Congratulations to Amanda Atkins, who answered our Social Web Survey and won an iPod Nano! Amanda works for Metropolitan Affordable Housing , an entrepreneurial non-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life for people living on limited incomes.

Like many of our 700+ survey respondents, she came to the survey through TechSoup.org, the technology portal for nonprofits that is the home of the NetSquared project.

Amanda uses social networking sites as one stop shops to blog and share photos. Though she enjoys using them personally, she doesn't use them at work, and sees her main challenge as being public perception of the professionalism of these tools.

I know a lot of artists that use MySpace and Friendster, and a lot of backpackers who use blogs as a way to keep everyone back home informed about their travels. But as someone who's not an artist, I just can't imagine telling someone at work to look at my blog. It just doesn't seem professional.

Though she doesn't currently use these tools through her nonprofit, her organization is very interested in conveying information with minimal paper waste, so she sees a lot of potential in the use of online tools to distribute information.

We asked Amanda, if she could have any tool created for her nonprofit, what she would like to see.

I'd love to have some kind of shared, updated database, where we can put in resource development ideas and resident service ideas. We currently do this on paper, but if we could do it online with a social program that was easy to use, so everyone in the community could add resources, then when a resident comes, we can just pull up our information and everyone else's and match them with the resources they need.

If we had a blog tracking each service, so that people could put in updates, such as "we just ran out of funds, and will not be able to take in new clients for the next month", that would be an easy way to get relevant up to date information for the residents we serve. I'd like to see something like MySpace but specifically for the industry.

Over 25% of those who took the social web survey say that they use a social networking site such as Friendster, Tribe.net, or LinkedIn, all the more reason to join TechSoup's Social Networking Online Event, which you can find out more about in Britt's call to action. 

We'll be giving away iPod every Friday for the next couple of weeks to a randomly drawn survey respondents nswer the social web tools survey at  http://netsquared.org/social-web-survey

Congratulations Amanda, and thanks for the thoughtful responses!