This is the third part of our series on free and open-source software and the resources to help your organization make the most of what FOSS has to offer. When you need to know the meaning of a word, you flip open a dictionary. It’s a trusted authority. It gives the information you need to use an essential tool (language) more ...

A great deal of reliable statistical data has long been available to the public eye — but it’s often been a challenge for resource-strapped nonprofit organizations to track down the information you need for policy development or to support your fundraising appeals with cold hard facts. UNdata has just made that research task a bit easier. A ...

Techsoup.org, one of the best non-profit resources online, has suffered an SQL Injection attack. The site was taken down promptly when suspicious activity was identified, but Techsoup account holders and anyone who has visited the site in the past few days are urged to take security precautions immediately. These types of attacks are known to ...

Has this ever happened to you? The printer jams, just as you’re trying to rush out a newsletter. Or you come up short on stationery and stamps, a few letters short of your mailing list run. Or you’re on the road with only a web-enabled phone at hand, when you remember an urgent note that must go out by mail… Some days, we can’t help wishing ...

People born since 1980 — the first generation to grow up in a wired world — have a whole new set of expectations about communication. Nonprofits who want to reach this audience need to rethink the traditional outreach methods and learn to understand how this group operates. Whether we call them Millenials, Net-Genners, or Generation Y, ...

Cross-browser compatibility has long been a frustration for website designers. What looks fine in one browser may be more or less “broken” in another, with sidebars shifted and elements overlapping... But does it really matter, how your website looks in different browsers, in the big picture of what your organization is trying to accomplish with ...

We all know that the Internet is a very public space -- but do we always act that way?  The separate compartments of social networking sites, once isolated in their own little boxes, have created an illusion of privacy where none may exist -- and now those boxes are opening wide. Consider this: Rapleaf alone has created over 50 million ...

So you've signed up your nonprofit group for a Facebook Page -- now what? It can be challenging to know what to put on your Page to make the best use of the space, especially if you're setting out to build a new page from scratch. And if you're new to Facebook, it may seem there's a bewildering array of applications to choose from. Michelle ...

New features and other enhancements have been added to Facebook since Wild Apricot's Beginner's Guide to Facebook for Non-Profits, and nonprofits are learning more about making the best use of the popular social networking site. We've talked about setting up a Facebook account and Profile, and a bit about Groups. Let's take a quick look now at ...

''Welcome to the age of the crowd,'' wrote Jeff Howe in The Rise of Crowdsourcing (2006). In coining the term crowdsourcing, Howe pointed to the rise of the open-source software movement; to the success of user-created Wikipedia; and to profitable businesses like MySpace and eBay ''that couldn't exist without the contribution of users.'' Howe put ...