How Can I Get My Software Included in Your Articles?

It’s an effective but stressful method of knowing that people are reading the Idealware articles: people who are distributing software tools have started pelting me with email. They range from complimentary and polite (i.e. “Great articles – just wanted to make sure our tool is on your radar”) to less than polite attacks for having somehow left their tool – obviously the best one available, of course – out of an article.

In an effort to head off a least a few of these, I thought I’d post a summary of how we determine the list of tools that are included in our articles.

The articles we are currently working on, in the Few Good Tool series (i.e. A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php or A Few Good Low Cost Constituent Databases http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_low_cost_dbs.php) are created through recommendations by nonprofit technology experts who we select to contribute to the article. We ask the contributors to suggest the go-to tools that they have found to be high quality and good values in their own work. These articles therefore may not list the very best tools in the area, and certainly don't include every available tool, but are designed to provide a list of solid choices as if you had asked a trusted consultant. Thus, any given product will be included in this article series only if the contributors for that specific article recommend them.

There's obviously a downside to this style of article: it doesn't help organizations find really excellent but not very well known tools. These smaller articles are intended to provide just a base level of information while we're raising funds for Idealware's real meat and potatoes: much larger reports, as per our online donation tool report (www.idealware.org/donations), which will comprehensively cover particular areas. For these reports, we will much more carefully define the specific criteria by which software will be included, and reach out to vendors and the community to attempt to find all applicable tools.

So the short answer: there is no way to request your tool be included in one of the Few Good Tool articles. And for the more robust reports, we’ll make every effort to find you. If you feel your tool should be included in the Online Donation Tool report but wasn’t, that’s a good reason to email me! Let me know, and we’ll take a look at your product for the next revision of this report.