My friends at Idealware have created a new fund to support their research.  Many of Idealware’s reports have been funded by foundations and some have had corporate sponsorship. As you probably know, neither foundation nor corporate support is a reliable funding source these days. In addition, since Idealware must maintain its independence in order to [...]

Tags: Donor Databases, Fundraising, IT Management, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Technology, Online Fundraising, Social Media, Web 2.0

Our friends at NTEN have launched a survey to examine nonprofits’ data ecosystems. Your first question is probably "what is a data ecosystem?" NTEN describes it as follows: The nonprofit ecosystem is a way of thinking about how data is shared by and flows across the different departments and activities in your organization. Similar to [...]

Tags: Databases, IT Management, NTEN, Software

The recent theft of confidential documents from Twitter’s Google Docs account points out the dangers of insecure passwords. NTEN’s blog discusses the details of the break-in and lessons we should learn from it. The chief lesson: good passwords are key to good security.  A 2007 NTEN post provided suggestions and resources for creating strong passwords [...]

Tags: IT Management, Security

The front-page headlines read "Hacker steals Twitter’s confidential documents," but the real story isn’t about Twitter — it’s that the stolen documents were stored online, "in the cloud." This could happen to any nonprofit or company storing data this way. As we’ve seen over and over, it’s amazingly easy to guess or steal passwords. And [...]

Tags: Cloud Computing, IT Management, Security

Want to build your IT leadership skills without a travel budget? Our friends at NTEN are launching a 2-day virtual conference for nonprofit IT leaders. I’m thrilled to see this. I think there’s a big need for a "mini-MBA" for nonprofit chief information officers (CIOs), particularly those who came up through the ranks. NTEN describes [...]

Tags: IT Management, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Technology, NTEN

Hewlett Packard has published a free guide to greening your IT. They describe it as: Green IT for Dummies … is intended to give organizations simple and straight-forward ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of IT systems and harness the power of IT to reduce the wider environmental impacts of climate change in [...]

Tags: IT Management

I just received two identical messages with the following text. There’s no URL — the only way to respond is to reply to the message. Replies go to updatweb1 at aol.com I hope no one’s foolish enough to fall for this. —–Original Message—– From: apache@net.lg.ua [mailto:apache@net.lg.ua] On Behalf Of Webmail Support Sent: Friday, March 27, [...]

Tags: IT Management, Security, Spam

The Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line have released Security in-a-Box, which was designed to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders. They describe it as follows: Security in-a-box includes a How-to Booklet, which addresses a number of important digital security issues. It also provides a collection of Hands-on [...]

Tags: IT Management, Security

In early January, Convio asked a group of nonprofit technology bloggers to suggest New Year’s resolutions for nonprofits (TechSoup Blog was one of the participants). In addition, they asked people to post resolutions on Convio’s Connection Café blog. Subsequently, they reviewed the resolutions, identified the main topic areas, and created a Resolutions Guide. The guide [...]

Tags: Databases, IT Management, Online Fundraising, Social Media, Web 2.0

The early-bird registration period for NTEN’s 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference ends January 31.  I love the NTC.  Here’s what the NTEN folks have to say about it: In addition to the scores of breakout sessions, the networking, camaraderie, and general nptech-related good times, noted author Clay Shirky will be the keynote speaker at the 2009 [...]

Tags: Consulting, Email Marketing, IT Management, Mobile Communications, Online Fundraising, Social Media, Web 2.0