Archive for August, 2008

Getting Fundraisers to Write Contact Reports

Jim Moore of CommUlinks posted a wonderful response to the following question on a mailing list for prospect researchers. He granted me permission to repost it here. Q: Can anyone share with me ways to ensure development officers are submitting contact reports? Or tools that you have provided them with? A: You’re asking a classic [...]

Filed in Fundraising No Responses yet

Showcase of Fundraising Innovation & Inspiration (sofii.org)

I’ve been watching SOFII develop over the past few months, and it’s having an amazing growth spurt.  It was set up to “provide charitable fundraisers everywhere with an easily accessible archive of the best fundraising creativity from around the world.”  The quote from George Bernard Shaw on their homepage sums up the mission as: “The mediocre [...]

Filed in Fundraising One Response so far

Stop Sending Vacation Replies to Mailing Lists

Anyone who’s a member of a listserve has spent the summer deleting vacation replies from list members.  Here’s my approach to preventing this:  Before a vacation I used to manually visit every one of the more than 30 lists I’m on and set my status to No Mail (or unsubscribe if that was my only option).  When I [...]

Filed in Uncategorized No Responses yet

Tips for Hiring IT Staff

TechSoup just published an article called Tips for Hiring IT Staff: Balancing Skills and Communication.  It discusses critical issues like finding someone who will spend your money wisely, have a practical understanding of your needs, be able to communicate with your staff, and have the right mix of technical skills. The article reminded me of [...]

Filed in IT Management No Responses yet

Cuil search engine isn’t

After testing www.cuil.com I can’t figure out what the buzz is about. I like the categorization feature, but that’s about it (and clusty does a better job). But the actual search results are disappointing and downright weird. Of course, I searched for my own name. When I don’t put quotes around my name, I get [...]

Filed in Web One Response so far

Online Donor Cultivation and Stewardship Survey

The Gilbert Center is conducting a survey on how nonprofits are using the Internet to cultivate and take care of their donors. A lot of research about online fundraising focuses on the tactics of the ask. We’re trying to broaden the field a bit by researching the topic of online cultivation and stewardship of donors. [...]

Filed in Online Fundraising No Responses yet

Rate Your Donor Database

NTEN is conducting another in its series of vendor satisfaction surveys. This time they want your input on donor management systems. Their pitch: Tell us what you love — and what frustrates, irks, and just generally annoys you — and we’ll compile the results into a handy report, then give it to everybody who fills [...]

Filed in Donor Databases,TechSoup Comments Off

How Do You Use Social Media?

From the good folks at NetSquared: TechSoup’s NetSquared project is in the process of developing curriculum to help nonprofits use social media effectively. But before we go about creating the curriculum, we need to know what you need to know! We put together a brief survey that should only take about 5 minutes to complete. [...]

Filed in Web 2.0 No Responses yet

Becoming a Consultant

The Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted an online discussion about becoming a consultant to nonprofits. The panelists were Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Jonathan Howard, and Karla A. Williams. They addressed a wide range of questions, including: How do you know when to move from being on staff to being a consultant? How does one go about deciding [...]

Filed in Consulting No Responses yet

CNN Top 10 Virus

A new virus is circulating in the form of a CNN Daily Top 10 newsletter (my brother was an unfortunate victim).  A description was posted at http://blog.mxlab.be/2008/08/04/cnn-daily-top-10-leads-users-to-site-hosting-malware/.  Postings on that site say that the AntiVir free antivirus and ComboFix will remove it.   

Filed in Viruses No Responses yet

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