Ten Innovative Ways Nonprofits Can Use Facebook

Facebook has to be the most talked about social networking site right now. Many nonprofits have already found Facebook to be an essential addition to their web working toolbox. Why? Because the Facebook social networking experience can be precisely what you want to make of it. Here are ten innovative ways nonprofits are using Facebook today.

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Case Study: How to Reach New Constituents, Build Relationships and Drive Actions That Stick

Mission Movers Group is a cadre of consultants who try to provoke organizations to use innovation and process improvement programs to maximize outcomes. Every group is challenged to go beyond its own conventional wisdom and explore the amazing resources that are now available, easy to use and affordable.

Back in late 1999 before spam took over, they created a funny piece on how stupid board development efforts were. They wanted feedback so they sent it out without a name so people would not know who wrote it. Those people who got it then sent it out saying "read this funny piece on boards that I got from someone." Within 48 hours the email had traveled the globe and people were signing up for the email newsletter which was original concept at the time. They were blown away by how fast a message could travel the globe. From that day, they knew the web was going to be very special.

Today, their number one tool to reaching constituents is email. Their number one goal is to collect an email and put themselves in a position to push content to them and get them to be viral movers of their message.

"We use email and web 2.0 for a number of reasons because these tools allow me to have a global voice. We have readers of our content from all over the world. These tools are also important to us because people who read my content then can do something with it like blog or email it. We have traffic from so many places because people had read my content or commented on it somewhere and that in turn increases our reach. For this reason our focus is 100% web 2.0. However, this way of marketing works only if you have something to say that matters to others".

Here are the five most important things to do when using email and web 2.0 to reach constituents:

• Produce content critical for the receiver or they will ignore you
• Keep building your network base and keep in contact. Use the phone not email to say thank you. Do this world wide by using Skype - it's free or low cost.
• Give people the tools to move your message. Kiva is real good at making it easy to get their logo.
• Make your listeners feel like the hero not you. It's your job to be the conduit for their actions. They are the one that make the difference
• HAVE FUN - if you're not having fun you will burn out...

Read the complete case study to learn how Mission Movers use email and other Web 2.0 tools to reach new constituents, build relationships, drive actions and build loyalty.

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Wild Apricot Info Zone

Here are the key updates released to Wild Apricot in December:

• Upload your own header background picture or select from a large set we have prepared for your
• Make any member a site administrator (without the need of setting him up with a separate email) - so they can contribute to adding events or editing web pages
• Import any event into MS Outlook or Apple iCalendar
• Review statistics on most active members and outdated pages
• Establish automatic recurring payments - you can now have members sign up and be charged automatically, for example monthly
• Customize the look and feel of your site even more - with easy point and click customization. Adjusting colors and styles is now possible without any technical skills
• Customize emails and workflows for new applications and renewals separately for each membership level
• Sort member directory by fields of drop-down type as well
• Empty fields are now automatically hidden from member profiles
• Advanced search now includes field 'Show in member directory'
• We also rewrote big chunks of old code to speed the system up

As always - go to http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/0.+Release+history for more details.

We will not be doing any significant development over the next few weeks as many people on our team will be taking well-deserved vacations and the rest will focus on minor polishes and tweaks. We will start full-speed on January 14th so next major update will be in the early February. Expect to see many cool changes and enhancements in 2008!

Top 10 easy-to-use slideshow tools for your community photos

Photo sharing has become increasingly popular in the last few years as a way for associations, clubs and nonprofits to publish or distribute their digital photos online. As a result, many of the photo sharing websites that host these photos have become useful sources and practical tools for managing photos online. Using a photo sharing site is an easy way to share your nonprofit's event, conference or holiday photos on the web in a creative way. Photo sharing sites allow one or more users to upload photos to a main account and share those photos by email, instant messenger or by posting the slideshows on your favorite social networking site, website or blog. In this article, we review a number of slideshow tools to find one that 1) works consistently across browsers, 2) is classy looking, 3) easy to use, 4) free.

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N4P Dose of Humor

Making Fundraising Fun and Easy

Copyright, Grantland Enterprises; www.grantland.net. Used with permission. May not be reproduced in any format

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The Wild Apricot blog is constantly publishing articles, interviews and case studies about web technology and social media tools for associations, clubs, charities and other non-profit and member-based organizations. Our focus is on issues relevant to volunteers, administrators, webmasters, and managers. You can subscribe via RSS or email.

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