Idealware

Little Things Can Mean A Lot: Email Signatures

2010-02-08T17:38:00.005-05:00

Easily Overlooked Opportunities to Polish your Brand Online

This is the second of a handful of small ways to extend your organization's brand through out your online presence.

As I was trying to come up with a good handful of easy wins I thought immediately of the email signatures. I have seen some great ones on various mailing lists and some that make me cringe. Plus no list like this would be complete without a mention of this free way to improve your branding on a daily basis. So I started with Google, as I always do, to see what the prevailing wisdom is on these - sure enough I found out that I am not alone in my thinking and I found two great articles right away.

After reading through the brief summary below, I highly encourage you to check out Nancy Schwartz's definitive article and Jon Stahl's fantastic real world case study from at Groundwire (formerly One NW).

Make the most of your last word
When you talk about email and nonprofits E-newsletters and donation appeals come to mind immediately, but in this case I'm talking about the last lines in regular day-to-day emails that staff send to each other and those outside the organization. Internally having a set (or set of) on mission and on brand signatures can reinforce professionalism and a sense of unity. And when you communicate with the outside world, the value of these snippets becomes even more apparent in solidifying your identity and purpose in the readers mind.

What should your organization's email signature include?
Obviously you'll want to have your name, position and contact information.

You should keep this under control though and if you find that your signature is regularly longer than the email itself, it's probably too long.

What else?
Add your branding, tagline, website or maybe a tagline and link for your current campaign - action or fundraising.

Think long and hard about adding a logo graphic though - simple and consistent more important than flashy. Think of this as subtle reminder not a billboard because by the 3rd time they get an email from you it can start to annoy people if its too large. Also as you can see in Jon's article its not as easy to implement as text only.

I think developing a set or some really clear guidelines could be a potent tool to allow for personalization while staying on message. If you can offer two or three acceptable styles (short, medium and long or official, colleague and more personal) and make them easy to get into the emails staff will be able to match the signature to the message.

See Nancy's article for a more thorough list of ideas.

Check out what some organizations are doing:

Ask for donations:

Support our efforts for 2010
http://www.1sky.org/donate

Love us? Support us!
Make a tax-deductible donation to the Office of Letters and Light today.
http://store.lettersandlight.org

--
Engage activists:

Sign up to become part of Audubon's E-Activist community
http://www.audubonaction.org/audubon

--
Give a description of your organization and the official tag line:

Visit our website: www.policylink.org

PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by Lifting Up What Works.®

--
Reinforce your mission:

Several nature and environmental organizations include the line -

"Please consider the environment before printing this email"

--
And while those funny quotes that used to be so common probably aren't a great idea for an official organization sign off, I love the use of humor in this one:

http://www.issuelab.org/subscribe/public/index.php
We've got issues. Read all about it in IssueLab eNews!

More tips and ideas on how to do it

From Microsoft - all about using your Outlook signature

A few good thoughts on how to sign off

Thanks for reading,
heather gardner-madras
------------------------------------
gardner-madras | strategic creative
http://www.heathergm.com
[e] hgm@heathergm.com
[p] 541-933-1942
[c] 541-579-6665

Donate to Idealware's Research Fund!
http://www.idealware.org/research_fund

Why Idealist.org needs your help

2010-02-04T15:09:00.002-05:00

Idealist.org needs your help to survive. Do you need more reasons to go donate now? Here's one.

Five years ago, I was a website consultant to nonprofits. I had an idea -- hey, someone should do reviews and information about nonprofit software that all organizations can benefit from! -- and I talked to a bunch of people to see if the idea had legs.

One of the people I spoke with was Ami Dar, the Executive Director of Idealist. I don't even know how I connected with him -- did I cold call him? He's exactly the type of person who's genuinely nice enough and helpful enough to take a call from a miscellaneous person with questions.

He had a lot of useful thoughts and insights about the idea that was to become Idealware, but he said one thing in particular that I've never forgotten, and has proven true over and over. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here): "The more you try to support all nonprofits, everywhere, the less likely you are to get funding."

It's completely counter-intuitive, but true. I think it's the same phenomenon as the Bystander Effect -- the idea that someone is less likely to help someone in trouble if there's a bunch of people also there. Nonprofits like Idealist help so many people that it never seems to a donor as specific or pressing a thing to support as other causes. It's easy to understand -- for instance, your local job fair clinic in Boston is right there, and you know it doesn't have a big pool of donors. If you live in Kentucky, it's easy to see why you should support a site targeted to help people in rural areas find jobs.

But this reasoning is faulty when it comes to critical organizations like Idealist. They provide job fair clinics in Boston... and dozens of other locations. They help people in rural area find jobs... along with hundreds of thousands of others. They're one of the pieces of infrastructure by which the nonprofit sector works, and just like any organization, if they can't get support, they go under.

Which is in danger of happening now. One of their principle income sources was from job listings, and job listings, as you can imagine, are not what they used to be.

Do you want Idealist to survive? Would you be bummed if they were gone? Then don't wait for other people to support them. Go donate yourself.

Introducing the Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits

2010-01-28T09:14:00.001-05:00

We're excited to announce the launch of our very first book -- the Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Fundraising, Communications, and Outreach. I'm really proud of it -- it's 84 pages summarizing what we've learned about software over the last four years, as a quick reference as to what software exists and what might make sense for you based on your needs and level of tech savvy. And then it gives a quick summary of what you might pay, what you can get, and some of the key vendors for each of 34 types of software.

Basically, it's like a neutron star of nonprofit software information. Concise but incredibly packed with info. I've had a printed copy on my desk for almost a month now, and let me tell you: I refer to it almost every day to look up something... and I co-wrote the thing.

It's a real paperbook book. Buy it from Lulu for $19.95 and it will be shipped to your door.

Four ways to send a SMS (a mobile text)

2010-01-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

We're hard at work on a lot of work in regard to mobile texting and and mobile apps (funded in part by the Research Fund... and all of you who donated to it! Thanks you!). I've learned a lot, but among them: the world of SMS (meaning "Short Message Service", the official name for a text message) is a darn complicated one.

As we at Idealware like to break things down, we've broken down the ways to send a text into four categories.

SMS as email. It's usually possible to send people a text message simply by emailing it to an email address consisting of their phone number and then their provider's domain (i.e. 6463523431@att.net). This is not actually officially supported, and can lead to problems when doing it in quantity, but can be an easy method for a few quick (or internal) texts. You also have the problem of collecting providers and provider domains, which is a kind of unusual thing to ask supporters for. But it's free.

Connecting your phone to your computer. There are software packages -- like Frontline SMS or Microsoft SMS -- which allow you to literally hook your cell phone to your computer and send a bunch of messages out through your own cell phone. This is more common (for reasons we're still investigating) in third world countries than in the US. The software is inexpensive.

SMS via programmatic services. If you have a programmer, you can use services like Click-a-Tell that allow you to send messages by communicating via API. For instance, Click-a-Tell is often used in conjunction with Drupal for either one way broadcast texting, or more sophisticated processes like letting people sign up via texting, or providing dynamic info (like the weather). Click-a-Tell is priced by the message, averaging about $0.04/ message. There's also open source software like Kannel and Gammu which we think falls into this category.

SMS in a box. Finally, there are vendors like Mobile Commons and Distributive Networks who provide you a nice packaged service, and an interface, very much like a broadcast email interface, that lets non-technical people easily set up texting streams -- to let people signup via text, broadcast texts, setup complex two-way interactions, or donate. We're investigating pricing, but they're not cheap. Perhaps starting at $200- $500/month?

So as you can tell, we've still got a ways to go on our research -- would love to hear your thoughts (either via comment below, or via email) if you can fill in any of our blanks or if you think we've gotten this wrong.

NPO Evaluation, IE6, Still Waters for Wave

2010-01-25T10:43:00.001-05:00

Here are a few updates topics I've posted on in the last few months:

Nonprofit Assessment

The announcement that GuideStar, Charity Navigator and others would be moving away from the 990 form as their primary source for assessing nonprofit performance raised a lot of interesting questions, such as "How will assessments of outcomes be standardized in a way that is not too subjective?" and "What will be required of nonprofits in order to make those assessments?" We'll have a chance to get some preliminary answers to those questions on February 4th, when NTEN will sponsor a phone-in panel discussion with representatives of GuideStar and Charity Navigator, as well as members of the nonprofit community. The panel will be hosted by Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy, and will include:

Bob Ottenhoff of Guidestar

Ken Berger of Charity Navigator

Lucy Bernholtz of Blueprint R & D

Christine Egger of Social Actions

David Geilhufe of NetSuite

and host Holly Ross of NTEN.

I'll be participating as well. You can learn more and register for the free event with NTEN.

The Half-Life of Internet Explorer 6

It's been quite a few weeks as far as headlines go, with a humanitarian crisis in haiti; a dramatic election in Massachusetts; A trial to determine if California gay marriage-banning proposition is, in fact, discriminatory; high profile shakeups in late night television and word of the Snuggie, version 2 all competing for our attention. An additional, fascinating story is unfolding with Google's announcement that they might pull their business out of China in light of a massive cybercrime against critics of the Chinese regime that, from all appearances, was either performed or sanctioned by the Chinese government. There's been a lot of speculation about Google's motives for such a dramatic move, and I fall in the camp that says, whatever their motives, it's refreshing to see a gigantic U.S. corporation factor ethics into a business decision, even if it's unclear exactly what the complete motivations are.

As my colleague Steve Backman fully explains here, here's been some fallout from this story for Microsoft. First, like Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft operates a search engine in China and submits to the Chinese governments censoring filters. They've kept mum on their feelings about the cyber-attack. Google's analysis of that attack reveals that GMail accounts were hacked and other breaches occurred via security holes in Internet Explorer, versions six and up, that allow a hacker to upload programs and take control of a user's PC. As this information came to light, France and Germany both issued advisories to their citizens that switching to a browser other than Internet Explorer would be prudent. In response, Microsoft has issued a statement recommending that everyone upgrade from Internet Explorer version 6 to version 8, the current release. What Microsoft doesn't mention is that the security flaw exists in versions seven and eight as well as six, so upgrading won't protect you from the threat, although they just released a patch that hopefully will.

So, while their reasoning is suspect, it's nice to see that Microsoft has finally joined the campaign to remove this old, insecure and incompatible with web standards browser.

Google Wave: Still Waters

I have kept Google Wave open in a tab in my browser since the day my account was opened, subscribed to about 15 waves, some of them quite well populated. I haven't seen an update to any of these waves since January 12th, and it was really only one wave that's gotten any updates at all in the past month. I can't give away the invites I have to offer. The conclusion I'm drawing is that, if Google doesn't do something to make the Wave experience more compelling, it's going to go the way of a Simply Red B-Side and fade from memory. As I've said, there is real potential here for something that puts telecommunication, document creation and data mining on a converged platform, and that would be new. But, in it's current state, it's a difficult to use substitute for a sophisticated Wiki. And, while Google was hyping this, Confluence released a new version of their excellent (free for nonprofits) enterprise Wiki that can incorporate (like Wave) Google gadgets. That makes me want to pack up my surfboard.

Browser Security and Choices

2010-01-24T14:23:00.007-05:00

Browsers have been in the news again lately.

The open conflict between China and Google has brought front page/national news attention to Internet privacy and censorship lately. Google announced that Chinese cyber spies had hacked into Gmail accounts in order to identify human rights activists in China. It turns out that it was not just Google. Other popular web service providers had suffered similar attacks. And now it has become a diplomatic incident, with Sec of State Clinton and Pres Obama now forced to intervene even while presumably engaged by Haiti, growing mess in Afghanistan and more.

Google--somewhat belatedly for many--retaliated by threatening to stop self-censoring searches of its Chinese edition. Web freedom activists have long felt this accommodation to Chinese law violated Google’s philosophy http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html. Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco and others feel pressure to follow suit.

Browser Security Holes the Point of Attack

So what does this have to do with browsers? Turns out that the cyber warfare story behind the story has to do with Chinese teams exploiting yet another point of failure in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has now patched that problem, and web users should get it. According to the BBC and others, Microsoft knew about the vulnerability since September and planned to patch it. Soon. February. For the government of Germany, enough was enough. In the middle of the cyber crisis, they urged web users in their country to stop using IE altogether, as part of their version of domestic homeland security.

To give Microsoft credit, Internet Explorer 8 overall offers more security protection than 7 or 6. (And it looks good, just as Microsoft's bing search site looks good.) You really should have it: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

Yet, statistics show many users still on IE 6, presumably many because users have older computers and just don’t know what they have. Partly also, some corporate software apparently displays better on IE6. Presumably German authorities felt that an announcement, "please upgrade to IE8 and set your computer to download all your security patches weekly" really would have required way more public information that is practical. Makes sense to me.

And of course, the preference for IE6 has a bitter irony for web developers worldwide. As software moves to richer browser experiences, through Javascript, Flex, JQuery and the rest, it has become harder and harder to ensure cross-browser compatibility when those compatibility tests have to include IE6. We don't do it any more unless this is specifically part of the requirements--say, in school environments with a lot of older computers.

We keep an eye out for who continues to support IE6 compatibility and who does not. Paychex just announced it would end IE6 support as of March 2010 for its payroll software. 37Signals announced way back in the fall of 2008 that it would phase out support for IE6 in Basecamp and its other web services. "Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress." Good for you, Paychex, 37Signals, web developers no doubt said to themselves. Microsoft itself will pull the plug on IE6 in July 2010.

Of course, the bigger story is that more and more web users have moved away from Internet Explorer altogether, much as in the German announcement. Too confusing and just can't wait. Many folks used to worry that websites developed with Microsoft tools would fall apart outside of Internet Explorer. Not true! In fact, some .Net web pages that test fine in competing browsers need tweaking for IE.

Firefox now has just under a quarter of all web users. With plans underway for it, I suspect Firefox will continue to grow. (For example, soon each Firefox tab will run in its own memory space. This means that if one page causes a problem, it won't freeze other tabs. This also helps with speed. Chrome works this way now.)

What is most intriguing to me is the continuing march forward of Google’s Chrome. In early January 2010, statistics showed it had inched by Safari to become the third most popular browser. It has become my preferred browser. Why? It’s quite fast and has that now familiar clean look of other Google products.

Personal esthetics aside, two things account for Chrome’s surge

Beta Release for Mac and Linux. I have been using the Linux version on my Ubuntu netbook, and it has been fantastic. It may be beta, but like other Google betas, it seems ready to go. In my personal experience, it’s much faster than either Opera or Firefox running on my small Ubuntu notebook. Other reports support this.

On XP, both it and Safari seem significantly faster than either IE or Firefox. The forthcoming release schedule for Firefox includes a lot of focus on performance, so who knows where things will line up.

The other big news in the Chrome department has been growing support for browser extensions. There’s still nothing like the Firefox library. Yet my most essential extensions installed really easily and work just fine—Delicious bookmarks, Lastpass password protection, bitly url shortener, Gmail integrator, and Evernote note and page clipper. Small bonus: unlike Firefox, you don’t have to restart the browser when you install or update the those extensions.

For many folks, all the yak about extensions must seem so nerdy. Yet browser extensions are to web experience what apps are to mobile: we spend so much time in the browser while using our computers, why not make the effort to personalize and enrich our experience? Though this may drive standards-minded IT departments crazy, it seems part of life on the ‘net today.

Why choose one over the other? Security, Speed, Customization, and User Experience

As I mentioned, number one reason for me in crossing over to Chrome on my 1 GB netbook has been speed. It is faster with Gmail and all the Google stuff, yet not just. It’s hard to truly compare “fast.” In my case, it means being able to have a lot of tabs open at once and for a long time with limited memory. Apple has steered clear of supporting Linux (no Ubuntu browser, iTunes or anything) so I can’t compare, yet the Windows version is quite fast as well.

I have all of Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera on my older Windows XP notebook. I switched from Firefox toChrome there as well my first choice browser. All the browsers now emphasize a modern spare look, which is great, with Safari and Chrome the most refreshing in this regard.

The contradictory thing about Chrome’s speed is that part of the netbook attraction is that it runs well with low memory. On the other hand, on XP at least, its speed seems to come at the price of insatiable memory. I posted some tips about this Chrome issue here.

Why NOT to choose one over the other?

The browser makers compete over the four categories mentioned above. This is good and worth paying attention to. They also compete over internal features, some of which is good and some not. Two features I would recommend steering clear of are bookmark synchronization and password protection.

Each of the browsers now emphasize their features for these everyday requirements. They even have grown in ability to sync across multiple computers. I don’t look anymore and I don’t care. I use delicious to hang on to my bookmarks (supplemented by evernote page grabber). And I use lastpasss for keeping track of passwords. I’m not going to review those products here. I’ve commented on them in earlier posts, and I recognize there are other options in each category.

The point here in a review of browser choices is that those choices seem to be blowing wide open in a product category that a few years ago seemed “solved.” There’s more choices on the desktop and more on mobile phones as well. (My Nokia phone also has, yes, three separate browsers I cycle among.) By storing your critical web experience information independently, you can switch from one browser to another as well as from one computer to another.

I can save a site log-in to my lastpass account from browsing with Windows desktop in Firefox and then the next day, open that same site from Chrome on my Linux netbook—or find the same password from my lastpass app on my cell phone. Likewise with my delicious bookmarks.

By contrast, the syncing each browser offers emphasizes keeping you locked in to that one browser. Browser lock-in does not feel like a good thing for the year ahead for me, and I hope you don’t either.

Dealing With Domains Part 2

2010-01-19T11:01:00.001-05:00

Last week, we talked about domain registrar services and what to look for. In today's followup, we'll focus on how to transfer a domain and the accompanying security concerns, then talk a bit about registrars vis a vis hosting services.

Domain Transfers

Transferring domains is a somewhat complex process that has been designed to minimize the risk of domain hijacking. In order to insure that transfers are performed by the actual owner of the domain, a few important measures are in place:

Every domain has an authorization (a.k.a. EPP) code associated with it. Transfers can not occur without this code being submitted. If you don’t have this information, your current registrar does. Some registrars have automated functions that will deliver that information to the domain contact; others require that you ask for them via email to the registrar or their support ticket application. Registrars are required to provide you with these codes within five calendar days of your request. If they don’t, your best recourse is to determine who they get their domain authority from (there are only a handful of companies that resell registration services) and appeal to them for assistance.

Communication is strictly through the registered “whois” email address of the domain owner. You can determine what that is by doing a whois lookup on your domain.

Tip: While most domains can be looked up at http://whois.net. However, whois.net has some trouble with .org domains, so the alternative http://www.pir.org/whois is a more reliable source for most non-profit domains.

If the address that your domain is registered with is either non-functional or owned by someone other than you, then you need to update it, via your current registrar’s web interface, before you can successfully transfer the domain.

Domains can (and should) be locked to prohibit transfers before and after you switch registrars. Locking and unlocking your domains is usually done by you, from your registrar’s web site. If you don’t have options to do that when you log on to the web site, your registrar should do it for you upon request.

Transfer Procedures

To initiate the transfer, go to the web site of the registrar that you want to switch to and follow their instructions. They will have you submit a request and, upon receipt of your domain fees, issue an email to the email address associated with the domain containing a link to a form where you can confirm the request. That form will also ask for the authorization code. Subsequently - and this can take up to seven days - you’ll receive an email from your current registrar asking you to confirm the transfer request. Once that is submitted, the transfer should go through.
Detailed rules about how domains are transferred, as well as what the responsibilities of the registrars are in handling the transfers, are listed at http://www.icann.org/en/transfers/policy-en.htm.

Choosing Registrars

Registrars charge anywhere from $5.00 to $50 dollars for a year’s domain service. The two best known registrars are Network Solutions and GoDaddy. Many people go with Network Solutions because they're the longest standing of the registrars (for many years, they were the only registrar). GoDaddy has become very popular by dramatically undercutting the cost. Note, though, that both of these registrars have been accused of questionable business practices:

Network Solutions has engaged in "Front Running", a questionable practice of locking domains that a potential customer might search for in order to block competitors from making the sale. They will also use subdomains of your domain to advertise, a practice called subdomain hijacking. A decent registrar will not seek to make profits based on your intellectual property.

GoDaddy famously suspends accounts based on corporate requests. In 2007, they suspended seclists.org, a website that archives internet security mailing lists, per the request of MySpace, with no court order or valid complaint. MySpace was upset that content posted to one of the lists that Seclists archived was inappropriate. But, instead of contacting Seclists to deal with the content in question, GoDaddy closed the site and wouldn't respond to desperate emails or phone calls regarding the sudden closure. Worse, after the fiasco was resolved, they were unrepentant, and reserve the right to shut down any site for any spurious reason. If your NPO does work that is in the least bit controversial, keep this in mind when considering GoDaddy.

Web Hosting and Registrars

Many registrars supplement their business by providing web hosting services as well. Some will even offered discounted or free domain registration with a hosting plan. While this simplifies things, it can also be a bit risky in the “eggs in one basket” sense. Having a separate registrar and control over your DNS service allows you to be more flexible with switching hosts, should your current host prove themselves unreliable or go out of business. And the web hosting industry is pretty volatile, with companies coming and going pretty quickly. I would suggest a best practice is to keep your host and registrar separate.

The Joy of Google Ads

2010-01-19T09:46:00.002-05:00

Not enough people are taking advantage of Google Ads, in my opinion. They're a really useful tool -- affordable enough for most nonprofits, and in fact free to qualified ones.

How do they work? You create a short text ad, choose the keywords and geographic area you’d like to reach, and Google posts your ad next to searches for them. So for instance, I could choose to show my ad if people from Virginia search with a phrase that includes "food pantry". The cost depends on the popularity of the keywords you choose, but often starts at just a few cents per each user who clicks through to your site—and you can cap the amount you spend per day. Google provides easy-to-use tools to track your results and optimize campaigns, making it straightforward to manage. There's lots more information on their website.

Nonprofits who use Google Ads often get substantial results, making them a high bang-for-the-buck way to reach new constituents. Even better, qualifying nonprofits can get up to $10,000 per month in free Google AdWords advertising through the Google Grants program. The majority of nonprofits are approved (though it appears that those that are religiously or politically affiliated are less likely to be approved). And the application is easy, less than an hour to complete even including getting up to speed on how to write an ad (the application includes a sample of the type ad you would run). So it's worthwhile for almost every nonprofit to apply. The Google Grants site has all the information you'll need.

Dealing With Domains - Part 1

2010-01-11T10:57:00.006-05:00

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created at TagCrowd.com

Domain Name Management: not a very sexy topic. This will be a rare post for me that won't mention popular search engines, the latest "superphone", content management or rumored tablets. But I hope I can provide a good glossary on a geeky subject that anyone with a web site sporting their organization's name has to deal with.

You have a web site and you have a domain, and as long as the web site is up and running, everything is fine. But what happens if your domain is hijacked? What if you need to make changes to your domain registration, or register a new one, and your registrar is simply disinterested? What if they go out of business? Your domain name is a valuable property, and you should keep it in pro-active and trustworthy hands.

How Domain Registration Works

Domain registrars provide the service of keeping your domain name mapped with current information so that it can be found on the web. Domain names are meaningful aliases for numeric IP addresses, and aren’t technically required in order to host a web site. But, the internet would be hard to navigate if we could only find things by their numeric addresses.

The primary thing that a registrar does is to keep your contact (whois) data maintained; point your domain to the appropriate name servers; and allow you to move your domain to another registrar if you choose to.

Domain Services

In addition to domain registration, most registrars offer additional services, such as:

DNS Management (address mapping) for subdomains (which allows you to host your main domain on one server, but, perhaps, an online store called “store.yourdomain.com” on another server),

Aliasing of Addresses (so that both http://yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com go to the same place),

Backup Mail Handling, so, should your primary mail server go down, messages sent to you will be stored until they come back around;

Web Forwarding, so you can, say, register yourdomain.org, yourdomain,.com and yourdomain.net, but forward all visitors to the .com and .net sites to your website at yourdomain.org.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates, to encrypt sensitive data, like online donation forms.

Things to Look For in a New Registrar

Are they accredited? ICANN, the organization that oversees domain management , accredits registrars. If they aren’t on ICANN’s list, they aren’t trustworthy.

Do they add a year to the existing expiration date, or charge you for a full year as of engagement? They should do the former.

Do they offer automated access to all functions (via web forms), including locking/unlocking domains, retrieval of authorization (EPP) codes, and modification of all whois records? (Some registrars prefer to list themselves as the technical contact. It should be up to you whether they can have an official name on your domain, not them).

Do they list a telephone number, and is it promptly answered during business hours?

Do they respond promptly to emails and support requests? The ability to communicate with your registrar is rarely needed, but, when it is, it’s critical - you don’t want them out of the loop if your domain is subject to an attempted hijack.

Do they offer the ability to manage DNS for mail servers and subdomains? While this is an added feature, it’s common enough to be worth expecting.

Do they have any additional services (examples above)? While these supplemental services are far from critical, they are convenient. More to the point, a company that is engaging in a robust suite of services is more likely to be focused on their business. The truth is that anyone can be a domain registrar, if they make the proper investment, but whether it’s a going concern or a neglected piece of extra income for them is a question you’ll want to ask.

Next week: Safely transferring domains and a word on web hosting completes the topic.

Avoiding Technology Ice Dunes

2010-01-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

This may be a metaphor that doesn't mean a lot to you southern and California people, but Idealware's based in Portland, Maine, and up here we give a fair amount of thought to snow. I was shoveling out the driveway from our first big snow of the season (maybe 6") yesterday, and while I did it, I was giving a fair amount of thought between the overlap in shoveling and technology planning. Bear with me here.

While you're shoveling out your driveway, you plan how much room you'll leave for the cars. Maybe you're feeling lazy, and you shovel out a passageway with just an inch or two to spare. Or maybe it's an easy shoveling job, and you shovel out generous room to turn in from both sides of the street.

It doesn't feel like a decision of much importance, until you've lived somewhere where it's below freezing most of the winter. Here, you build some serious snow dunes with what you've removed from the driveway. And soon those dunes thaw a little, freeze a little, and there's a little rain, and a little more snow on top of them... and within a few days your casually shoveled banks of snow become impenetrable blocks of ice. Which may well be with you until spring, unless you have an unseasonable thaw or invest a lot of backbreaking labor.

Okay, so here's where the metaphor comes in. There's a lot of technology decisions that we as nonprofits approach just as casually. But just as often, our decisions can be with us for much longer than we thought they would. You decide to just throw up a temporary website without a lot of thought to the structure... but then between one thing and another, you're still using it two years later. You decide to use a particular piece of software mostly because you need something in a hurry, but then your staff is used to it, knows how to use it, and doesn't want to change.

Change is hard, whether it's chipping through the ice to widen your driveway, or trying to move off something you've been using for a while. It's worth giving a little extra thought when you're making those "temporary" decisions, to consider whether they're likely to make your life a misery if you need to try to maneuver though between the barricades they've imposed for much longer than you planned.

Help put us over the top for the Research Fund!

2009-12-31T13:37:00.004-05:00

We're getting really, really close! As of 1:45 this afternoon, we have $14,380 towards our goal of $15,000 for the Idealware Research Fund!

Only $620 to hit the goal. Can you help us hit $15,000?

Any amount can help us transform nonprofits' work --allowing shelters to help more people, advocacy and arts organizations to reach a wider audience, and environmental groups to make more of a difference.

Can you donate now?

We can't say thanks enough to all our donors, but especially the consulting firms who made this possible with their generous donations. A huge thank you to Phase 2 Technologies, who came through with a thrilling last minute $1000 donation. And we wouldn't be anywhere near this close without the help of the firms that donated at the $500 level: Beaconfire Consulting, Exponent Partners, Database Designs Associates, and Rad Campaign.

Thanks to them and all of you guys, we're so close I can taste it!

Making the Best of Data Conversion

2009-12-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

Ask most any developer what's the worst part of a software project and mostly likely you'll hear, “data conversion.” And what's most magical when working a project spec? “We're going to start fresh with new data.”

Reflecting back on the year gone by, clean or messy data migration definitely has a huge impact project success as a whole.

What makes the data migration part of a project so hard?

You look at old data on screen, in reports, or with tech specs. That's often all you get to look at before starting, and that's not enough to judge its true quality. You can't fully judge how well its going to work until you do real trials into the new system. And you can't really do that until you have that new system ready.

So here are painfully accumulated tips about data conversion. I'm writing this from the point of view of the “joint planning team”--lessons to both client and consultant/developer. And I'm not going to say which ones I have the most success sticking to. I'm doing this partly as therapy and partly as New Year's resolution. I promise to reread this myself on every new 2010 project.

Data conversion and the project plan

Do as much clean up as possible in the old system. The data will look familiar there, and staff who have to do it will be faster on the old.
Don't wait until the end. Put time in the schedule to for clean-up straight through the planning and configuration of the new. Reflect each decision about the new back to the old. Understand how you will get there and when the route can be opened.
It's often hard to reserve enough time for clean-up. Explore whether you can effectively use volunteers, interns, or temp staff to do routine clean up work instead of taking consultant project time to do it or burdening organizational staff beyond what is reasonable or essential for each side to do.

Data conversion and the budget

Here's a tough one: See if you take data conversion outside of the rest of the project estimate and work it as time and materials. That protects the consultant and focuses program manager attention on only doing as much as is necessary.
The fall-back choice is to allocate a specific, reasonable number of hours, say as a percent of the whole project, and agree that the consultant will do much and as best they can within that block of time, and no more.

Data conversion and "letting go"

A corollary to the last: Consider converting the essential top level stuff—the primary contact lists—and not all the historical details (all donation or membership history, services rendered, etc). The top level lists are often cleaner, easier to check, more essential, and less encumbered with old-to-new data structure changes.
For historical data you really do need, consider adding special new fields to summarize the old. For example, instead of importing an entire “trainings” history, can you live with aggregating “total workshops attended” for each contact? And remembering preferred training topics, how about just tagging the contact with “attended series A workshops” or “workshop B series”? You might be surprised how much headache this saves where the old data turns out not as clean as it now appears on screen.

Data conversion in stages

It frequently makes sense to plan on a data migration way station--a temporary clean-up and check-me database. It could be Excel, Access or something else that has strong query and reporting tools. Maybe all the status categories need to be remapped, or collected from three different current places. Maybe the notes field holds way more than notes and needs analysis
On the other hand, the new system may have fantastic clean up tools available, such as address correction and verification, or deduping. Maybe it specifically has importers for the old donor database you are moving form. Check them on sample data and use them where you can.
What about all the rest of the details of the old? If keeping the old system around does not incur licensing or hosting costs, why not just leave it up, frozen as an archive for historical data. Again, only convert what is really needed.

Data conversion and testing

Count on doing at least one trial conversion for staff to test before the day you go live. Once you have worked that into the plan, it makes sense to do it as soon as a trial version of the new software is up. Let folks test the new software with some real, existing data. It improves the testing and improves the data migration. And make sure you have put time on the calendar for that checking. Discovering gaps six months into a new system, say when quarterly or annual reports first have to run for real, really will mess things up.
Do have a series of benchmark queries to run on old and new system to quickly check results. For example, maybe the count of contacts by status group has to match exactly. Maybe the total dollar value of donations by year will not match 100% for this, that and the other reason. Make an agreement in advance, the new system will vary by as much as 3% earlier than the last two years.
Conversely, agree on a couple representative accounts you will use as a standard base line for checking the conversion. I remember one large scale donor management system with a huge master contact list mostly sparsely populated and just a handful with tons of details. Running overall lists just wouldn't cut it. Every step in the development process had to be run against one particular wealthy donor with a 28-page single spaced personal profile. Each new iteration of the software had to pass muster on him or it was back to the cubicles for us.

Data conversion documentation

Data conversions usually involve a lot of steps. List them out in a shared document and explain what each does. When you have a series of scripts that have to run, number them in order, like “step100_clear main contact table,” “step 200_import from spreadsheet xyz,” “step310_relink contacts table to database X_manual step,” step 315 _import from database x,” “step 400_run dedup query,” “step510_extract priority A people to excel and give to ED to check personally.” By putting that first step in there, you have already set things up for running the conversion process as a whole more than once. Get every step, manual or automated, in there. Consider counting by 10s at least so you insert more steps as you fine tune the overall process.
Use a shared Google doc or some other collaboratively editable document to hold the conversion steps. Even if your steps lean toward the technical, take the time to go through them collaboratively, understand what they mean, and sign off that this is the plan.

Data conversion therapy

Accept that data conversion has a therapeutic component. You can count on the staff person who is most impatient with the old system to miss data and procedures that don't show up exactly the same in the new. Hmm. My Tai Chi sensibility says maybe the framework is more meditation than therapy: it's all about grasping the essence firmly, remaining calm to find the path from the old to the new, and letting go of what you can.
And through it all, be reasonable and patient with each other. This means the organizational lead needs to look at the raw underbelly of the data and appreciate whatever is giving he consultant the most trouble. The consultant needs to sit with users and understand the consequences, workarounds, new ways of doing things if new data doesn't 100% line up with the old.

Data conversion sounds like such a mine field that you might ask, why would anyone ever agree to do it? Well, you often have to, to get the project at all. In addition, I have to say, data conversion does have a creative appeal. Its almost always unique. Unlocking old data is like unraveling a mystery. It requires real detective work. It requires knowledge of multiple systems, which takes time and experience to accumulate. If both sides agree to a reasonable plan, it is possible for all to find satisfaction and joy when the new reports line up with the old.

And speaking of the therapeutic and the meditative, just writing this has been both therapeutic and meditative for me. hope it helps you as well, and best wishes for the New Year.

Things You Might Not Know About...

2009-12-28T10:29:00.001-05:00

...or you might. I find that, in a 25 year IT career that has always included a percentage of tech support, human nature is to use the features of an application that we know about, and only go looking for new features when a clearly defined need for one arises. In that scenario, some great functionality might be hiding in plain sight. Here are a few of my favorite "not very well-hidden" secrets. Share yours in the comments.

Google Search Filtering

Have you ever clicked the "Show Options" link on your results page? Do a search for whatever interests you and try it (it's located right under the Google logo). This will add a left navigation bar with some very useful filtering options. Of note, you can narrow to a trendy real-time search buy clicking on "Latest" under "Any Time"; choose a date range,filter out the pages that you've seen, or haven't seen yet - how useful is that for finding that page that you googled last week but didn't save? The funny thing is that Google has an "Advanced Search" screen, which, of course, can do many things that this bar can't (such as searching for public domain media).

Microsoft Outlook Shortcuts

If you use Outlook, you know how simple it is to find your mail and calendar. Other common folders are conveniently placed in your default view. But if you're the slightest bit of a power user, or you work in an environment where users share mailbox folders or use Exchange's Public Folders, than keeping track of all of those folders can get a bit tedious. That's what the Shortcut view is for. Buried below the Mail, Calendar and Task buttons, you can move it up to the visible button list by right-clicking on the bar area (in the lower-left hand corner of Outlook 2003 or 2007's screen) and choosing "Navigation Pane Options". Highlight "Shortcuts" and then click "Move up" enough times to get it in one of the first four positions. Click OK, then click on the "Shortcuts" bar. From here, you can add new shortcuts and, optionally, arrange them in shortcut groups. You can rename the shortcuts with more meaningful titles, so that, if, say, you're monitoring a norther user's inbox, you can give it their name instead of having two folders named "Inbox". One tip: to add shortcuts to a group, right-click on the group title and add from there.

Facebook Friend Lists

Nothing makes Facebook more manageable than Friends Lists, and, with the new security changes, this is more true than ever. If you're like me, your connections on Facebook span every facet of your life, from family to childhood friends to co-workers. Wouldn't it be useful to be able to send links and messages to all of your co-workers but not your friends, or vice-versa? Click on "Friends" from the Facebook menu, then all connections. If you've become a fan of a page or two, you'll see that Facebook has already created two lists for you: Friends and Pages. To make more, scroll through your connection list and click to "Add to List" option to the right. You can create new lists from there, and add friends to multiple lists.

When you share a link, note, video or whatever, you can choose which list to send it to by clicking on the lock icon next to the "Share" button and choosing "Customize".

There Are More

Did you know about these features? Are there other ones that you use that make your use of popular applications and web sites much more manageable? Leave a comment and let us know.

Won't You Let me Take You On A Sea Change?

2009-12-21T11:00:00.001-05:00

Last week, I reported that Nonprofit assessors like Charity Navigator and Guidestar will be moving to a model of judging effectiveness (as opposed to thriftiness). The title of my post drew some criticism. People far more knowledgeable than I am on these topics questioned my description of this as a "sea change", and I certainly get their point. Sure, the intention to do a fair job of judging Nonprofits is sincere; but the task is daunting. As with many such efforts, we might well wind up with something that isn't a sea change at all, but, rather, a modified version of what we have today that includes some info about mission effectiveness, but still boils down to a financial assessment.

Why would this happen? Simple. Because metrics are numbers: ratios, averages, totals. It's easy to make metrics from financial data. It's very difficult to make them out of less quantifiable things, such as measuring how successfully one organization changed the world; protected the planet; or stopped the spread of a deadly disease.

I used to work for an org whose mission was to end poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area. And, sure enough, at the time, poverty was becoming far less prevalent in San Francisco. So could we be judged as successful? Could we grab the 2005 versus 2000 poverty statistics and claim the advances as our outcomes? Of course not. The reduction in poverty had far more to do with gentrification during the dotcom and real estate booms than our efforts. Poverty wasn't reduced at all; it was just displaced. And our mission wasn't to move all of the urban poor to the suburbs; it was to bring them out of poverty.

So the announcement that our ratings will now factor in mission effectiveness and outcomes could herald something worse than we have today. The dangerous scenario goes like this:

Charity Navigator, Guidestar, et al, determine what additional info they need to request from nonprofits in order to measure outcomes.

They make that a requirement; nonprofits now have to jump through those hoops.

The data they collect is far too generalized and subjective to mean much; they draw conclusions anyway, based more on how easy it is to call something a metric than how accurate or valuable that metric is.

NPOs now have more reporting requirements and no better representation.

So, my amended title: "We Need A Sea Change In The Way That Our Organizations Are Assessed".

I'm harping on this topic because I consider it a call to action; a chance to make sure that this self-assessment by the assessors is an opportunity for us, not a threat. We have to get the right people at the table to develop standardized outcome measurements that the assessing organizations can use. They can't develop these by themselves. And we need to use our influence in the nonprofit software development community to make sure that NPOs have software that can generate these reports.

The good news? Holly Ross of NTEN got right back to me with some ideas on how to get both of these actions going. That's a powerful start. We'll need the whole community in on this.

New Facebook Privacy Settings: Protecting (or enhancing) your brand

2009-12-16T09:50:00.004-05:00

People seem to be pretty nervous about the new Facebook Privacy Settings, which are explained here on the Facebook blog and here on a Facebook-created video. This post, "10 New Pivacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know" from All Facebook does a great job detailing the changes. Kaliya Hamlin wrote a post on ReadWriteWeb outlining how she believes that Facebook broke their contract with users (Thank you to @peterscampbell for pointing me in the direction of Kaliya's post).

Although people seem to be reacting strongly to this new move, I think most of the reaction is more to the fact that people are nervous they will accidentally leave things open to the public that they only want seen by their friends. It is more of a, "what of my personal life should I allow my extended network to see" question than a, "what should my privacy settings be" question. And, it is not a question that should be taken lightly.

While this debate over public/private information is being played out over Facebook, it is a concept that reaches over all of social media. The social part of social media is most important, but how much should you share about yourself when representing your organization?

Facebook Fan Pages purposefully don't list administrators, so that the Page can be a reflection of an organization/company/brand and not of a single person. On Twitter, organizations are trying to figure out whether they have staff tweet from their own account, from an account that indicates they are with the organization (Holly Ross, executive director of NTEN tweets from @ntenhross), or from an organization account (Laura and I both tweet from @Idealware).

There are many options and considerations, but here is what I know about how people should think about privacy and how they portray themselves on social media channels:

Social media needs to have a more human touch than traditional media (see Idealware's Laura Quinn's post on social media tone).Therefore, people need to feel that a human is behind the words, even if they don't know exactly who it is. But, they should know who that person is whenever possible.
Some people's business and/or organization is their personal brand. Those people need to be most careful about how they portray themselves. Yet, is also more important that those people are true to themselves when presenting their public face/brand. (See this must-read post on hotel mogel Chip Conley's struggle with maintaining a presence on Facebook, and Mashable's post on How to Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook).
As the world becomes more and more networked, its is difficult to delineated "work Kaitlin" from "personal Kaitlin." And, people will still see you as representing the organization you work for when they are looking at your personal profiles. I've had people friend me after giving seminars. This is good for connections and meeting new people, but not as good for keeping personal interests or activities private. For some people this works in their favor, for some not.
If you don't want your funders, clients, boss, or mother seeing something, it shouldn't be on the internet, and it definitely shouldn't be viewable by the general public. It probably shouldn't exist, but it is too late for that. This is a little more difficult for those of us who started Facebook pages before we were in the workforce, when we thought only our friends with .edu email addresses would be able to see our profiles. This has changed, and the way we portray ourselves needs to as well.
You, and your organization, need to give as much information as you feel comfortable giving, but no more than that. If you don't feel comfortable having information public, no matter how harmless that information might be, don't make it public (seems like common sense, right?).

In sum, we need to find the thin line between protecting our privacy, and how we are representing our organizations, and allowing people to better know us and understand us.

In my efforts, most of my Information tab on Facebook is public (except for some personal contact information). My friends list is also public, but my wall and photos are closed to only my friends. That is what I feel comfortable with, and it seems like a good compromise between public/private information.

What do you think? How does how you portray yourself in your personal profiles affect your organization? What information are you leaving private/public? Please leave your comments and thoughts in the comments.

Little Things Can Mean A Lot: 404 Pages

2009-12-14T15:28:00.002-05:00

Easily Overlooked Opportunities to Polish your Brand Online

You've probably heard the adage that your brand isn't just your logo or tagline, its every experience people have with your organization. And its true that having a consistent message in everything you do, from the words your staff uses answer the phone to exactly matching your colors on print materials, does pay off in terms of presenting your organization as professional and clear about your mission.

I have been thinking lately about small ways you can extend your organization's brand and personality online that are often overlooked. As always, I get the most excited about those that are fairly inexpensive, not too difficult to execute and that provide a lot of bang for your buck. I've decided to do a small series of these over the next few weeks. Here's the first - a friendly 404 can say a lot about who you are and how much you care about your web site visitors.

404 pages
When visitors can't find what they are looking for on your site it can put them off, even though it might be in no way your fault. Its not just good usability to customize your "page not found" page it's also an opportunity to reinforce your messaging and brand.

An Error 404 page is what your web server will display when the URL in the browser can't be found. Instead of the boring or unfriendly default "Not Found The requested URL /oops was not found on this server. This document cannot be retrieved" you can help your visitors find what they are looking for on your site.

First you'll need to find out how you access that page (this might be via the hosting company control panel or in your content management system) and then add helpful tips to reorient the user and provide paths to your most popular, important or interesting content. Not only is this more friendly but its a good opportunity to reinforce your messages for the visitor and show them what's available.

What should your 404 include?
A friendly message and a search form are good ideas, as is a list of links to major site sections or popular content. At minimum you want to be sure that your site navigation is available on this page or a link to the site home page to help retain and orient visitors on your site.

And if you can add your sitemap, it will help your visitors find what they are looking for and show off all the great stuff on your site.

Ideally you would also include a link to email the webmaster or a form to submit broken links in case it's a bad link on your site that landed them on this page.

Check out how some organizations do this:

MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/oops retains site-wide navigation and branding while providing every possible link and option.
New York City Coalition Against Hunger: http://www.nyccah.org/oops is friendly and helpful with a touch of their own personality
Grist: http://www.grist.org/oops continues their tongue in cheek image without going over the top.
Alertbox: http://www.useit.com/oops Jakob Nielsen's is all business with a slant towards self-promotion, just as you would expect from this minimalist usability guru.

Whether you go simple with just a nice message and link back home, or get really fancy and try to guess what they were looking for, its a vast improvement over the default error page that can send the wrong message about your organization.

In my opinion, a short statement and bulleted list is most helpful to guide users to their intended information and its best to avoid being too cutesy or clever on these pages. Visitors are already frustrated so reminding them they may have made a mistake or forcing them to read a lot of text probably isn't going to improve their mood or associations with your organization.

More tips and ideas on good 404's

And some specifics for some common open source content management systems:

Drupal
http://www.davebeall.com/Drupal-HowTo/custom-error-pages-drupal
Joomla
http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Create_a_Custom_404_Error_Page
Plone
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/error-handling
Wordpress
http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Error_404_Page

Happy 404'ing

Get Ready For A Sea Change In Nonprofit Assessment Metrics

2009-12-14T10:15:00.001-05:00

Last week, GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and three other nonprofit assessment and reporting organizations made a huge announcement: the metrics that they track are about to change. Instead of scoring organizations on an "overhead bad!" scale, they will scrap the traditional metrics and replace them with ones that measure an organization's effectiveness.

The new metrics will assess:

Financial health and sustainability;

Accountability, governance and transparency; and

Outcomes.

This is very good news. That overhead metric has hamstrung serious efforts to do bold things and have higher impact. An assessment that is based solely on annualized budgetary efficiency precludes many options to make long-term investments in major strategies. For most nonprofits, taking a year to staff up and prepare for a major initiative would generate a poor Charity Navigator score. A poor score that is prominently displayed to potential donors.

Assuming that these new metrics will be more tolerant of varying operational approaches and philosophies, justified by the outcomes, this will give organizations a chance to be recognized for their work, as opposed to their cost-cutting talents. But it puts a burden on those same organizations to effectively represent that work. I've blogged before (and will blog again) on our need to improve our outcome reporting and benchmark with our peers. Now, there's a very real danger that neglecting to represent your success stories with proper data will threaten your ability to muster financial support. You don't want to be great at what you do, but have no way to show it.

More to the point, the metrics that value social organizational effectiveness need to be developed by a broad community, not a small group or segment of that community. The move by Charity Navigator and their peers is bold, but it's also complicated. Nonprofit effectiveness is a subjective thing. When I worked for a workforce development agency, we had big questions about whether our mission was served by placing a client in a job, or if that wasn't an outcome as much as an output, and the real metric was tied to the individual's long-term sustainability and recovery from the conditions that had put them in poverty.

Certainly, a donor, a watchdog, a funder a, nonprofit executive and a nonprofit client are all going to value the work of a nonprofit differently. Whose interests will be represented in these valuations?

So here's what's clear to me:

- Developing standardized metrics, with broad input from the entire community, will benefit everyone.

- Determining what those metrics are and should be will require improvements in data management and reporting systems. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, as collecting the data wis a precedent to determining how to assess it, but standardizing the data will assist in developing the data systems.

- We have to share our outcomes and compare them in order to develop actual standards. And there are real opportunities available to us if we do compare our methodologies and results.

This isn't easy. This will require that NPO's who have have never had the wherewith-all to invest in technology systems to assess performance do so. But, I maintain, if the world is going to start rating your effectiveness on more than the 990, that's a threat that you need to turn into an opportunity. You can't afford not to.

And I look to my nptech community, including Idealware, NTEN, Techsoup, Aspiration and many others -- the associations, formal, informal, incorporated or not, who advocate for and support technology in the nonprofit sector -- to lead this effort. We have the data systems expertise and the aligned missions to lead the project of defining shared outcome metrics. We're looking into having initial sessions on this topic at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

As the world starts holding nonprofits up to higher standards, we need a common language that describes those standards. It hasn't been written yet. Without it, we'll escape the limited, Form 990 assessments to something that might equally fail to reflect our best efforts and outcomes.

Social Networks for Market Research

2009-12-11T10:10:00.004-05:00

I just met with Brian Clark, the Program Manager for an organization called STRONG Fathers. STRONG Fathers' tagline aptly explains the organization, "Supporting men in Maine in their efforts to become skilled, active, and strong parents." I asked Brian to chat with me because I knew he had been using MySpace to reach his audience, and I was curious as to how that was going. During several online seminars I've conducted, there are always participants who quickly dismissed MySpace, as more and more people are moving towards more popular sites like Facebook. This dismal of using MySpace seemed to increase after the Causes application left nonprofit MySpace users high and dry, and only gave them notice a couple of days before (See Beth Kanter's post and Amy Sample Ward's post for more information on that).

With Causes ditching MySpace, and growth in the social network slowing down, many nonprofits seem hesitant to consider using it. Preliminary results of Idealware's Social Media Benefits Survey show that MySpace was the tool least likely to be used by respondents compared to the other tools we asked about (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, photo-sharing sites, video-sharing sites, and blogs). (Please note, analysis is not yet complete and the full report on findings will be released in early 2010). It is in this context that I asked Brian to discuss his MySpace experience.

Brian decided to have a MySpace page with the goal of increasing attendance at his live events. Based on demographic data available, MySpace seemed to be the appropriate place to go for his target audience. Although the organization reaches out broadly to all fathers, the emphasis is placed on younger dads (teens and early 20s) who may be struggling with the challenges of fatherhood. (A recent report from The Pew Research Center says that the median age of MySpace users is 26, while the median age of Facebook users has increased to 33).

While MySpace hasn't yet proven to work for Brian's intended goal, it has worked surprisingly well for understanding his audience better.

"I intellectually understood the importance of listening and understanding our audience, but I completely underestimated the value that MySpace could bring in this regard," Brian explained.

This is not the listening that we often hear in the nonprofit world (as in, listen to what people are already saying about your organization and your issue before jumping into the conversation), this is listening in the market research sense. Through his audience's MySpace profiles, updates, and conversations, Brian has been able to much better understand the needs of his group, and can therefore offer up more relevant and effective services and create relationships different to those on Facebook and Twitter.

For example, Brian connected with a soon-to-be father who is in highschool, started a conversation, and recruited that student to reach out to other student Dads to figure out how STRONG Fathers could best meet their needs - all through MySpace.

I asked Brian why he thought MySpace was a better venue for these types of conversations and introductions than Facebook and he had two pretty compelling reasons.

1. It is easier to search for a narrow audience on MySpace than Facebook. Brian showed me how he can search within a certain radius of a zipcode, for men ages 18-24, who list "Proud Parent" under their family status. This means he can better-target the group he is listening to, which is important when you have limited time and resources.

2. The people he connects with on MySpace have less of a filter than the people he has been able to connect with on Facebook. Brian relayed stories of how the men he is reaching out to speak openly (often via status updates) about things such as court appearances, fights with the mother, and the like. He explains that there is a struggle for practically all fathers between how they view, and portray, themselves as "guys" and how they want to be good fathers. MySpace has proven to be a window into that disconnect.

All in all I left our morning coffee meeting with the idea that we are (read: "I am") missing a great opportunity: using social networks for market research. Brian has redefined the way he interacts with this portion his audience because he was able to learn more about them. We should all learn from his experience. I know some larger organizations have created networks specifically for market research (Groundswell gives some good examples), but a lot of nonprofits probably don't have the resources for that. So instead, why don't we take 15 minutes each day to really listen. Not about what our audience is saying about us or our issue, but what they are letting us know about themselves, their lives, and what is most important to them. I think I just found my News Years resolution!

The Cults That Get Things Done

2009-12-07T10:27:00.001-05:00

Poster by Joshua Rothaas / CC BY 2.0

Here at Idealware, an organization that's all about nonprofit-focused software, we understand that the success or failure of a software project often has far more to do with the implementation than the application. So, in addition to discussing software, we talk a lot about project management. To many of us, it seems like the only thing worse than devoting our scant resources to the task of building and maintaining a complex project plan is living with the result of a project that wasn't planned. While I'm a big a fan as the next guy of PMP-certified, MS Project Ninja masters, and will argue that you need one if your project is to build a new campus or a bridge, I think there are alternate methodologies that can cover us as we roll out our CRMs and web sites, even though I know that these projects that will fail expensively without proper oversight.

The traditional project planning method starts with a Project Manager, who plays a role that fluctuates between implementation guru, data entry clerk and your nagging Mom when you're late for school. The PM, as we'll call her or him, gathers all of the projected dates, people, budget, and materials, then builds the house of cards that we call the plan. The plan will detail how the HR Director will spend 15% of her time on a series of scheduled tasks that, if they slip, will impact the Marketing Coordinator and the Database Manager's tasks and timelines. So the PM has to be able to quickly, intelligently, rewrite the plan when the HR Director is pulled away for a personnel matter, skewering those assumptions.

My take is that this methodology doesn't work in environments like ours, where reduced overhead, high turnover and unanticipated priorities are the norm. We need a less granular methodology; one that will bend easily with our flexible work conditions. Mind you, when you give up the detailed plan, you give up the certainty that every "i" will be dotted, every "t" crossed, and every outcome accomplished on schedule. But it's possible to still keep sight of the important things while sacrificing some of the structural integrity.

First, keep what is critical: clear goals, communication, engagement and feedback. The biggest risk in any project no matter how well planned, is that you'll end up with something that has little relation to what you were trying to get. You need clearly understood goals, shared by all internal and external parties. Each step taken must factor in those goals and be made in light of them. All parties who have a stake in the project should have a role and a voice in the plan, from the CEO to the data entry clerk. And everyone's opinion matters.

Read up on agile project management, a collaborative approach that is more focused on the outcomes than the steps and timeline to get there. Offload the project management by focusing on expectation management. The clearer the participants are about their roles and accountability for their contributions, the less they need to be managed. Take a look at the Cult of Done (their manifesto is at the top of this article). Sound insane? Maybe. More insane than spending thousands of dollars and hours on an over-planned project that never yields results? For some perspective, read The Mythical Man Month (or, at least, this Wikipedia article on it), a book that clearly illustrates how the best laid plans can go horribly wrong.

Finally, my advocacy for less stringent forms of project management should not be read as permission to do it haphazardly. Engagement in and attention to the project can't be minimized. I'm suggesting that we can take a more creative, less traditional approach in environments where the traditional approach might be a bad fit, and for projects that don't require it. There are a lot of judgment calls involved, and the real challenge, as always, is keeping your eye on the goals and the team accountable for delivering them.

Help your local museum, food pantry, and the environment all at once

2009-12-03T10:34:00.002-05:00

We've just launched a campaign I'm really excited about: The Idealware Research Fund.

Almost all nonprofits struggle to keep up effectively with new software tools and tactics. Many have no one with technology experience on staff, and no one to ask for reliable software information. That's where Idealware comes in!

By helping us to seed the Idealware Research Fund, you can provide them with information about the software choices that can transform their work—increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of vast numbers of nonprofits working on critical issues, from decreasing illiteracy rates, helping abused animals, fighting global warming, and so much more.

Help us raise $15,000 by Dec 31 by making a tax-deductible gift to the Idealware Research Fund today.

The Idealware Research Fund will give us the flexibility to create the new, high-quality research that will most help nonprofits. By supporting the Fund, you will allow us to build on our base of more than four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software research to provide the new resources that nonprofits need most, like on social media tools, mobile text messaging, constituent databases, and more.

Please help provide nonprofits the software information they need to effectively tackle their missions by making a gift to the Idealware Research Fund.

And, most importantly, thank you for your continued support of Idealware!

Wave Impressions

2009-11-30T10:33:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, I blogged a bit about Google Wave, and how it might live up to the hype of being the successor to email. Now that I've had a month or so to play with it, I wanted to share my initial reactions. Short story: Google Wave is an odd duck, that takes getting used to. As it is today, it is not that revolutionary -- in fact, it's kind of redundant. The jury is still out.

If you haven't gotten a Wave invite and want to try it, now is the time to query your Twitter and Facebook friends, because invites are being offered and we've passed the initial, competitive "gimme" stage. They should be easier to find if you speak up. And, once you get there (or if you are there and don't know what to do), there are some excellent ways to start learning and playing, which I'll discuss below.

Awkwardness

To put Wave in perspective, I clearly remember my first exposure to email. I bought my first computer in 1987: a Compaq "portable". The thing weighed about 60 pounds, sported a tiny green on black screen, and had two 5 and 1/4 inch floppy drives for applications and storage). Along with the PC, I got a 1200 BPS modem, which allowed me o dial up local bulletin boards. And, as I poked around, I discovered the 1987 version of email: the line editor.

On those early BBSes, emails were sent by typing one line (80 characters, max) of text and hitting "enter". Once "enter" was pressed, that line was sent to the BBS. No correcting typos, no rewriting the sentence. It was a lot like early typewriters, before they added the ability to strike out previously submitted text.

But, regardless of the primitive editing capabilities, email was a revelation. It was a new medium; a form of communication that, while far more awkward than telephone communications, was much more immediate than postal mail. And it wasn't long before more sophisticated interfaces and editors made their way to the bulletin boards.

Google Wave is also, at this point, awkward. To use it, you have to be somewhat self-confident right from the start, as others are potentially watching every letter that you type. And while it's clear that the ability to co-edit and converse about a document in the same place is powerful, it's messy. Even if you get over the sprawling nature of the conversations, which are only minimally better than what you would get with ten to twenty-five people all conversing in one Word document, the lack of navigational tools within each wave is a real weakness.

Redundant?

I'm particularly aware of these faults because I just installed and began using Confluence, a sophisticated, enterprise Wiki (free for nonprofits) at my organization. While we've been told that Wave is the successor to email, Google Docs and, possibly, Sharepoint, I have to say that Confluence does pretty much all of those things and is far more capable. All wikis, at their heart, offer collaborative editing, but the good ones also allow for conversations, plug-ins and automation, just as Google Wave promises. But with a wiki, the canvas is large enough and the tools are there to organize and manage the work and conversation. With Wave, it's awfully cramped, and somewhat primitive in comparison.

Too early to tell?

Of course, we're looking at a preview. The two things that possibly differentiate Wave from a solid wiki are the "inbox" metaphor and the automation capabilities. Waves can come to you, like email, and anyone who has tried to move a group from an email list to a web forum knows how powerful that can be. And Wave's real potential is in how the "bots", server-side components that can interact with the people communicating and collaborating, will integrate the development and conversation with existing data sources. It's still hard to see all of that in this nascent stage. Until then, it's a bit chicken and egg.

Wave starting points

There are lots of good Wave resources popping up, but the best, hands down, is Gina Trapini's Complete Guide, available online for free and in book form soon. Gina's blog is a must read for people who find the types of things I write about interesting.

Once you're on wave, you'll want to find Waves to join, and exactly how you do that is anything but obvious. the trick is to search for a term "such as "nonprofit" or "fundraising" and add the phrase "with:public". A good nonprofit wave to start with is titled, appropriately, "The Nonprofit Technology Wave".

If you haven't gotten a Wave invite and want to, now is the time to query your Twitter and Facebook friends, because invites are being offered and we've passed the initial "gimme" stage. In fact, I have ten or more to share (I'm peterscampbell on most social networks and at Google's email service).

Software as a Service vs Infrastructure as a Service

2009-11-25T07:10:00.005-05:00

In an earlier post, I talked about two challenges which fuel cloud computing: the capital and support costs of network infrastructures and desktop anarchy. I want to pick up here where I left off, with more discussion of three cloud computing opportunities.

Software as a Service probably has the most familiarity. The wispy tendrils of Software as a Service reached into my Thanksgiving this year. Usually, we don’t host, and this year we will. To reduce operational costs, frustrated with the support costs involved with email, I put the family invite list, arrival and departure logistics and food contributions up on doodle.com.

It’s off my desktop and phone system into their system--simple, collaborative, low cost, centrally maintained, reliably backed-up, eminently scalable (hopefully won’t need that for our thanksgiving), platform independent, secure (enough for this), environmentally sustainable (carbon offsets for how much we may eat).

Doodle is a light weight alternative to meetingwizard.com or more elaborate reservation systems, and though its light-weightedness caused some other problems, it helped.

Meanwhile, Linda tapped into foodie SaaS epicurious.com to supplement the menu planning. Yes, we also have the 3-ring binders of family recipes and a shelf of cookbooks. Epicurious (OK, I prefer allrecipes.com) brings a world of collaboration, search, on-demand, pay as you go to the meal planning type of project. Print magazine co-sponsor Gourmet magazine is about to close its doors, but no doubt SaaS Epicurious will continue.

Holiday photo-sharing? Facebook, Flickr, Google web albums and not bring-your-own laptop, flash drive or photo album.

At the consumer level, Google has championed this approach more than any other company. Google entices millions to leave the desktop behind and do our daily work with on Gmail, Google Documents, Calendar, YouTube, Maps, Groups and more. Yahoo and others add to the offerings.

Once you get comfortable, you may find yourself surrounding yourself with other services. You may well use a hosted pay as you go service like Basecamp, Zoho or Central Desktop to mange projects. You may use Mozy, Carbonite, Dropbox or other web based services for back-up. You may use webex, adobe connect, or logmein to provide hosted screen sharing or web conferencing services.

Going back ten years, at the corporate level, Salesforce championed the software as a service approach to managing contacts, leads, business relationships, and all things related to the sales process (and now support and other business functions). Instead of network installing Act, Goldmine, Microsoft stuff at the low end or Siebel and other systems at the high end, they invited customers to use their web service. Pay according to what you need month-to-month, and let them take care of security, back-up, support, upgrades and the like.

The SF foundation charitable donation and “starter pack” has extended Salesforce’s appeal to nonprofits as well.

As I suggested earlier, these types of services typically may get justified on cost basis. Specifically, they transform long term capital and human resources costs into operating expenses. Today’s recession favors this calculation. Instead of figuring out the total cost of ownership of a new server, new software, support costs, licensing, periodic version updates, desktop upgrades, back-up, security and other ancillary utility purchases, SaaS lets organizational planners focus on one thing—the monthly usage cost. They also favor collaborative approaches to getting things done that are not as easy or natural on traditional network installed systems.

As critical applications move up to the cloud, the desktop does not matter very much. All that matters is having a standard browser.

Yet, to get to those web software as a services, you still have you to boot up that familiar personal computer and land on your personal desktop. Google hopes to go further, turning its Chrome browser into an entire web-facing operating system. More about that another time.

For now, for most of us, the desktop still matters a lot. Most of us still do our daily work there—word processing, maybe email, maybe other stuff. It matters for installed donor and contact management systems, network accounting software, critical long time installed databases whether Microsoft Access or some giant client server application. It matters when you want to print, scan, archive, share files, and avoid malware all the while. When these issues come up, the costs in time and support in monitoring and managing desktops come into play.

IT as a service (or Infrastructure as a Service) looks at things from this end. If the premise of SAAS is to make the desktop matter less, with IT as a Service, the idea is to tame it.

IT as a service has levels and gradations. It often begins with combining and rationalizing network servers using virtualization. VMWare and other companies have popularized the idea of running mutual virtual machines on the same hardware. Many businesses and organizations today have more than one server. They may have a basic server for sharing files and printing. Another for Exchange email management. Another for their fund-raising software or other special applications. Virtualizing servers takes advantage of increased computing power to reduce the total number of servers, and focus on keeping those few up and running well.

A related trend is to centralize and standardize the user experience. You start up your machine and then connect via Microsoft Terminal Services or Citrix into central server which then gives you a new, fresh, controlled desktop. For larger companies, creating that standardized network infrastructure makes it easier to then have IT infrastructure specialists manage everything from afar using elaborate diagnostic tools such as Kasaya.

The higher level next step is to move the whole infrastructure up to the web. If everything is centralized, virtualized, standardized, why not seek even higher efficiencies of scales by running the whole operation on someone else’s servers, where bunches of other organizations also are getting managed at the same time in the same place.

Ask you local network support organization if they have this kind of offering and compare prices with what you are doing and planning now. I recently got a major taste of this approach at a day-long business summit run by Zumasys, a West Coast infrastructure company which has helped some of our larger clients, and I see other partners heading in this direction.

Of course, like SaaS, IT as a Service come at a cost. Both point in the direction of flexibly supporting organizational expansion, especially in a recessionary era, reducing support costs, and reducing user woes and problems, and also reducing the cost of a desktop computer.

The goal is usually not to reduce on-site IT staff, but to keep that staff from burning out and to keep it focused on strategic support and innovation. By commodifying basic support issues, IT staff can focus on what is critical and distinctive about what you need and do.

Next up, the newer “aaS,” Platform as a Service.

Last chance to take our social media survey: Help us better understand social media use

2009-11-24T13:42:00.004-05:00

Thank you to the over 445 people who have already taken our Social Media survey.

If you are a nonprofit staff member at an organization using social media and haven't taken the survey yet, please do so today. We will taking the survey down tomorrow (Wednesday, November 25th) at 3:00 pm EST.

Idealware has embarked on an intense, year-long social media research initiative which will ultimately result in a Social Media Decision Making Guide for Nonprofits.

As one of the first steps, we are conducting a survey of nonprofit staff to help us understand which social media channels work best for accomplishing what goals.

Please take the survey now.

Thanks for your help!

Twitiquette

2009-11-23T11:06:00.001-05:00

Social networks provide nonprofits with great opportunities to raise awareness, just as they offer individuals more opportunities to be diagnosed with information overload syndrome. To my mind, the value of tools like Twitter and Facebook are not only that they increase my ability to communicate with people, but also that they replace communication models that are less efficient. Prior to social networks, we had Email, phones, Fax and Instant Messaging (IM). Each of these were ideal for one to one communication, and suitable for group messaging, but poor at broadcasting. With Twitter and Facebook, we have broader recipient bases for our messaging. Accordingly, there's also an assumption that we are casual listeners. With so much information hitting those streams, it would be unrealistic to expect anyone to listen 24/7.

Geek and Poke cartoon by Oliver Widder

Twitter offers, in addition to the casual stream, a person-to-person option called direct messaging. This is handy when you want to share information with a twitter friend that you might not want to broadcast, such as your email address, or a link to a map to your house. You can only direct message someone who is following you -- otherwise, it would be far too easy to abuse. Direct messages have more more in common with old-fashioned IM and EMail than Twitter posts. You can't direct message multiple recipients, and most of us receive direct messages in our email inboxes and/or via SMS, to insure that we don't miss them.

So I took note when a friend on a popular forum posted that his organization was launching a big campaign, and he was looking for a tool that would let him send a direct messages to every one of his followers. This, to me, seems like a bad idea. While I follow a lot of people and organizations on Twitter, I subscribe by email to far fewer mailing lists, limiting that personal contact to the ones that I am most interested in and/or able to support. I follow about 250 organizations on Twitter; I have no care to receive all of their campaign emails. But i trust that, if they are doing something exciting or significant, I'll hear about it. My friends will post a link on Facebook. They'll also retweet it. The power of social media is -- or, at least, should be -- that the interesting and important information gets voted up, and highlighted, based on how it's valued by the recipients, not the sender.

Social networks differ primarily from email and fax in that they are socially-driven messaging. The priority of any particular message can be set by each persons community that they tune into. My friend thinks his campaign is the most important thing coming down the pike, and that he should be able to transcend the casual nature of Twitter conversation in order to let me know about it. And, of course, I think that every campaign that my org trumpets is more important than his. But I think that proper campaign etiquette and strategy is to blast information on the mediums that support that, where your constituents sign up to be individually alerted. If you want to spread the word on Twitter or Facebook, focus on the message, not the media, and let the community carry it for you, if they agree that it's worthy.

Social Media Survey: Help us better understand social media use

2009-11-18T09:23:00.001-05:00

Are you on staff at a nonprofit? Are you using any social media channels (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, video sites, blogs) - or even just starting to experiment with it? If so, please take our Social Media survey today.

Idealware has embarked on an intense, year-long social media research initiative which will ultimately result in a Social Media Decision Making Guide for Nonprofits.

As one of the first steps, we are conducting a survey of nonprofit staff to help us understand which social media channels work best for accomplishing what goals.

If you are using social media, whether you're just getting started or you have already successfully launched a campaign, please take just five minutes to fill out the survey, and share your experience.

Please take the survey now.

Thank you for your help!