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Nonprofit Tech, Tools and Social Media

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Category Archives: Best Practices

Using Closed vs. Open Web Site Tools as a Nonprofit

Recently, we had a conversation with an organization who was getting pressure to use a closed tool called Jimdo rather than the open-source tool, WordPress for their web site. Jimdo seemed easier and quicker and they wanted to know what we thought about it. Here’s a couple points that we brought up with them: Using […]

Engaging Network Hubs

One of the best ways to take advantage of social networks is to realize that they work just like in-person social networks. Well. Maybe not JUST like in-person social networks. There isn’t much handshaking going on, but the underlying strategies and mutual back-scratching of in-person relationships and network-building are still there. One tactic to broaden […]

Breakups are Hard: Departing Staff and Tech Security

Photo courtesy of zebedee.zebedee Ending any relationship is hard. Creating a standard set of processes can ease the pain of the schism. When a marriage ends, there are legal filings, transfer and division of property and the surrendering of keys and changing of locks to ensure security. When an employee leaves your organization, similar processes […]

A Template for Calendaring Your Messaging

One of the best practices often overlooked by many “I’m spinning too many plates on long skinny poles” nonprofits is calendaring out the messaging your organization is going to send ahead of time. Akin to flossing, calendaring your messaging ahead of time is something that organizations think that they should do but don’t see the […]

Are Your Emails Skim? Or 2%?

The first rule of email messaging as an organization is that no one reads emails. People skim emails. Making your email blasts as skimmable as possible is the best way to get your point across to the people you are trying to reach. When it comes to email newsletters, skimmability becomes even more necessary as […]

Are You a Twitter Spammer?

Recently one of the organizations that we work with had their account suspended on Twitter. The situation looked something like this. The organization started tweeting about a video/petition. No biggie, right? Well, they started to tweet at people (putting the @username at the beginning of the tweet). A lot. And not just anyone. Celebrities, big […]

Email Best Practice Questions on Answr

There have been some great questions around email communications submitted and answered on our sister (beta) site Answr and I wanted to throw up (?) a quick blog post to highlight a few of them. Answr is a site dedicated to questions and answers around nonprofit online communications (focusing mainly on email at the moment). […]

How to Manage an Email Discussion List to Invite Collaboration

Some Nonprofit Tech Discussion Lists NTEN Discuss NOSI Riders Tech Riders Talk Open Translation Tools Email discussion lists or listservs (name comes from a specific piece of software called LISTSERV), while increasingly overshadowed by social networks, can still be a great way for a like-minded community to carry conversations and discuss issues online. Originally, discussion […]

Keeping Track of Your Dashboard Feeds with a Listening Matrix

We, like a lot of other people, love using a “listening dashboard” like Netvibes to listen to the social web. It’s free, pretty easy to put together and it does all the work for you of tracking down when your name or organization has been mentioned online. Fun stuff. The magic is all in finding […]

Tools to Introduce Online Communications Best Practices

We spend a lot of time here at Aspiration and here on the SSC Blog talking about online communications best practices, trying to help nonprofits and social justice organizations find ways to use technology cheaper and more effectively for their missions. As part of that effort, I put together some interactive tools around eAdvocacy Readiness […]

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