Our organization has been in an unusual position since Hurricane Ike slammed us a week and some change ago. Houston is just now reverting to normalcy... though a complete recovery is months away, if at all possible. The Blood Center shut down its operations for four days in response to Ike and began collecting again last Tuesday, calling for the public to give blood and replenish the supply.

As I've been (mentally) exploring the many ways for my NPO to effectively use social media tools, I've also been paying close attention to what others are doing. A great example of a non-profit on Flickr came up just the other day, when Houston's Opera in the Heights extended an invitation for local amateur photographers to a photo shoot for its upcoming production of Madama Butterfly.

When the idea of starting a blog for our organization first came up a few years ago, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. All I knew about blogs was that a few of my friends did it for fun, and the Houston Chronicle had about 50 of them that didn't interest me in the least. And since when was my organization the kind to waste its time on trendy stuff like that?

Looking back, I think my problem was not understanding the purpose of having a blog. I mean, we already had a website where we posted news and pictures - wasn't a blog just another place to put all the same stuff, only with a trendier name? At that time, I don't think any of us really "got it".

The net2thinktank question about non-profits on Flickr is what brought me here... but now that I'm all registered and logged on, I'm drawing a blank. The truth is, non-profits are doing lots of great things with Twitter, some of which are truly impressive.

My NPO has only begun to scratch the surface of social media. We have a Flickr account. We have a few pics up, some different versions of our logo. One on the main reasons we created a Flickr account was to put information out there for the local media to access when they want to feature us in a story. Thus far they've had to contact us for pictures, and since we haven't had many good pictures on hand anyway, we've missed out on some potentially great coverage.