, documents, tasks and people associated with a project can be daunting, but online project management software can help. We present three case studies of nonprofits who have used packages like Basecamp, Central Desktop and Trac to help manage real projects.

If you want your site to show up prominently in search engines like Google, your website content management system can help - but not all CMSs are created equal. We suggest the features to look for to help with search engine optimization. 

Documenting your organizational procedures can be a big help, but this information often languishes in obscurity and goes slowly out of date. Jeremy Wallace talks about how wikis - easily editable websites - can help.

Most organizations have (or at least should have!) internal documentation that outlines procedures, best practices, and tips to help make everyone’s job easier. For instance, an organization might write up:

Successful online communities require more than a software package. In this article, we outline the strategies and features that can help you build online message boards, social networks, or other conversation based sites that become vibrant, useful communities.

This article is now out of date... but we have a whole report on this topic!  Check out our Nonprofit Social Media Decision Making Guide for an overview, research results, and a workbook on how to decide if you should use social networking sites or other social media tools.

Adding visuals to a phone conference can make a big difference - perhaps by showing a document, software application or slides. Or maybe you want to conduct a more formal online seminar—sometimes called a Webinar. There are a number of affordable software packages that can help. We talked to five nonprofit professionals about the tools that have worked for them.

With Google's recently announced Google Apps donation program - which offers organizational email, calendaring, and document sharing for free - there’s suddenly a viable alternative to Microsoft Outlook for many organizations. How does Google Apps compare to Microsoft Outlook for typical nonprofit needs? We take a close look.

Secure, staff-only websites, called intranets, are widespread in the business world and increasingly common among nonprofits. What are NPOs doing within these private Web sites? What are the benefits, and the costs? We profile three different administrative intranets.

Are you embarrassed by your organization’s Web site? (Come on, you can admit it.) Was it built in a volunteer’s nephew’s basement — or does it look like it was? Does it feature events or breaking news that are sadly out of date? Are you still trying to get around to adding that program you started last year?

Finding Constituent Relationship Management software isn’t easy – there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. This article, the conclusion of Paul Hagen’s two-part series, helps you understand the CRM marketplace and offers practical advice to help you define a software infrastructure that will work for you.

How are small organizations tracking constituents? What are they struggling with, and what works well? In partnership with the River Network, we spoke to a number of river conservation groups about their constituent databases, and report back with best practices and case studies that apply to any smaller organization.

Web analytics tools help you track your site's statistics, allowing you to see how many people are looking at which page, what sites your visitors are coming from, who your users are, and more.  Which one should you use?  We talked to six nonprofit experts about the tools they recommend.

Screencasts – movies that capture tasks performed on a computer – can be powerful communication and training tools, and you don’t need to be a Hollywood filmmaker to create them. Beth Kanter walks through why screencasts are useful, how to create them, and some of the software tools that help in the process.

Integrating all your constituent tracking applications so they can share data is highly desirable, but how should you go about it? We walk through the pros and cons of three basic methods of integrating data: Manual Import/ Export, Integrated Packages, and Automated Connectors.

New integrated online software tools lead to more possibilities for nonprofits. How do you choose?   Internet strategist Michael Stein describes what's available and offers some considerations when choosing tools that can help with emailing, online donations, advocacy online, and more.

Is your organization drowning in a virtual sea of documents? Document management systems can provide invaluable document searching, versioning, comparison, and collaboration features. Peter Campbell explains.

Selecting a content management system (CMS) can be a complex task, and organizations often run into pitfalls with processes, politics, and understanding the CMS environment. James Robertson outlines a common-sense approach to avoiding the most common mistakes.

How do you choose a donor database that will support successful fundraising? The software is only half the story. Fundraising technology strategist Robert Weiner addresses ten common mistakes that can prevent you from selecting the right database and managing it effectively.

You may have seen signs that knowledge isn't flowing easily through your nonprofit: Staff can't find documents, or research things that others already know, and decisions are made without full information. Software can't solve all your problems, but it can probably help.

It's a challenge to manage information about all your organization’s constituents.  But this challenge is common to both commercial companies and nonprofits. A strategy borrowed from the commercial sector has been gaining popularity in the nonprofit sector over the last couple years: CRM.

If thoughts of detailed client histories and reports to funders make you break out in a cold sweat, it may be time to consider the many good case management tools that will help you track demographics, interactions, scheduling, billing information, and more. We asked eight case management experts what tools they would recommend.