March Articles: Web Analytics and Payment Processing in Pictures

Our March articles are up (got them in under the wire)! We've got two great ones. The first is another article in our continuing A Few Good Tools article series: A Few Good Web Analytics Tools. This one was a really interesting one for me. There's a wide range of analytics packages from very good free ones to ones that cost a thousand dollars a month or more, and I was really curious about the differences. We talked to six different nonprofit technologists with experience in the area to shed some light on the different packages. I know I learned a lot.

Our other article, Online Payment Processing in Pictures, is just what it sounds: a walk through of how online payment processing works via a series of diagrams. We've been using these diagrams in our Getting Started with Online Donations workshop for a long time and folks keep asking for them - so here they are at long last.

Our new sponsor: Beaconfire Consulting

Those who have been watching our homepage with eagle eyes (come on, I know it's pretty exciting) likely noticed that we have a new sponsor. We're thrilled to welcome Beaconfire Consulting as a 2007 Idealware sponsor. Beaconfire helps nonprofits with the evaluation, design and implementation of websites and other internet technology. They've long been a friend of Idealware, contributing to articles and lending advice. Jeff Herron, one of the founders and VPs of Beaconfire has been on the Idealware board since the beginning.

Are you interested in sponsoring Idealware? Take a look at our Sponsorship Opportunities packet. Note that we're only able to accept sponsorships from organizations that do not sell or distribute software.

Resource Roundup 4/24

Seven Ways to Get the Most Out of the Web on a Budget (ClickZ)
A practical look at the technology and marketing strategy decisions that will help small organizations get the most value out of the internet.

Fostering Online Communities - Part One (Diva Marketing Blog)
A great, lengthy interview with Nancy White about practical (although not always easy!) ways to foster effective online communities.

Using Facebook in Your Nonprofit (Bamboo Project Blog)
A great introduction to what Facebook is (an online social networking environment in insanely heavy use by high school and college kids especially) and practical ways to use it in your org

NOAA's Ocean Explorer on YouTube: Braving Uncharted Waters (INFluence/ ForumOne)
A fairly raw but detailed look at how NOAA's is using YouTube to disseminate video, with some practical tips.

Buying Software is like Buying a House (TechCafeteria)
From Peter Campbell comes an interesting metaphor: he explains how the thought process in buying software is similar to that in buying a house.

Beyond Managing Members (Michael Stein's Nonprofit Tech Blog)
A quick but useful look at what it means to go beyond managing members, to functionality that would also help track and retain members.

Five Ways Nonprofits Can Use Flickr to Reach New Audiences (Wild Apricot Blog)
Nothing dramatically new, but a useful summary of ways that nonprofits can use Flickr (an image sharing site)

Online Image Editors Compared (Smiley Cat Web Design Blog)
A detailed comparison of online tools that can be used to do image manipulation - essentially, downscale alternatives to Photoshop (tip of the hat to Patrick Shaw)

Moving Day for That Vista Machine (NY Times)
A look at the process and tools you can use to move your files to a Windows Vista computer from an older computer with an older version of Windows. Patrick Shaw adds a few more tips.

Free Tools for Small Organizations (World's Touch)
A long and interesting list of free tools that might be useful to organizations, although without much context for them.

Thanks for your vote!

Just wanted to thank all of you who voted for the Idealware project in the Netsquared project – we appreciate your support! We didn’t win (see the list of winning projects here), but we’re working a few other options for that same project, so we hope to be able to expand our Few Good Tools article series anyway not too far down the road.

And more opportunities to get involved coming soon!

Last Chance to Vote in the Netsquared Contest

Netsquared has extended their voting deadline to TODAY at 5pm PDT - so this is your last chance to make your voice heard as to which projects will best use technology for social change.

The Idealware project is getting some great buzz and endorsements - we're on a bunch of lists, including those by Beth Kanter of Beth's Blog, Patrick Shaw, and Allan Bennamer of Confessions of an IT Tech Director (Wow, Allan! I think I'm blushing!).

If you haven’t already, please take just a few minutes to vote for the Idealware project – “
Idealware Nonprofit Software Knowledge Sharing Initiative.”
If you tried to vote before but had trouble, Netsquared reports that they’ve fixed the issues – might you be able to try again? And if you’ve already voted, thanks so much – consider asking a few friends to vote as well!

The project we’ve proposed would let us dramatically expand our Few Good Tools articles, to cast a much wider net to find the software knowledge that already exists in the nonprofit sector and bring you more and even better articles. Read much more about the project.

Voting should take less than five minutes. Go to http://www.netsquared.org/projects/vote. You'll need to register on the site to vote, and to pick at least five projects to vote for - but there's certainly no lack of worthy projects to choose from. Here's a few that caught our eye:

• Aspiration's Social Source Commons
• Access to Markets and Education: Fair Trade Language Tutoring via Webcam
• Farmer 2 Farmer Learning
• Games for Change
• Grassroots.org Toolbox
• moulin Wiki - the Offline Wikipedia
• Point K Learning Center Community Features
• The CTC VISTA Project

Please, vote now!

In Defense of Income Models That Make Money

There’s been a notable hue and cry in the blogosphere over the licensing of The Gilbert Center’s and NTEN's new Journal of Information Technology in Social Change. The Journal is an online journal, under traditional copyright, and the Center is charging $18 for it.

A number of people are calling for the Journal released under an open licensing scheme, and available for free. Fair enough – we’d all like this. There’s no question that it would be preferable to get the Journal out to a wider audience than will be willing to pay, and the ability to distribute articles more widely – in workshops, to email lists, etc – would promote knowledge in this space.

It would be great to find ways to make content free – both as in speech and as in beer. But as it’s certainly not free to write or edit, just saying that it ought to be open, and taking the Gilbert Center and NTEN for task for inappropriate licensing, isn’t helpful. It doesn't helpput this important content into the world.

In fact, I find this “all content should be open” attitude irresponsible. It abdicates responsibility to find workable solutions by which we can all increase openness. Saying that the nebulous “gift economy” will provide isn’t a tactical solution – there’s some interesting mechanisms packed into this phrase but we need to unpack it for this problem rather than rely on it to provide in some tooth-fairy-esque fashion. Assuming that some foundation or company must be willing to foot the bill is also irresponsible in my mind – for what reason do we assume this would be easy? Because they've been so very forthcoming in funding nonprofit capacity building in the past?

I find the “solutions” offered to be rather pale, to say the least. They boil down to, in my mind:

• Getting foundations or corporate sponsors to foot the bill. I think this is the most workable possibility. But that’s unfortunate, as it’s exceedingly difficult to find foundation funding for cross-sector work, or capacity building work, or projects involving publishing content, or online projects, let alone something that is all four. And the few corporate sponsors interested in reaching a nonprofit tech audience tend to prefer tactical to strategic content. Regardless, there may be possibilities here – but I admit to being disappointed that the best solution we can come up to fund our new and innovative content licensing methods is to rely on the very traditional and fickle method of basic fundraising to get someone else to pay.
• Asking nonprofits to chip in what they can afford. This sounds good – so good that I tried it for Idealware. But unfortunately, it’s not a model in which I think you can effectively cover costs, at least at the types of volume that the Journal is looking at. Idealware is earning about $0.35 for each person who looks at our Online Donation and Blogging reports. And I understand that this is a remarkably high number for this kind of "tip jar" model.
• Consulting or Seminars. This is in fact how the Gilbert Center makes most of their money, but it’s hard to see how it applies to the Journal. The Center itself didn’t author the articles, so they’d have to get in the journal authors to conduct the events, and take a cut off the top. I don’t see a way to get a substantial income stream here, especially in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative of the authors. Fundamentally, I’m also confused that charging for training is valid under “everything should be open” while charging for content is not. Don’t small organizations have a right to training as much as they have a right to read articles? Is this dichotomy based solely on a feeling that the public should pay only for direct costs rather than the huge indirect ones required for research and content generation?

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to hear workable solutions. I just don’t think I’m hearing them. Instead, I’m hearing people who really want open content to be viable blaming the Gilbert Center and NTEN for not figuring it out. And then daring to actually go ahead and publish something (footing the up-front costs themselves, mind you) to help gather data on what’s possible.

And I’m going to go further (I think I’m already over the top, so what’s the difference?). I think we as a community also need to consider possible negative impacts of advocating that all content ought to be open. It’s already very difficult to pay for the effort of creating great content. If in addition we promote in people’s mind the idea that all content ought to be free, it’s hard to escape promoting the idea that no content is worth paying for. Which puts us in danger of tipping an environment in which it’s very difficult to support good content into one in which it’s downright impossible.

I know it’s not a popular suggestion. It’s not what we want to believe. It sounds oh-so-capitalistic and anti-openness. But that doesn’t make it not true.

If we just yell a little louder about the Journal’s license model, maybe we can get someone to cough up some money to fund an open model. That would be a terrific result. But failing that, I can guarantee that it will give the Gilbert Center and other organization like them pause about writing new content and asking people to pay for it. It certainly gives me pause. And as these organizations need to pay the rent and their staff like the rest of us, that will likely mean not writing it at all. That would be a really bad result, as there’s already so little good content in the world for nonprofit technologists.

Obviously, this is a subject close to my own heart. If we want good nonprofit content in the world, we can’t just arbitrarily demand openness. We can't assume that someone else will foot the bill for us, because that just isn't a sustanable long term solution. We need to support the organizations that are writing it in figuring out how to cover their costs. Or these organizations will simply cease to exist.

Portland, I’ve Been Defending You…

LOOK FOR SNOW TO DEVELOP EARLY THIS AFTERNOON. AS THE PRECIPITATION STARTS...IT MAY START AS A MIX OF SLEET AND RAIN. AS THE PRECIPITATION BECOMES HEAVIER...IT WILL FALL IN THE FORM OF SNOW. THE SNOW WILL FALL HEAVILY AT TIMES LATER THIS AFTERNOON AND THIS EVENING...LOOK FOR A TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 4 TO 8 INCHES BY MORNING...

I’ve been telling everyone that Portland, Maine really isn’t Siberia, that it’s only two hours north of Boston, it’s really very beautiful and not that cold. You’re letting me down, Portland. Two storms resulting in 18” of snow in the middle of April just isn’t going to cut it. I was in Washington DC last week- I know it’s spring. You can’t fool me. You’re going to have to do better.

Your Vote Will Help Idealware Write Articles!

Netsquared is holding a contest for the best projects using social web technology tools for social impact. We've thrown our hat in the ring with a project that will allow us to greatly expand the work we've been doing with our Few Good Tools articles (like our A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools article, for example).

Please vote for us!

We've proposed a knowledge sharing initiative that involves first creating a rich online repository that will help us all understand what nonprofit staff and consultants have expertise in which software areas. We'll then use collaborative communication tools to round up this knowledge about key software areas (perhaps online integrated packages? collaboration tools? constituent databases? content management systems? event registration tools?) and then publish it in a form that will be useful to hundreds of nonprofits worldwide? Read more about the project.

Would these summaries be useful to you? We'd love to write them. Idealware is still a small organization and the type of exposure and money we'd get from winning the Netsquared project would really help us with not just this content but even more reports and articles.

But we need your help - vote for the Idealware project! Vote now>

You'll need to register on the site, and then pick at least five projects to vote for, but there's lot's of great ones to choose from. I'm going to go through and pick my favorites, and post them here tomorrow, should that be useful...

Resource Roundup 4/10

MobileActive Guide #3 Released: Mobile Phones in Fundraising Campaigns(NTEN)
Continuing the MobileActive Series, a new guide on using mobile phones for fundraising.

Plone Online Training: Short Plone Overview (TechNW)
Based on the demand for our Joomla/ Drupal/ Plone overview workshop, understanding content management systems is a big need, which means that a number of you may be interested in TechNW's very reasonably priced Plone Online Training.

Managing Pictures in SharePoint (Gavin's Digital Diner)
Gavin Clabaugh lays out his process for building a Digital Asset Management system to manage photographs in SharePoint (Microsoft's intranet and collaboration tool)- an interesting piece both for those interested in DAM and in SharePoint.

Knowledge Management: Finding Quick Wins and Long Term Value (How To Save the World)
Dave Pollard lays out some very useful suggestions about what systems and processes can do to help organizational Knowledge Management in the short and long term.

Online Community through Email Lists (Beaconfire)
Great overview of how to create community using listserves - an old school but still very relevant technology - as well as how to apply these lessons to more new-fangled approaches

Software To Convert RSS Feeds Into Published Web Pages - A Mini-Guide (Kollabora)
Another in the great Kollabora mini-guide series - this one on software tools that will help you publish content from RSS feeds on your website.

Use of Web 2.0 Tools about an UK Educational Audience (TALL Blog)
Results of a very interesting survey, looking at the use of specific Web 2.0 tools and communications methods among those looking at Oxford continuing education classes.

What is Windows Vista? (ICT Hub Knowledgebase)
A great overview of what does, the differences in the various versions that are available, and what it means to you.

How to Create a Pre-filtered Mash-up of RSS feeds (Journalism.co.uk)
Step-by-step walkthrough of how to put together a RSS aggregator based on complex criteria using Yahoo Pipes

Put that in Your Pipe and Search It (NTEN)
NTEN offers an aggregator of NPTech blog posts, news, and the like, using Yahoo Pipes

A Strategy for Using Email Lists (ONE/Northwest)
Another great, practical resource from ONE/NW - this one with an overview of four ways that every organization should be using email lists.

Varieties of Membership Management (Michael Stein's Nonprofit Tech Blog)
Quick but insightful look at two fairly different types of "membership management" and the processes that go along with them.

Come See Us at the Nonprofit Technology Conference!

I’m out at NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington DC today through Friday. If you’re here, I’d love to see you – drop me a line! Or we’ll be easy to find:

• Aspiration is kindly hosting Idealware at their Science Fair table – drop by for some fancy new Idealware collateral, or to chat.
• On Wednesday morning, I’m leading a Getting Started with Online Donation Tools session, based on our Online Donation Tools report.
  
• In the first session on Wednesday afternoon, Colin Delaney will host a session on Leveraging the Power of Participatory Media, exploring the ground from his Idealware article in more depth, with the help of speakers from MoveOn, Oxfam, and EchoDitto.
• In the last session of the day on Wednesday, Idealware stalwarts David Geilhufe, Ryan Ozmiek, and Patrick Shaw, along with myself, will be Comparing Open Source Content Management systems (and demo-ing them!)
• - And last but not least, I’m talking about Branding Through Websites on Thursday morning. It’s not actually affiliated with Idealware (I’m doing it as part of my other professional life, as a nonprofit website strategy consultant), but it should be a good time anyway.

Hope to see you there!