TechSoup is a nonprofit helping nonprofits and libraries get the technology resources they need to operate at their full potential.
Twitter- YouTube
- Flickr
- Facebook
- SlideShare
- TechSoup Blog
- Around the Web
- Contact
-
Tweets
- Our website will be offline May 31 - June 4 while we upgrade our servers. Here's what this means for you: http://t.co/UaFtOQTT
- Avert disaster by learning how to back up your data in the #cloud during our 5/31 webinar w/ @npcloud: http://t.co/tZzBcb3J #nptech
- @decodaliteracy @webjunction @bettinasays You've been quoted in my #Storify story "TechSoup for a Day: Crystal" http://t.co/Nd37cWXi
- @techsoup4libs @scatterbolt @ALAlibrary You've been quoted in my #Storify story "TechSoup for a Day: Crystal" http://t.co/Nd37cWXi
- @rightsizedview You've been quoted in my #Storify story "TechSoup for a Day: Crystal" http://t.co/Nd37cWXi
- @vickks @mjfrombuffalo You've been quoted in my #Storify story "TechSoup for a Day: Crystal" http://t.co/Nd37cWXi
- @ckhayek @TechForAllTexas @pewinternet You've been quoted in my #Storify story "TechSoup for a Day: Crystal" http://t.co/Nd37cWXi
- Yesterday's guest tweeter @NoCoLibrarian sparked a great discussion on #DigitalInclusion. Check out the @Storify: http://t.co/IAvMLfunMay 25, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Do you know how your #nonprofit or #library could start receiving @Microsoft software from @TechSoup? Watch this: http://t.co/zuKfIY2F
- You can find me @nocolibrarian - please get in touch if you want to keep on sharing - I'd love to hear your stories too!May 24, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I've had a great time tweeting for #techsoup today! Thanks for everyone who's been following, RTing, and sharing!May 24, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
-
Uploads
-
2012 NTC Days of Service
-
Wall
- Yesterday Crystal Schimpf took the helm of our @TechSoup twitter account and sparked a discussion about libraries and technology access. Check out the Storify to catch up on the conversation.
- Where does your library shine in tech? Share your success!
- Don't sacrifice those bullet points, tables, and special characters you love so much! Use Microsoft Citizenship SkyDrive for all your document storage and collaboration needs.
- Michael Sheldrick, keynote speaker from the Connecting Up Australia conference in May, talks about the importance of integrated communications for the The End of Polio campaign for Global Poverty Project in this Sky Social Business interview.
- A few Lytro test shots of TSG staff & contractors: Rik Panganiban Kristy Graves and Michael DeLong were at the office and found themselves in front of the new camera. Go to the Lytro site to zoom in and test the light field features.
- What's the big secret to using social media for successful events? Lean in and NetSquared Houston's Wesley Faulkner will tell you.
- TODAY at 11am PT - Our monthly series, NPLive, will be talking about nonprofits and gaming with guest experts from Games For Change, Global Kids, and Kidz Connect. Join us for this live, interactive event!
- Looking for ideas on how to engage your community ambassadors & evangalists? Check out the recap of today's chat on Twitter: part of a weekly tweet chat organized by our friends at NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network. (Today's chat was guest hosted by our own Community Manager, Michael DeLong!)
- TechSoup's own Jim Lynch to present expert testimony tomorrow (5/15) with the U.S. International Trade Commission! He'll speak about the growing network of refurbishers providing job training and low-cost computers to developing countries.
- How can Pinterest encourage corporate volunteerism? Causecast and NetSquared tell you all about it.
- The power of storytelling! Can the private sector take a cue from nonprofits?
- Join us tomorrow (5/10) for a free webinar with SAP and learn how to create effective reports for donors, funders, and other stakeholders.
-
Posts
- May 16, 12
Nonprofits Live is a monthly interactive talk show with guest experts from the field sharing insights, case studies and answering questions from organizations. In this episode on GAMES we share insights from Michelle Byrd from Games for Change, Ben Stokes at USC, Josephine Dorado and Barry Joseph who develop games in the nonprofit space. This event is hosted by Evonne Heyning, Interactive Producer for TechSoup. - Apr 27, 12
April 25, 2012 San Francisco Online Community Meetup presentation by Marc Siegel of Simraceway - Feb 13, 12
The first part of this three-part webinar series focuses on all the decisions you need to make before you start recording your video. You’ll learn how to tell your story in a way that touches your audience and moves it to action. This includes understanding the basics of good storytelling, translating that story into a script and/or production guide as well as where to find great auxiliary tools and resources to really make your story shine. Host: Rich Vazquez of Lights.Camera.Help. @drapetomaniac - Sep 29, 11
TSG’s co-CEO model profiled in national philanthropic magazine, reaching 13,000 subscribers. - Sep 22, 11
Evan Hamilton of UserVoice was a guest speaker at the TechSoup Online Community MeetUp in San Francisco. Here is his presentation where he discusses customer feedback. http://www.meetup.com/octribe/ - Sep 20, 11
What is your story, goals, audience look like? Take a look at your organization and how to share your social media stories for impact, outreach, fundraising, volunteer growth, advocacy and education in this worksheet (and slides) created by Evonne Heyning for TechSoup Global - Sep 20, 11
Social media planning, step by step questions to ask as a nonprofit organization embarking on a cause, campaign or org social media plan. - Jul 21, 11
Data Points to Success: Getting Started with a Database for Your Organization - Jun 23, 11
Rik Panganiban, community manager of the Nonprofit Commons - Jun 17, 11
Companion document for the presentation "Cloud Computing - The Opportunity and Challenge for European Foundations and their Grantees" - Jun 17, 11
Cloud Computing: The Opportunity and Challenge for European Foundations and their Grantees - May 26, 11
From the Nonprofits Live, The Future of Fundraising interactive event, brief presentation on StartSomeGood by Tom Dawkins.
-
Posts
- May 25, 12
Did you miss our spring SAP webinars, Explore, Report and Share Your Data Online and Creating Effective Reports with Crystal Reports 2011? Great news! You can now view both of these webinars on the TechSoup YouTube page.
In Explore, Report, and Share Your Data Online we hear from SAP's Saurabh Abhyankar about issues surrounding data and reporting. We also talk about possible solutions, culminating in a closer look at SAP's product, Business Objects BI OnDemand.
What is Business Objects BI OnDemand? It is a cloud-based business intelligence application which supports multiple data formats to help you understand how your organization is performing.
In Creating Effective Reports with Crystal Reports 2011, we focus on how SAP's Crystal Reports 2011 can provide effective reporting solutions for your organization.
Crystal Reports reporting software allows you to create interactive reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications. In this webinar, SAP's Jaclyn Churcher and Kenneth Li walk you through the ins and outs of Crystal Reports 2011, including a discussion of mapping and visualization functions.
Want more information on SAP? Check out their SAP analytics blog.
Also, don’t forget to check out the donated SAP products available to eligible organizations through TechSoup.
- May 25, 12
Since we launched our donation program in 2002, TechSoup has saved nonprofits and libraries in the United States and around the world over $3 billion dollars in IT expenses. The whole team here at TechSoup continues to work each day to help organizations like yours put more of your hard-earned dollars toward helping your communities.
None of this would be possible, however, without our donor partners. We started the TechSoup product donation program in 2002, with Microsoft, Cisco, Intuit, Symantec, and a few other partners making donations available to nonprofits and libraries. Today more than 50 partners offer product donations and discounts in 37 countries — and growing.
And, we’re always looking to add more partners, increase product availability, and add more products to our catalog. This fiscal year ten new donor partners have joined with TechSoup to make their product donations available to nonprofits and libraries.
The Donor Class of (TechSoup Fiscal Year) 2012
Efficient Elements
The Program: Efficient Elements makes up to 100 licenses of its Efficient Elements for presentations software available to organizations per fiscal year.
The Product: Efficient Elements for presentations is a plugin for PowerPoint that helps organizations build more effective presentations. This software features built-in wizards to help structure your presentation’s narrative and build libraries of standard graphics and slide elements (like logos and maps). Read how nonprofits and libraries are using the software.Headsets.com
The Program: Headsets.com offers up to twelve discounted Sennheiser OfficeRunner wireless headsets to organizations per fiscal year.
The Product: These headsets work with almost all office phones (VoIP and PBX). And they can be used for both telephone and PC connections. They feature a 400 foot range, 12-hour battery life, and 64-bit digital signal encryption that keeps calls private. Read how nonprofits and libraries are using this product.Pitney Bowes
The Program: Pitney Bowes helps organizations save time and energy by sending newsletters, bulletins, and other mailings with discounted postal rates and meters.
The Products: The DM100 lets you weigh and ship packages up to five pounds while the DM200 allows packages up to ten pounds. Also available soon: subscriptions to PBSmartPostage. This service lets anyone with web access print mailing labels or stamps with a bar code for tracking. Read how nonprofits and libraries and using these products.Dharma Merchant Services
The Program: Dharma Merchant Services lets organizations access discounted rates for processing credit and debit card payments and donations in-person or on a website.
The Product: Access discounted rates, payment terminals, check processing equipment, and card readers for mobile devices. Plus: as a B-Corp, Dharma will return 10 percent of the gross annual processing profits from your merchant account in the form of an annual donation to you. Read how nonprofits and libraries and using this product.Huddle
The Program: Huddle is a cloud-based collaboration and content management tool that helps up to 25 people inside and outside your office to work together.
The Product: Create and manage projects, assign tasks, share documents, and hold discussions — all on one secure online platform. Almost any file type — Word documents, PDFs, images, and even video — can be uploaded to Huddle’s workspaces. Then, anyone on your team can share, edit, or discuss it. Each account includes 10 GB of file storage space. Read how nonprofits and libraries and using this product.QuickBooks Made Easy
The Program: QuickBooks Made Easy helps organizations learn to correctly set up their books, enter transactions, and create nonprofit-specific reports with training CD-ROMs.
The Product: Each lesson is designed specifically for nonprofits and led by CPA Gregg Bossen, who’s been teaching QuickBooks for over ten years. These lessons will show beginners how QuickBooks works and help those already familiar get a better understanding of the software.Smartphones from Dell
The Program: Dell helps organizations stay connected with Venue Pro smartphones.
The Product: These 3G-enabled Windows Mobile phones let you access email and the Internet anywhere, take photos and video, and work on Microsoft Office documents in the palm of your hand. Plus: you can download free and low-cost apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace. Organizations can request up to 20 donated Dell Venue Pro phones within a fiscal year. Hear how Dell has helped fellow nonprofits and libraries.Mobile Beacon
The Program: Mobile Beacon lets organizations access broadband internet with donated 4G modems and wireless hotspots.
The Product: This offer provides nonprofits, schools, and libraries with a modem for connecting devices like computers, tablets, printers, or smartphones to Mobile Beacon's 4G Internet service. Organizations can choose one of four donated Mobile Beacon 4G devices.Acteva
The Program: Acteva offers cloud-based tools to let organizations streamline registration and payments for events, conferences, and classes.
The Product: An online interface to create a custom web page for your event that attendees can use to register and pay any fees. Acteva Express (good for small events) is available to organizations with budgets under $500,000, while Acteva Plus (good for medium-sized events) is available to organizations with budgets from $500,001 to $5 million.npVault
The Program: npVault cloud storage from npCloud helps protect your organization's systems and servers against disaster by backing up your critical data online.
The Product: Discounted rates from npVault plus a one-hour consultation with npCloud. The team will work with you to determine which of your files needs to be backed up. And they will configure, manage, and monitor your backups for you.Fiscal Year-End Reminder: Place Donation Requests Before June 30
Make sure your organization gets all of the hardware or software it needs from TechSoup before our fiscal year ends on June 30, 2012.
Why the rush? Most of TechSoup’s donation programs limit the number of requests an organization can place per fiscal year – our fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Don’t worry, you can request products again on July 1, but you don’t want to miss out on getting your fiscal year 2012 allotment.
- May 25, 12
You may have recently read about TechSoup’s partnership with the Network of Nonprofit Technology Solution Providers (NNTSP). One member of NNTSP, npCloud, is being featured heavily in our upcoming webinar on Thursday, May 31 at 11 a.m. Pacific time, Backup and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud. This webinar will cover disaster recovery solutions and products that can help you protect your organization's data.
Register today as space is limited.
According to npCloud, "For many nonprofit organizations, 'the cloud' can take the place of everything in their server closet."
During this webinar, we will hear from Sam Chenkin, Product Manager for npCloud. Sam will discuss cloud computing and disaster recovery basics, and will outline the different types of cloud storage and products designed to help you achieve your disaster recovery goals.
Sam will then focus specifically on what makes npCloud different, outlining the benefits of choosing their npVault product.
You can read more about npCloud, TechSoup, and the Network of Nonprofit Technology Solution Providers (NNTSP) in this online press release.
Need to access closed captioning for this event? Access instructions will be included in the confirmation email sent to you following registration.
- May 23, 12
This post originally appeared on the NetSquared blog, which is an initiative of TechSoup Global's, and was written by Causecast. Causecast helps connect nonprofits (for free) with businesses, volunteers, and corporate donations.
Lets face it; it’s hard to look away from Pinterest. The hottest new social media site has become a go-to source for the latest shopping tips, design advice, and funny dog pictures. Who wouldn’t want to sit there all day and stare?
As Pinterest fans are discovering through the growing legion of companies that are marketing and selling products via the site, Pinterest also has great commerce potential. Nordstrom, Real Simple, Fresh Direct, and even Major League Baseball, for example, have all developed active pages that encourage user interactivity.
But to take full advantage of Pinterest's possibilities, businesses should also be thinking about the site as a way to highlight their philanthropic endeavors and promote corporate volunteerism. In so doing, companies can increase employee participation in volunteer and giving programs and earn the goodwill of other Pinterest users and potential customers.How does Pinterest work as a tool for employee volunteer promotion?
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, images are key to Pinterest. This means that in order to successfully promote and encourage volunteering efforts, photos must be at the forefront of the initiative. Pinterest-interested businesses should thus encourage employees to take photos while they volunteer; use pictures in company handbooks to explain the company’s volunteering opportunities; and keep extra snapshots available so there is content in reserve to regularly update the Pinterest page.
Need more reasons to start "pinning" your corporate social responsibility initiatives? Here are four other ways that Pinterest can promote corporate volunteerism:
1. Motivation
Employees often just need a trigger to pick up a cause, and sometimes this motivation comes from seeing others engaged in positive work. That’s why showing good work in action - or the results of that good work - can easily inspire others to do likewise. And don’t forget the potential of food for thought pieces; just posting motivational quotes can encourage employees to start volunteering.
2. Support
Pinterest offers a compelling way to support those who are already volunteering. Say that one of your employees wants to raise funds for a particular nonprofit; why not post information about their mission on the company Pinterest page?
Sharing these sorts of visual updates could encourage company-wide support while inspiring others to start their own fundraisers. Combine that with a company match of some sort and you've got a great way to help your employee reach his or her goal as fast as possible.
3. Engagement
Gamification is a hot buzzword these days, and when this sort of competition is applied to corporate volunteer programs it can generate significant employee engagement. Through the use of solutions like Causecast's Employee Impact Platform, companies can develop entire volunteer campaigns around a competitive goal, like prizes for those who raise the most funds.
In this case, participants can use Pinterest as another tool to post updates about their progress and efforts. For instance, seeing Dan next to a photo of 100 canned foods may motivate Sue to bring in 110 the next day. With a prize that encourages participation, seeing the frontrunner in photos can go a long way towards firing up the competitive juices of other employees.
4. Interaction
With visuals featured so prominently, Pinterest can also be used as a way to interact with employees around volunteering. A picture speaks a thousand words, so posting a photo of an animal shelter set to close down and asking how co-workers can help could lead to active brainstorming. Once ideas get rolling, who knows what's possible? A charity drive may come together, or a Saturday for employee volunteering may form. But planting the seed can offer tremendous results, with little cost.
Besides the obvious goodwill generated, the final outcome of all of these ideas can be to create fantastic content for your company’s Pinterest page. And if Pinterest is used as a vehicle to promote your overall corporate volunteering efforts, these compelling photos and interactions can bode well for your company's employee engagement levels.
So the next time you plan a company volunteer outing, just remember to “Pin it.”
- May 22, 12
Online fundraising has become a popular method for increasing revenue and acquire new donors.
While it does not yet amount to the bulk of fundraising for most nonprofits, online giving grew by 13 percent from 2010 to 2011.
The only vertical experiencing a decline from 2010 to 2011 was International Affairs organizations. According to Blackbaud's 2011 Online Giving Report, online earnings dropped by 55 percent; but that was likely due to the increase in donations due to the Haiti earthquake in January 2010.
Despite the large drop for International Affairs organizations, since 2009 nonprofits in all verticals have seen double-digit growth with International Affairs organizations leading the way, realizing 75 percent growth.
Looking to help your organization get better at raising money online? First Download the 2011 Online Giving Report, then implement these seven tips that will help you improve your online fundraising efforts.
1. Look at Web Traffic
Start by scrutinizing your web traffic. How many people visit your organization’s website each month? Do they pop up just once, or are they frequent visitors? Are they visiting your key online fundraising pages?
Once you start to learn more about your web traffic you can make intelligent decisions about how to optimize your website to achieve the best online fundraising results.
2. Pay Attention to Referrals
Where do your visitors come from? Search engines? Social media sites? Partner websites?
You should be getting roughly 40 percent of your online traffic from search engines, so plug your organization’s name, key event, or fundraising program into a search engine and observe where your site falls on the list of results. If it's not first, improve your website promotion, and educate yourself about making the site easier for potential donors to find.
3. Make the Ask
Make sure you have implemented a specific online "ask." The ask should be accompanied by a precise message tailored to the demographic you are targeting. This allows your organization to create and continue strong relationships with its donors.
4. Know Your Audience
While you might find your website easy to navigate, it might not be so simple for website visitors who don't know much about you. Have friends or peers who aren't familiar with your site take a look at it, and explore their feedback. Remember, audience analysis should be a key part of your online strategy.
Make it your goal to put the needs of potential donors’ first, and discuss with colleagues what to change so that the most pertinent information is easily accessible. Return visits and referrals are more likely if a donor can effortlessly steer through your organization’s site, understand your mission, and know how their money will be used.
5. Keep Messaging and Branding Unified
It's also important to make all your online communication uniform, streamlining the donor's experience and making a return or referral more likely. Images and messages should complement each other, and organizations should personalize any literature - email, website, and so on - to display ownership and stay on-message.
When a donor receives online communications that are jumbled or inconsistent with past communication, it creates confusion and decreases the likelihood of repeated donations.
6. Make the RIGHT Ask
Do not get too comfortable with your online ask, even when reeling in large donations. Analyze what you request of your donors. Is your ask always the average of your total online fundraising revenue? Does your ask vary with each donor, and does it adjust based on the donor’s giving history?
Being smarter about your ask, if executed properly, can help you receive more.
7. Follow Up Relentlessly
After receiving a donation, make sure to follow up with the donor. Update them with your organization’s progress and show them how their gift has made a difference. Engaging donors with a look at how they helped your organization make a difference in the world will encourage conversation and future donations.
For more information, download Blackbaud’s free 2011 Online Giving Report.
- May 22, 12
Patrick Callihan is the executive director at both NPower Pennsylvania and npCloud.org, two charitable organizations that provide technology and cloud services to nonprofits.
First, if you have not been exposed to Microsoft’s Office 365 product or to their SharePoint solution, let me take just a moment to provide some background.
What Are Office 365 and SharePoint?
Office 365 is a relatively new offering from Microsoft. They have taken the most widely used office and collaboration tools and placed them in the cloud. This includes email, shared calendaring, the Office suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote), file sharing, and web conferencing. All of these applications are hosted with no servers on your site.
Some of the plans that you can choose also include SharePoint. SharePoint is a powerful alternative to traditional shared folders. It also includes collaboration and project management tools to help your organization work efficiently, effectively, and remotely. There is a hosted or cloud version of SharePoint and a locally-installed server version of SharePoint. For the purposes of this piece, we'll talk about the cloud option.
(Editor's Note: Eligible nonprofits and libraries can request donated locally-instlled SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition and user CALs through TechSoup, but know that the on-site setup and maintenance may require IT staff or hired tech consultants.)
Cloud Hosted Calendars, Email, and Files
Now that you have some background, let’s get geeky for a minute. Most of the smaller nonprofits we work with have an average of 80 gigabytes of data in shared folders. These shared folders are typically hosted on a server in their office along side email and shared calendars (Microsoft Exchange).
We have been advocating for nonprofits to move to Office 365 for email and shared calendars but have been somewhat hesitant about moving their shared files to SharePoint. SharePoint has been too expensive for most organizations to use as a primary shared file solution.
Email, on the other hand, has been inexpensive — for a couple of dollars a month per mailbox, a small nonprofit will never have to worry about their email again. That is a pretty powerful statement.
Disruptive Changes in Cloud Storage Pricing
We run our nonprofit on Office 365 and I sleep better at night knowing our server will not crash, we are backed up, and we have access from anywhere at any time from any device. On the other hand, SharePoint storage was prohibitively expensive. At $2.50 a month most of our nonprofits would need to pay $200 per month to replace their file server.
That just changed. Microsoft dropped the price on SharePoint cloud storage to $.20 per gigabyte. To say that is significant would be an understatement. Now that same shared folder costs about $16 a month to manage on SharePoint. Just like email, it is a better platform than most small nonprofits would ever be able to afford with a server onsite.
This technology is disruptive. It changes everything – for the better. It means that small nonprofits should not invest in servers for email and share folders. Servers cost thousands of dollars to purchase, install, and maintain. For most nonprofits their server is also the basis for a single point of failure model.
Because Microsoft deeply discounts their Office 365 services to nonprofits, the value proposition is too powerful to ignore. For a few dollars a month a nonprofit can host their email in Microsoft data centers and take the worry and cost of maintenance and crashes off the table.
Before upgrading your server or upgrading your Exchange software, take a look at Microsoft Office 365. One of the services we offer at npCloud are migrated to Office 365. We hope you consider us when making the move, but at the very least consider the technology.
Now, get back to saving the world.
Additional Resources
- May 21, 12
Every sector surveyed in our 2011 Online Fundraising Report experienced double-digit growth since 2009, including roughly 13 percent* in the past year.Amazing!
Along with strong growth in online fundraising we found that online donors give significant amounts. The median online gift among donations of $1,000 or more was $1,200, and forty-three percent of 2011 donations were between $1,000 and $5,000.
The largest online gift received in 2011 was $260,000 – more than two-and-a-half times 2010′s largest gift.
You’d be silly not to spend time focusing on improving your organization's online fundraising program knowing that the upside is so incredible. With that in mind, here are four online fundraising tactics that every nonprofit should have in place.
Retention, Retention, Retention
Most people who do online fundraising are looking to both acquire new donors and keep those donors giving on a regular basis.
However, according to our research, many organizations don’t have a well-developed retention strategy in place to ensure that first-time donors turn into repeated givers.
Since 2010 was an abnormal year for online giving - due to the wave of offerings for Haiti’s earthquake relief - many organizations received a gift that year, but never heard back from the donor. We found that organizations enforcing a retention strategy were able to keep 15 percent of their new Haiti-related donors the following year.
A retention plan will become even more important in coming years, as online giving becomes more popular. With a retention plan in place, organizations can count on more past donors continuing their support.
Pro Tip: Keep donors – both scarce and consistent – up-to-date with information on how their money is being used. Show progress, successes, and new areas of focus. And do it all very shortly after they give their initial online donation.
Don't Count on End-of-Year Kindness Alone
Most online giving occurs towards the end of the year with 20 percent happening in the month of December alone.
Whether December is the most popular month because of holidays or end-of-year joy, it does not have to be an organization’s only month with a spike in monetary gifts.
Educational organizations enjoy an online donation spike at the end of the academic school year in June, while healthcare organizations saw their spikes during fundraising events in April and September.
Pro Tip: Find a month during the year (not in Q4) – perhaps at the end of an annual year-long campaign, or during company events – where you can reliably increase online gifts. Start building this into your overall fundraising plan to ensure it gets the focus and attention it needs.
Learn from the Best!
Everyone wants to be better.
The simplest way to improve your online fundraising results is to imitate nonprofits that are successfully raising money online. What are their strengths? Where are they focusing? Can you use similar concepts? Adopt characteristics that work well for them and watch your online fundraising take off.
It’s also helpful look at organizations that are less successful than yours, and learn from their mistakes.
Pro Tip: Go check out http://www.charitywater.org … watch them. Learn from them. Imitate them.
Check out the report for an equation to find out where your organization stands compared to others.
Use Your Website
Organizations, depending on their size, should consider analyzing their website traffic.
An easy-to-navigate site featuring useful information is more accessible, and therefore more appealing, to potential donors. Take a look at the areas on you site that get the most traffic and ask your-self three things:
- Is it simple for a website visitor to understand what my nonprofit does to make a difference in the world?
- Is it easy for a website visitor to find ways to support my nonprofit's work?
- Can a website visitor quickly take action once they’ve decided to?
Larger organizations in particular should examine what they ask of each donor. Is your requested donation similar to your average online gift? Is it consistent with what donors have given in the past?
Pro Tip: Analyze past donations to look for how you might be able to strategically increase your online ask to receive more value per gift, or decrease it to receive more frequent gifts, depending on your needs.
Online giving and fundraising are key strategies for any nonprofit organization looking to bulk up its total annual revenue stream, and assessing and improving your organization’s current methods can help you expand growth significantly in the coming years.
For more information, download Blackbaud’s free 2011 Online Giving Report.
- May 21, 12
Are you responsible for your nonprofit's event management? It's an undertaking with a lot of pressure riding on the project's success. Here are a few steps to help manage your time.
1. Figure Out Your Event's "Must Haves"
The basics change from event to event but are critical to the process. If you know the following answers, you're on the right path.
- Where will the event be held?
- When will the event take place?
- What are the goals of the event?
- Why should people attend? (Free food? Open bar? Speaker?)
- Who is the target audience?
- How will you reach the audience?
Now the focus turns to logistics.
2. Reach Out to Your Audience — Yesterday
Your event is competing for your community's attention. The best advice is to get your event on their radar first, with juicy "carrots" to catch their eye! Depending on your audience, you need to advertise in multiple ways. People need to see something seven times before it registers. Advertisements must answer the question "why?" Cater your incentives to your audience to drive attendance.
Do not waste funds on a webmaster to create an event page or a catalog. Having your event registration solution based in the cloud saves you time and energy, allowing you to access your information anytime, anywhere.
Online event registration and management platforms, like Acteva, allow you to create your own landing pages using intuitive step-by-step wizards. The same goes for your email marketing campaign.
You can distribute invites to your email list, set reminders, and forget it. Wizards assist you with every step, guaranteeing that you maximize your event options. You can also manage promotion codes and let attendees invite friends and share on social media. Having a wait list helps to achieve 100 percent attendance.
Attendees can buy and print their tickets plus manage their registration information … from home. Event payment becomes easy if you accept credit card payments and use your own merchant account for instant access to funds. You and your attendees receive email payment confirmation simultaneously.
3. Fundraising Strategies
Once people are registering, the focus shifts to fundraising. Developing corporate sponsorships helps, especially if they donate to the event. Auctions are a great fundraising strategy; almost 300,000 fundraising auctions are hosted yearly, raising about $14.6 billion (according to the National Auctioneers Association).
4. Manage Check-in and On-Site Registration
Events have stragglers who want to register on-site. Skip the paper and register them on a laptop, instantly accessing their information. The print manager can design tickets or name badges with a barcode. You can scan attendees in, minimizing lines. Don't rent lead retrieval devices. Barcodes can pull the registrant's details up on your smartphone by scanning, or you can access it online.
5. Analyze Your Event
Track the event before, during, and after. Run a template or create custom reports to analyze the results. Follow up, send unique thank-you notes, or request feedback to improve your next event.
- May 18, 12
Over the past months, TechSoup has been answering the call from the community to provide short, video tutorials on topics of interest to nonprofits and libraries. Some of these videos have included tutorials on the eligibility and registration process, TechSoup's eligibility quiz, and updates to the Microsoft Software Donation Program.
We are pleased to announce that we have added one more video tutorial to our ever-growing collection: How to Get Started with the Microsoft VLSC.
In How to Get Started with the Microsoft VLSC, we show you how to get started with your Microsoft software donation request through TechSoup. Topics covered include taking the first steps toward accessing the Volume Licensing Service Center, what you may need to do before retrieving your donation, and signing up for a Windows Live ID.
Want more information about using the Microsoft VLSC? Check out Microsoft's tutorials on the Microsoft Volume Licensing site.
Have ideas or requests for future videos? Feel free to email me at khunt@techsoupglobal.org.
- May 18, 12
Want to access your files wherever you are, without sacrificing the Microsoft features and formatting you use every day?
Then check out what Microsoft’s cloud-based storage and collaboration solution, SkyDrive, can do for your organization.
Free Cloud Storage
Microsoft SkyDrive offers 7 GBs of secure free storage, and all you need is a Windows Live ID to get started. If you need more storage, Microsoft offers paid storage plans starting at just $10 a year.
Integration with Microsoft Office
Free storage is always nice, and SkyDrive offers more free storage than competing products like Dropbox and Google Drive. But what really sets SkyDrive apart is its deep integration with other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office (available through TechSoup donations).
You can store anything you want in SkyDrive, but it really shines when you're working with Microsoft Office files:
- When you sign up for SkyDrive, you also get access to Office Web Apps, Microsoft’s free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Combined with SkyDrive, Office Web Apps allow you to create, edit, and store Microsoft Office files using just a web browser.
- If you prefer to work with your regular desktop version of Microsoft Office, you can also open and edit files from a SkyDrive folder on your computer, just the same way you would any other Office file. The only difference is that when you save, you’re saving to SkyDrive instead of onto your computer.
This means you can create, edit, and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files using a variety of devices, without sacrificing the Microsoft Office formatting or features you’ve come to rely on.
Collaboration and Sharing
SkyDrive offers a variety of easy sharing and collaboration options. No more emailing documents back and forth if you’re working with a group!
On Your Desktop and On-the-Go
Whether you’re a Mac or a PC, prefer IE or Chrome, have an Android phone or an iPad: SkyDrive supports them all. This means you can access your SkyDrive files from just about anywhere.
- On the desktop: When you install SkyDrive on your PC or Mac, a SkyDrive folder is created on your computer. This means you can access, update, and organize your cloud-based SkyDrive files right from Windows Explorer or Finder.
- With a mobile app: Access files using the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone or iOS. If you’re using a Windows phone (including the Dell phones available through TechSoup donations), you can also edit SkyDrive files right on your Windows phone with Office Mobile.
- Via a browser: SkyDrive is also compatible with most mobile and desktop browsers including Safari, Chrome, and (of course) Internet Explorer.
I'm just one user, but I use a PC in the office and a Mac at home, so I benefit from both SkyDrive's cross-platform availability and its deep integration with Microsoft Office. Once a file is saved to SkyDrive, I can update it from my office PC or my personal Mac (and read it via a smartphone or a tablet). Even better, I can edit Microsoft Office files via my Mac, with no loss of formatting or features, even though I don't have Microsoft Office installed at home.
What do you think SkyDrive could do for your organization?
Learn More
- See how SkyDrive compares to other cloud services
- Get to know the Dell phone
- Reduce travel and Go Green with these online collaboration tips
Photo: theaucitron
- May 17, 12
If you read our recent blog post Does Microsoft Office SmartArt make you smarter?, you are in for a treat. On Thursday, May 24 at 11 a.m. Pacific, we will be holding a live webinar that will be covering SmartArt, Creating Better Presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint.
Register today as space is limited.
During this free webinar, we will hear from TechSoup's Elliot Harmon and Microsoft’s Doug Thomas on ways to enhance the effectiveness of your presentations. First, we will talk about improving the visual aspects of your presentation through tools such as SmartArt. We will then discuss PowerPoint's broadcast function, which allows you to virtually share your presentation with clients or colleagues throughout the world.
Also included in this webinar will be a discussion of Microsoft Web Apps, PowerPoint resources, and information on the TechSoup Microsoft Software Donation Program.
This webinar is appropriate for nonprofits or libraries interested in creating enhanced PowerPoint presentations.
Stay tuned for announcements of other webinars in our Microsoft Tips and Tricks series!
- May 17, 12
Beginning at 6 p.m. (Pacific time) on Thursday, May 31, TechSoup.org will be unavailable while we upgrade our servers. We expect TechSoup.org to be back online and fully functional by Monday morning, June 4.
During this time, TechSoup’s product donation programs and learning resources, community forums, and the TechSoup blog will all be unavailable. Also, users will not be able to access their account or donation request history information. Rest assured, this information will be unaffected by what we’re doing.
TechSoup’s Client Services will unfortunately be unable to address questions or concerns from our members during this time, as they rely on the same systems that we’ll be upgrading. For any pressing matters, please contact Client Services via email at customerservice@techsoup.org, and your question will be addressed as early as possible the following week.
Thank you for your patience. In the meantime, you can keep up with the latest products, content, and community happenings at TechSoup by following us on Twitter and Facebook.
- May 16, 12
From time to time, we at TechSoup highlight webinars from our webinar donor partners and former presenters. Check out the following free webinars from ReadyTalk and the My PC Series!
From ReadyTalk
LinkedIn – Enabling Nonprofits to Engage and What They Need to Succeed!
Thursday, May 17 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern timeYou may use LinkedIn for reaching constituents one-on-one or in group settings but are you familiar with the power of LinkedIn for recruiting nonprofit employees? Approximately 75 percent of nonprofits* have no formal budget for recruitment – that’s where the power of social recruiting can help you gain an edge on finding the best people for the job.
As a member of the non-profit community, I thought you might want to join us for a webinar, LinkedIn - Enabling Nonprofits to Engage & What They Need to Succeed!, on May 17 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Bryan Breckenridge, Head of LinkedIn Nonprofit Solutions at LinkedIn Corporation, will provide some key takeaways on using LinkedIn for recruiting personnel and offer information about new programs LinkedIn offers specifically for nonprofit organizations.
*2011 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey
From the My PC Series
Basic Computer Training Curriculum for Adults Using Windows 7
Tuesday, May 29, 2 p.m. Eastern time, 60 min
Thursday, May 31, 2 p.m. Eastern time, 60 min
Learn about the My PC Series; mypcprogram.com a Windows 7 based, completely free, hands-on, and jargon-free curriculum of computer classes developed by Microsoft that aims to make the challenge of providing basic computer training for adults a bit easier.
The webinar contains two sessions; A Program Overview and a Workshop Preview session. If you want to understand the research behind the program, what workshops are available, and what resources are offered for you and your staff - register for the Program Overview session. If you want to see the class content and how it is presented, the Workshop Preview session walks you through a few select topics from the curriculum.Both webinar sessions will be hosted and supported by Microsoft and are not hosted or supported by TechSoup.
- May 15, 12
Among the many thousands of after school programs in the U.S. in schools, libraries, local governments, and nonprofits, it was tough to choose just one to profile this week, but I chose YouthBuild Boston because of my fondness for green tech.
They even use TechSoup Microsoft software donations to rehab used computers for their training labs. This is an after school program that is all about green jobs training and making old things new again.
The Mission of After School Programs
The need for after school programs is growing in modern life. More than 15 million children now take care of themselves after school each day. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 29% of all juvenile offenses occur on school days between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and that the number of violent crimes committed doubles in the hour immediately after school is let out. Idle unsupervised children of all ages can really get in to trouble. I can personally attest to that. After school programs do important nonprofit work, and it is largely a non-commercial field.
YouthBuild Boston's Work
I had a chance to chat with Dan Seibert, YouthBuild Boston's director of finance and administration about how they've used the software donations received through TechSoup to help run their programs. They've benefited particularly from from the Microsoft Software Donation Program and Intuit Donation Program through TechSoup.
Dan has been working in the nonprofit sector for many many years. He started in veterans programs and then got in to job training from there. Like most of us in in nonprofitland he does several other jobs in addition to taking care of the money at his organization. He is involved with the programs because, at heart, he is a construction guy. Dan built his own house in the 1980s using early green energy, a geothermal heat pump.
YouthBuild Boston works with inner city at-risk teenagers to do real-world construction projects. The kids go there after school to either learn construction design in the computer lab or learn construction job skills on the job site. The organization likes to have two major construction projects going at a time, plus several smaller projects.
They rehabilitate buildings and also build parks, playgrounds, and gardens in the Boston area. Much of their work now includes elements of energy-efficient design and construction. They are work a good deal with U.S. EPA and also engaging funder company volunteers, as in the case of Bank of America.
Making Old Buildings New and Environmental
A great example of YouthBuild Boston’s work is the 120 year-old firehouse building that they’re rehabbing for their own offices. When finished, the building will be a Leed-rated energy-efficient building. The program renovates lots of old Boston buildings and, in doing so, teaches job skills.
Dan reports that their students get first-hand experience learning carpentry and other construction skills from contractors willing to take the time to teach basic skills. Sometimes, that causes their projects to take longer than conventional remodeling - sometimes even as much as twice as long. But, the value of having kids engage professionals in the field is in forming work habits and also connections with trade unions.
YouthBuild Boston also arranges field trips to construction projects, so their students can see other types of construction like larger-scale commercial projects. He says that most students who stick with the program go on to attend college.
How TechSoup Donations Help the Organization
For their learning lab, YouthBuild Boston gets donations of computers that they upgrade in-house. They use current Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office licensing to bring the donated computers up to current standards. Dan says that they do this with 25 to 30 computers each year and still always seem to need more IT equipment for their design training program.
Dan says, “being able to get donations from TechSoup has made it possible for us to upgrade our technology to up-to-date levels. Technology moves so fast. It’s a huge help for us to be able to have the latest versions of Microsoft Windows and Office. We used to have all different types of software on our computers, but now we’re able to standardize our software on all of them.”
In his own financial work, Dan has recently upgraded the organization to the multi-user version of Intuit Quickbooks for Nonprofits, also a donation through TechSoup. Dan says simply, “we have a very limited IT budget. TechSoup is a great.”
How has your organization benefited from the technology donations received through TechSoup? Share your story in the comments below and maybe we'll profile your work for our network of nonrprofits, funders, and donors nationwide.
Image: YouthBuild Boston
- May 14, 12
Have you ever wondered if you were saying the right things to your supporters at the right times? Are you targeting your constituents and donors by demographics, giving level and seasons, or simply treating them like they are all the same?
If you answered yes to any of the above or are simply interested in learning from folks with over 20 years of experience in the email communication and nonprofit industry then look no further.
Constant Contact and Blackbaud have teamed up with TechSoup to offer you an exciting free series focused on helping you be a better communicator and fundraiser, Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together.
Join us this Wednesday, May 16 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time for our next free online event: Effective Marketing Tips and Tricks for Clicks
-
Around the Web
