Since the earliest days of world exploration, maps have told compelling stories to people who may never see the places depicted. Topographical lines on paper only go a small way to recreate the traveller's experience, however, and the rest depends on the viewers' imagination. Now, personalized and interactive maps are stretching those ...

Many of us are familiar with the Meals on Wheels concept — to deliver nutritious and affordable meals to people in need: seniors, convalescents, and people living with disabilities. What many don’t realize, however, says Leann Hackman-Carty of Calgary Meals on Wheels, is that her agency also gives “significant help” to students and homeless ...

Facebook is fast becoming a popular way to publicize an organization’s event, invite guests, and track who plans to attend. Facebook Events may be just what your group needs — but could you be shutting out some of the people who might support your event, by relying solely on Facebook to manage it? The fact is, for non-members of the site, ...

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, ...

''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 ...

How easy do you think it should be to make a charitable donation?  Getting a charity to accept your money might not be quite as easy as you'd think — if the charity's website is designed to meet its own needs, that is, rather than the needs of the people who visit and use the site. Here's an example: When an acquaintance passed away ...

The ''Web 2.0 Nonprofit Success Stories'' submitted to the NPC Carnival this week led to a selection of nonprofit organizations that are widely varied in terms of size, budget, and reach. Each group is using the Internet and Web 2.0 tools in a different way to meet its goals, but some common themes emerge; most notably, perhaps, the power of ...

Could your organization get a message to all your members within 48 hours?  One small assocation thought so --  until last week, when an unexpected event revealed a major flaw in how the group was communicating with its members.This is a real-life example of a real nonprofit organization, but let's just call it Association XYZ  -- a ...

Maps have come a long way from the traditional classroom wall map that many of us grew up with. Online, maps have taken on added dimension with multimedia mashups and a new level of interaction: the information they can deliver goes far beyond topographical features and geo-political boundaries. Here are three maps from three different nonprofit ...

  For this month's case study, we caught up with Curtis Brown from Mission Movers Group for an interview about using email and web 2.0 to reach new constituents and building relationships.   As President of Mission Movers, Curtis works with clients across the country to impact their marketing efforts and drive brand ...