Since my brick-and-mortar nonprofit org closed its doors, I have been working exclusively virtually, mostly with people who live on the opposite coast. I have a home office in a house I recently moved in to. It's got "vintage" 1975 five-color shag wall-to-wall carpeting (really—see pic to left; that's one of my co-workers, Sadie). But even before my org decided to close, we decided that if we got enough funding to keep our programs alive, we'd become a virtual office to save money, building on a fairly flexible office culture that had been evolving for years.
We were a small organization and most of us were parents. Our workplace culture was one in which we trusted each other to get our work done, even if it wasn't always between 9 and 5. The org made lots of space for people to take care of themselves during the work day—to go to doctor appointments or a kid's event—as long as we got our work done somehow. I telecommuted from time to time, sometimes for a couple months at a time, especially in the early days of parenting. It was a kind of informal flex time, which NPR reports is an increasing trend in some sectors and can allow for a better work-life balance. For me, working flexibly and virtually in this way has definitely improved my quality of life.
Since I work in tech—obviously a type of work conducive to the virtual/flex office—I am aware of more and more virtual orgs and companies as broadband becomes more ubiquitous, and as more people use telecommuting and flex time for various reasons. Some pros and cons...
Pros:
No commuting required. Ahh, so nice.
If you do advocacy work, or promote/cover events, you can use a virtual office setup to work and live blog/Tweet from the field. When appropriate, this can be a great way to promote your cause and engage constituents.
You can work in your pajamas, outside, in front of the fire, in your favorite cafe, or while you're waiting on the bench at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
My favorite pro: you can take breaks to exercise, walk, see a friend or your partner or child, take photographs, or make something. This requires some self-discipline, but the payoff is worth it.
You can work anytime of the day or night, not just 9 to 5.
Cons:
You can work anytime of the day or night, not just 9 to 5. Work and life boundaries can be hard to maintain if you're not really disciplined about it (I am not yet there, myself).
No face time and no spontaneous hall chats that lead to brilliant work-related insights (and fill the need we all have for socializing).
Here's my toolkit:
Laptop, smart phone, and broadband, obviously. I live in a rural area, so I don't take those last two for granted. The town next to mine has no broadband and no cell phone coverage, and a lot of people who work virtually in cafes and libraries as a result.
Telephone & web conference/meeting software: GoToMeeting or ReadyTalk are the two main ways that I have work meetings with my co-workers.
Jing and SnagIt for screen casting and screen shots, respectively. These helps me communicate in certain situations when I would otherwise call a co-worker or client over to look at my computer screen.
Collaboration Software: Basecamp, GoogleDocs, GoogleGroups, CentralDesktop (an alternative to Basecamp), Redmine (open-source ticketing and wiki collaboration software), Groupsite (fancier Ning; hosted social networking, document sharing and collaboration software). These are absolutely key for sharing files and communicating about and managing projects with a group of people.
Instant one-on-one or group communication: Twitter, IM, Yammer and Google Buzz for instant private group convos. Yammer is my new favorite; you can set up a private Twitter-like group, share documents and images, and communicate socially and about work, almost like a virtual watercooler. For me, IM, Yammer and Twitter can help replicate that missing co-worker hall-chat epiphany experience (and some of the socializing).
Are there other virtual office workers or telecommuters out there? If so, what are the best tools in your toolkit?
“Change” may not be coming to Washington as fast as we expected a year ago. Yet at the grass roots level, in the technology realm, something is definitely happening, and its going to help the policy reform process. The same kind of democratizing, collaborative, open source/open content trend that has swept through nonprofit technology now is gathering momentum in local, state and even national government. That was my overall takeaway from taking part in the March 6 New England Gov 2.0 “Unconference” at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Even if you didn't attend, you can find a lot of notes and material here: http://gov20ne.pbworks.com/ or look for Twitter archives at #gov20ne.
About 250 of us gathered in Cambridge as part of a series of Gov 2.0 summits and informal conferences around the country initiated last year by O’Reilly (the publisher) and other partners. While I have followed these to some degree, this was my first outing. Read more about the national efforts here: http://www.gov2summit.com/. On the related blog, you can sign-up to be part of the nonprofit/public sector connection.
Feeling that my own work straddles the fence between nonprofit and public sectors, I wasn’t sure how I would feel or where I would fit in that day. Right at home: we had an energized mix of public officials, government technology policy staff, nonprofit policy advocates, community activists, software developers, and academic researchers and students. Judging by the conversations at this conference, those working in human services, policy advocacy and political activism need to pay close attention to what is happening here. The public and nonprofit sectors have a lot to learn from each other, they serve common goals, and progress around effective use of data and the web will be mutually reinforcing. “Data” was likely the biggest buzz word at the conference—open data, sharing data, collaborative data, mapping and visualizing data and so on. This being an unconference, it aimed to self-organized by interest and we started by everyone giving a three words introduction of their background and interest. (Mine way, “share data now.”) Looking at the wordle (word cloud) of those introductions, you can see that data and open information drew many to the conference. (Creative Commons credit to http://www.wordle.net/ for the "Gov 2.0 Camp New England ")
Federal, State and Local Government agencies sit on enormous repositories of data that traditionally gets collected as a matter of course for regulatory reasons. We have business, economic, environmental and other data that advocacy groups need to be more effective. It’s often there but hard to get one’s hands on.
We also have mounds of data extracted from nonprofit social services and educational organizations at tremendous cost of time and infrastructure. Busy staff collect data to satisfy public grants as much or more than private foundation grants. From my point of view, this data may start as your data, yet once it passes to the government, it becomes public data. It makes sense that this data—in aggregated, depersonalized, privacy-protected form—be available back as well for communities to learn from, make their own assessments and evaluations of success and effectiveness.
In the public sector, making public data public serves the general good. Elected officials can commission and use (or ignore, as they see fit) qualitative assessments for policy making. The Gov 2.0 trend represents a desire for transparency around that government policy research.
Meanwhile, social sector advocates and activists have learned a lot about mining data to assess trends, correlate results with demographic and other community factors, and press for results and changes. We are all collectors of data and measurers of outcomes. This experience outside the government is an accelerant that will drive change inside the government. Organizational staff and consultants may gripe about grant requirements, yet we are also increasingly using the experiences to improve our own strategies and organizational management.
Toward a policy of "Data Impact Statements"
What should we look for, expect and advocate for in these realms?
First, the public wants more, easier, fuller access to government data. Yet government agencies have old systems, have legitimate boundaries around confidentiality and privacy, and have tight budgets and overwhelmed staff these days with little room to build elaborate data reporting systems. How do we strike a balance?
Where government agencies collect data, and most do, we should expect increasing transparency about what will be collected, at what cost in agency staffing and in compliance time and cost for those required to submit the data, with what quality, with what expected use internal to the government agency, and with what return back to the public. A few years ago, when incoming Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick asked for testimony to his Transition Teams, I proposed the concept of a standard “Data Impact Statement.” Like an environmental impact statement, government agencies would need to file a statement in a standard, readable format on any new initiative that collected data—individual filings or anything else. The statement would list what was being collected; what privacy, confidentiality, or security concerns there were about it; a pre-emptive judgment of the likely quality of the data; and what provisions the agency planned to make to put the data in the public domain.
In the not so distant future, we should aim that reactive freedom of information lawsuits will fade in favor of proactive Data Impact Statements throughout government. By having Data Impact Statements, at least advocacy organizations and human services agencies would be able to review, comment on, and press for change on what was going to happen with data their communities would provide and what of use they would get back. Over time, we can move toward uniform expectations—and funding to back it up.
Second, we should press that the release of data follow emerging technical standards. Web sites with pages of information, even if searchable, are not the same as reusable, transferable data format. The data evolutionary trajectory goes from text on the web, to tabular data on web pages, to downloadable text or Excel, to XML and now to the emerging concept of RDFa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDFa and http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/. This year’s new Drupal release, for example, will embrace RDFa as a standard for web services and data exchange. I suspect that other modern data and community oriented software will as well.
Helping people ask, "How would this look on a map?"
Third, where the average person might reasonably ask, “how would this data look on a map,” public data should be presented with geographic information right there for use. The Gov 2.0 conference gave interesting attention to opening up data for spatial analysis, using geographical based information in crises such as Haiti and Chile, and innovative light-weight open source software like Ushahidi for social mobilization and response.
Fourth, even in the midst of glaring global policy issues from health care to the economy to the wars, we should give some attention to reinforcing national leadership coming in the tech sphere. The Obama administration has taken a strong stand on the democratizing of public data. The http://www.data.gov/ web site is both a growing repository of data anyone can use in the policy making process as well as a sounding board for developing technical and policy standards. It is a welcome initiative and I part of the framework that makes the Gov 2.0 conferences so timely.
Let data inform the educational policy debates
Fifth, if data is flooding in to government and beginning to steam out, we need keep a steady eye on privacy and confidentiality issues. Protect privacy yet don't let it derail opening things up.
A good example is in the realms of education policy. Policy advocates want to be able to do their own refactoring of data on mandatory testing, the record of charter schools, programs to reduce educational inequality, and other elements of No Child Left Behind and its local equivalents. Often this data usage gets lost or delayed because of how long it takes to resolve legal issues around protecting individual student and teacher performance data. In this day and age, we should be able to keep individual data confidential and make aggregated data public. We should also be able to let public school systems and community-based youth jobs and enrichment programs securely exchange individual level student data where both sides agree, have signed appropriate agreements, and have family sign-offs as well. This is probably the single most recurring technology related demand from staff I work with on youth and alternative education programs.
Mobile and Social Media And the Gov 2.0 Trend
Sixth, there is better access to existing data and there is creating new data. In particular, an additional important trend is the use Web 2.0 and social media technologies to inform, energize and empower the public. At the conference, probably the most frequently mentioned example of local tech initiative was the local transit authority’s initiative to put realtime tracking of buses and other transit in the hands of the public. Yes, others may have started on this long before Massachusetts. Yet it has been remarkable how quickly local developers rushed to create mobile apps and all kinds of technology ideas have surfaced around the transit data. At one level, having this information helps busy people know whether they can grab that extra cup of coffee and therefore promote local business at a time when the state really needs it. At another level, it will also help transit and environmental activists really focus in on questions about which areas of the city get what kind of service.
As we learned at the conference, many local communities are experimenting with mobile phone-based systems that enable people and organizations to report problems, oversee responses, and work collaborative to improve services.
All these trends and more will also aid business planning and development. For the moment, the main learning and drive in the Gov 2.0 trend is collaboration and sharing among nonprofit and public sector technologists and policy makers. If you aren’t yet following this trend, you need to.
I'd like to thank new Idealware blogger Debra Askanase for the inspiration for this post, which actually take from her idea for a post around fundraising and advocacy widgets, and which she graciously let me run with due to my slight obsession with widgets. I look forward to her thoughts on the big picture around this web trend and hope she will post a follow up and others will share their insights in the comments below.
There are many great resources and experts out there on viral strategies that apply to using widgets and I won't try to cover all that here. I'll just attempt to provide a brief overview about what some organizations are doing and what they are using to implement their outreach.
In addition to checking back in on what nonprofits are doing now that Sprout Builder is moving to an enterprise level application only, I started thinking about some of the possible uses and options for viral or "moveable" widgets that nonprofits are likely to see as helpful.
Why use widgets anyhow? Well, widgets are basically movable, sharable mini-applications that can be used to raise donations, take action on a cause or spread information and awareness about your mission. The fact that your message and actions can be placed and seen "where the people" greatly increases your exposure to new potential supporters. Let's take a look as some possible uses and options for each purpose.
Fundraising Widgets or "badges" have been around for a while to promote and measure online fundraising drives. There are quite a few options if you are just looking to have a basic charity badge that allows donors to give and supporters to set a goal and place their progress on their web sites and social networks.
These types of badges are not usually very interactive and only allow for a logo and/or photo, short description of the cause, link to a video or more information, possibly some sort of progress indicator and of course a donate now button.
Network for Good was a forerunner in this space and has built several different styles of their Charity Badges including the celebrity based SixDegrees.org
Other community or peer to peer fundraising sites like Changing the Present have incorporated sharable widgets as part of each personal fundraising campaign.
Some paid custom types of "make your own" donation widgets provide more flexibilty for both the organization administrator and end user such as Giving Impact. Also check with your donation vendor as they might even offer these tools. I am aware that at least Click and Pledge and Convio do.
Direct Advocacy This week Change.org announced its sparkly new petition widgets (powered by DIA) that allow any change.org petition to be embedded and shared and even signed by supporters right on your site as well as customized and shared.
Also a new service called Call2Action provides multiple tab widgets offering both advocacy and donations using video as the engagement hook.
Some examples: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund has a whole array of advocacy widget options for supporters including mobile campaigns that are worth checking out. They are built on the Clearspring sharing platform*.
Awareness Raising & Mission Based Information This is a pretty broad category and its impossible to cover all the possible ways a widget can be used to get your message out or to distribute meaningful data to your supporters.
News and Blog feeds to supporters Widgetbox.com seems to have a fairly active nonprofit following that use their widgets in this way including IFAW and the National Wildlife Federation .
Kaboom offers members the opportunity to post progress update widgets for their playground building campaigns which seems to be built on KickApps and shared via Gigya.
Search and Display relevant information Here are just a few of the widgets I found that provide supporters or the public with pertinent actionable search results wherever they find the widget online.
Some other popular awareness raising tools used in widgets are maps, slideshows, videos, polls, quizzes or other interactive content. And of course many organizations also want to offer forms that collect all kinds of data like event registrations and the like as well. For more complex applications you'll want to check out what's possible with KickApps, Widgetbox and Yahoo Widgets already mentioned and the options below.
And some more widget tools for whatever you can dream up.
Flexible Flash "mini-site" producers WIX Produle Ahead.com(but I couldn't get their site to load)
Custom application options and intense Facebook integration Transpond ($2,400 You build. $4,000 We build) Involver (Facebook applications - some free) Get Social Apps
And Open Source fans will want to keep an eye on the variety of options that Peter Dietz at Social Actions has collected on his list of Action apps.
And finally a short Sprout Builder update
Via various Facebook comments on Beth Kanter's fan page I found this: Beth Kanter "Here's what we learned - they're going to continue to serve existing nonprofit clients - reach out to Trudy Marquardt "
Other nonprofit staff have reached out to Sprout Builder and been told that the discount is good for one year only at half off ($1500 paid up front) the regular fee $3000. There is no official word from Sprout Inc yet, so there is no way to tell if this applies to everyone or how long the offer stands. I still strongly recommend Sprout using nonprofits contact them right away to see what can be worked out for your organization.
Also, several options I listed in previous posts are now offline including poplfly, iWidgets and Blist. Dapper has split into a paid advertising site and an open source community for data mapping widgets now at http://www.dapper.net/open/
Hopefully all the turbulence these services are experiencing will settle down. If you take a look all the things nonprofits are doing with sharable content and engagement you realize how many more possibilities there are. And its looking like movable apps and widgets are a core constituent in the distributed world of Web 2.0. So if you want to start sharing through widget you'll need to be careful selecting your service partner, keep assets backed up and have a fall back plan. Which of course also applies to pretty much everything.
So have fun widget building and as always, please Share your widgets, strategies and vendor experiences in the comments and help build on this post for your colleagues - after all, its all about the shared content - thanks!
As more and more people use mobile phones, how do you ensure they can see your website on it?
Well, there's nothing magical about it. Most mobile phones can view sites using the same HTML that you would use for regular websites So it's very likely that people currently can see your website on their phone. However, mobile phones tend to intepret HTML standards much more harshly than other browsers, and mobile screens are tiny compared to a computer screen. So what your site looks like or whether anyone can actually use it on a phone is another story.
There's two possible ways to go to create a better mobile experience. You can optimize your current site so that it's more viewable by folks on a mobile phone. This would mean making sure your code is compliant with XHTML standards and moving key content and navigation to the upper left -- so it's more likely to appear without a lot of scrolling. Highlighting the text that's currently selected is also very important for mobile phones, as it's often hard on these devices to tell exactly where your cursor is.
If people on mobile phones are a key part of your website audience, you'll be able to support them much better by making a mobile specific website. This would be a separate website, designed specifically for smaller screens, with less images and text, and to allow people to get the information they're likely to be looking for faster. You could either have a separate URL for your mobile site (like mobile.idealware.org), or you can try to detect that a user is accessing your site through a mobile device, and show them the mobile optimized site accordingly.
A couple of months back, we conducted a survey of nonprofit staff members who were already using social media for their organization. We wanted to know what tools they were using, but more, we wanted to know what they thought was working. Specifically, we asked about seven tools or types of tools: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, video-sharing sites, photo-sharing sites and blogs.
Generally, respondents felt social media channels were effective for enhancing relations with an existing audience and reaching out to new supporters, but considerably less so for raising money.
Twitter was in the top three channels for every goal, and was considered the most-effective channel for reaching potential new supporters.
Although Facebook was the most widely used tool by a considerable margin, and the one that those not yet using were most likely to start, it was seen as the most-effective only in terms of raising money-and then, only by a small margin.
MySpace was not widely used, and ranked lowest for each of the three goals. LinkedIn was considered comparatively effective for fundraising, but lagged behind everything but MySpace for the other goals.
Laura let everyone know last week that Idealware's web site is up for a major upgrade, coming soon. The Idealware blog won't be left behind -- we're happy to announce new bloggers and some other important changes that coincide with the Web Site update. Here's what you'll want (and need) to know:
New Bloggers!
We're growing the blog roster, with an eye towards landing at ten bloggers posting about twice a month, for a healthy and diverse amount of content focused on helping nonprofits use software and technology to serve their missions. Joining Heather Gardner-Madras, Steven Backman, Eric Leland, Laura Quinn and myself are:
Johanna Bates has a strong background in technology management, with special knowledge of the web and online communications.
Debra Askanase brings her background of 20 years of community organizing with a focus and expertise in how nonprofits use social media to the blog.
Andrea Berry, who currently serves as Idealware's Director of development, brings her expertise in fundraising and donor management systems to the blog.
Marc Baizman brings a broad range of tech skills to the blog, with a background as both a nonprofit technology director and consultant in the sector.
New RSS Address!
Take note that, if you're one of the hundreds of people who subscribe to this blog in an RSS Reader, we will be moving to a new RSS address. You can change your settings now, and that's recommended, as the old feed will stop updating once we're on the new site. The address is:
As we make changes and improvements to the blog, we're eager to hear from you. What do you look to get from the Idealware blog? What works? What doesn't? What would you like to see more of? What burning topics are we failing to address? With a bigger group of bloggers and a renewed focus, we want to write about the things that you'd like to know more about. Feel free to offer your suggestions any time, either in the comments, or to Idealware at our Twitter feed or Facebook page.
Do you tell your nonprofit's stories online? Do you leverage your online community to raise funds? Do you have a great group of enthusiastic online supporters? If so, there are a three timely opportunities for you to enter to win cash, rewards, and recognition for your organization. Interested?
1. Conduit Gives 2010 Conduit will donate money to 100 selected nonprofits However, it's more than a simple donation; Conduit will donate money for every click on the "click to give" button of a custom Conduit toolbar. If selected, Conduit will help your nonprofit create a custom toolbar (called a "custom conduit") that you can distribute to your online stakeholders. The toolbar can be customized in many ways that benefit your organization, but it will also contain an exclusive "click to give" button on the toolbar. Selected organizations can offer this toolbar to community members, and each time someone clicks on the button, conduit donates to the organization.
To apply, check out their FAQ page and application here. This contest, offered by Conduit Gives 2010, ends March 1, 2010.
The catch: Do you have an active Ning, Facebook, MySpace, or private label community? If you don't have one already, does your organization have existing assets that it can leverage to easily create one (such as an active, large, email list, alumni list, etc.)? According to the Conduit Gives 2010 FAQ: "Non-profits will be selected based on their expressed need and their plan/commitment to promoting the program to their community." To me, this means that organizations that already have a vibrant online community have a much better opportunity of being selected by Conduit for participation. Think about it: Conduit is also interested in exposing users to its Conduit platform, in giving away funds (if they don't give away much money, then that would be bad for PR), and in helping organizations raise funds. One other important note: I cannot find any reference in the online literature as to how much money Conduit will donate for each click.
2. Getty Images' Grants for Good Getty Images is offering two Grants for Good to facilitate nonprofit storytelling
Getty Images wants to work with photographers or videographers that want to tell nonprofit stories. According to the website, "our Grants for Good provide two grants of $15,000 annually, to cover photographer, filmmaker and agency costs as they create compelling new imagery for the nonprofit of their choice." They want to help nonprofits develop imagery that "furthers the strategic communication objectives and mission of a nonprofit organization."
The good news for nonprofits outside the United States, is the communications professional or agency can choose any nonprofit to work with, anywhere in the world, as long as the nonprofit is officially registered in its own country.
To apply, check out the Grants for Good page with downloadable FAQs, application, and judging information. This contest, offered by Getty Images, ends March 1, 2010.
The catch (actually, there are several): A professional photographer (or filmmaker) anda communications agencytogether must apply for the grant. Advertising and communications agencies are "seen as essential partners to the 2010 Grants for Good program." In addition, the applicant must select a nonprofit that it will work with on an image project prior to the application process. The application cannot be submitted by a nonprofit; it must be submitted by the image maker or the agency. The $15,000 grant will be split by the photographer and the communications agency.
The biggest criteria for selection, as far as I can tell are how the images will be used, and the strength of the image professional's portfolio. This is emphasized in the application process PDF document. If you are a nonprofit that has a clear idea of what story you need to tell to further your mission, how telling that story visually will help you to do that, and you know of a professional filmmaker or photographer that you want to work with, apply!
3. Fourth Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards Win up to $10,000 in grants (plus awards! plus publicity!) with your nonprofit's video
YouTube and See3, along with sponsoring organizations The Case Foundation, the Nonprofit Technology Network, and Flip Video have teamed up for the Fourth Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. If you are a registered nonprofit in the US, the UK, Canada, or Australia, and your are part of YouTube's nonprofit program, then submit any video (or videos) that you made in 2009. Sixteen final videos will be selected on the basis of message, use of video, quality of video, and creativity. Top prize winners will be selected from among the sixteen finalist through a community voting process.
To apply, go to YouTube's Nonprofit Video Awards page for application and voting details. Application deadline is March 16, 2010
The catch: While the best sixteen videos (top four in each awards category) are selected by the judges, the public will choose the top winners in each category. Other limitations have been previously stated above.
So - submit your best video of 2009 and let the stories be viewed! It's all explained clearly in this short video:
Will you be entering any of these contests? Look forward to hearing about your entries!
Since my brick-and-mortar nonprofit org closed its doors, I have been working exclusively virtually, mostly with people who live on the opposite coast. I have a home office in a house I recently moved in to. It's got "vintage" 1975 five-color shag wall-to-wall carpeting (really—see pic to left; that's one of my co-workers, Sadie). But even before my org decided to close, we decided that if we got enough funding to keep our programs alive, we'd become a virtual office to save money, building on a fairly flexible office culture that had been evolving for years.
Laura let everyone know last week that Idealware's web site is up for a major upgrade, coming soon. The Idealware blog won't be left behind -- we're happy to announce new bloggers and some other important changes that coincide with the Web Site update. Here's what you'll want (and need) to know:
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