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April 2012
How do you choose software for your nonprofit? With so many different types of software available, it’s difficult to even know what’s available, let alone what’s best for your organization’s particular needs. That’s why we created the Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits. This handy reference covers all the different types of software that might be useful to you—and we just updated it for 2012.
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January 2012
What if a percentage of the $150 billion spent annually in online shopping could be donated to nonprofits working to make the world a better place?That’s exactly the promise a growing number of web-based businesses are making—purchase something from an online retailer you find through their site, and they’ll send a percentage to the organization of your choice. Neither users nor their designated charities pay anything—the donations come from participating merchants, who pay the sites a commission for each online purchase referred through them.
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Laura S. Quinn and Kyle Henri Andrei,
July 2011
Petitions and pledges provide ways to effect change by letting people add their names to a particular cause to show the amount of support for it. They can also help your organization build a list of people interested in its causes. So how do you implement these measures?
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Laura S. Quinn and Kyle Andrei,
April 2011
Web analytics tools help you track your site’s statistics, which let you see how many people are looking at each page, what sites they came from, and other information to help develop a picture of who your audience is. But which web analytics tool should you use?
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December 2010
FULLY REVISED IN DECEMBER 2010! We've taken our popular 2009 report comparing four free and open source systems -- WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plone -- that can help you to build and manage a website, and completely updated it to the newest versions of the systems. We provide both a feature summary and detailed reviews, as well as a directory of consultants.
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October 2010
Regardless of your organization’s demographics, chances are good that a majority of your constituents use mobile phones. How can you reach out to them on their cell? We walk through the possibilities: texting, two-way communication, giving, pledging, websites, apps, and more.
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June 2010
Are your online communications working? How can you tell? In this article, we talk through four types of measures-- Views, Followers, Engagement, and Conversion-- that help you track your efforts to see if they're worthwhile.
Chances are, your organization has a website. Perhaps you also send out broadcast emails, or maintain a blog, Twitter or Facebook account. Is the effort you’re putting into online communications working? How can you tell?
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May 2010
What tools can help you collect donations via credit card through your existing website? In this adaptation and update of our 2005 report, we look at the considerations and the options for taking online donations.
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April 2010
Online grant application systems can be a timesaver for all involved—or they can cause grantseekers and grantmakers hours of unnecessary frustration. Streamlining Online Grant Applications: A Review of Vendors evaluates seven different vendors against a set of essential and gold standard features for online applications and reporting, to help grantmakers identify the best systems to support their grantmaking.
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June 2008
We asked nine nonprofit internet specialists to share some of the Web hosting providers that have worked well for them, and some tips for hosting everything from a basic website to a powerhouse web application. Fully verified and updated in June 2008.
