Sorry I've been away so long. It was my birthday on Saturday (I finally turned 29) and I got a little carried away with all the celebrating it. Here's something worth the wait, though. I think...

On Sunday, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported:

Washington University and the University of Missouri at St. Louis have gone into the online matchmaking business. What's that - WU and UMSL competing with Match.com in the Internet dating game?

Well, not exactly.

Over the past several months, the universities have joined with the United Way of Greater St. Louis, the Regional Arts Commission and several other local groups to form a different kind of online dating service.

The aim, ultimately, is not romance, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, the new group hopes to pair local nonprofits with men and women interested in serving on their boards.

The web is creating some strange... er... bedfellows these days. This does seem like a creative approach, however. Click on the image above to check out the actual site.

after further exploration: While this could be a good idea, the publicity seems a little premature, given that many of the menu items "connect" to empty pages. Which -- perhaps especially in light of the slick, pricey-looking graphics -- is not such a hot idea. READ MORE

The VC2 Survival Guide is a comprehensive video production primer. It's available online -- so I'm writing to make sure you know about it!

http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/

Current's mission is to democratize TV, and part of that is helping to make the tools and techniques of video accessible to everyone.

That's where the Survival Guide comes in. It has several different parts:

* The Gear Guide, a run-down of the equipment you need to get started. READ MORE

I spend a lot of time on Amazon.com, some might say too much. But I learn a ton every time I go there. The reason is simple: people who know a lot more than I do about any given subject have been there before me and left little bits -- sometimes big chunks -- of their knowledge. Is there junk, dross, crap? Of course. But for me, ranting at someone else's stupid (imnsho) opinion is all part of the fun. (Fortunately, only my cat hears me. And she generally agrees.)

In the following list of lists, there will also be a lot of repetition. But be careful you don't just blow that off as noise. Sometimes it's valuable information that 20 people all recommend the same book. Especially if it's not Harry Potter or something by John Grisham. Not that I have anything against either. Point is, the narrower the field of focus -- in this case nonprofit organizations -- the more knowledge is required to have any perspective at all. I hope some of these pages will prove useful. If so -- or if not, either way -- maybe you can contribute something of what you know, as well.

So you'd like to...

• Quick Start Progress with Non-Profit Leadership Talents
• Rev-up Progress with Non-Profit Leadership Talents
• Shoot Ahead with Non-Profit Leadership Talents
• Learn about Non-Profit Management & Save the World!
• Try a creative approach to growing your nonprofit!
• Get the best nonprofits office suite [software]
• Improve Corporate Governance and Board Management
• Have a Bookshelf Full of Open Source Books?
• Harness the power and value of Open Source

Listmania!

• Human/Social Services Non-Profit Management
• Nonprofit Management Peter Drucker
• Got Nonprofit?
• Nonprofits
• Open source and intellectual property

The Nonprofit Times, based in Morris Plains, NJ, has a PDF chart of America's largest 100 nonprofit organizations. You can download the chart here. While that page is dated a year ago, the front page of the site says the chart was "Published November 2005" -- either way, it may be useful to some readers. The latest issue of the publication is here. Below is a clip from the PDF...

An article by Steve Lohr in today's New York Times -- Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies -- ends with the senior vice president of global marketing for Chrysler saying: "We think there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in the Google economy."

The article paints Google search as a disruptive technology, which it certainly is, and points out how it has many companies and industries both exploring new options... and quaking in their boots.

Nonprofits should similarly be aware of -- and concerned about -- the way Google is changing "business as usual." Traditional methods of fundraising and attracting volunteers may suddenly be eclipsed -- not that it isn't happening already -- by more efficient techniques that leverage the network and the new tools emerging on the web.

Expensive snail-mail campaigns never were that effective, and today may even be counterproductive compared to the organizational transparency and more human-to-human style of Internet communications. READ MORE