Join us for the San Francisco Net Tuesday on September 9:
Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks.
NetSquared is an initiative of TechSoup
NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
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Rate Your CMS Provider for NTEN
Brett Meyer, NTEN's Communications and Web Manager, asked me to ask all of you to take a moment to fill out their CMS Satisfaction Survey. The survey has 14 questions and will take about 5-10 minutes to complete.
Wondering what CMS is, or if the one you are using is on the survey? Here's what NTEN says:
" CMS Defined
Making it easier for NGOs to launch Facebook applications
Hi all, awhile ago you may remember me griping about the ineffectiveness of Facebook Groups and Pages. They are easy to set up, but they are also quite limited in functionality. These features are not conducive to community-building, engagement or organizing.
Today, I'm releasing the first beta of a new open source Facebook Newsroom CMS application framework.
See the demonstration application site at Facebook:
http://apps.facebook.com/newsdemo
Hindsight Is 20/20: Would You Still Recommend Nonprofits Use Social Networks?
In February 2006, members of the Net2 Community were asked, "What emerging tech tool do you think has the most potential to help nonprofits and NGOs create social change?"
Here were the results, ranked in order of preference:
- Content Management Systems, 29.41%
- Social networking, 29.41%
- Podcasting, 11.76%
- RSS (publishing information to an RSS/XML feed), 11.76%
- Blogging, 5.88%
- Cell phones/SMS, 5.88%
- Social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us, Furl), 5.88%
- Aggregation (republishing content from RSS feeds), 0.00%
- Tagging, 0.00%
- Wikis, 0.00%
- Other (posted here
A year and 8 months later, do you still think social networking and CMS can create the greatest impact for nonprofits?
Seems like social networking, in particular, is starting to reach its peak.
Chris Messina discussed some possible solutions to social networking fatigue in his post, Stop Building Social Networks.
Grassroots.org Toolbox
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The Grassroots.org Toolbox will empower nonprofit organizations by granting free access to a suite of fully configured & hosted online tools, including content management, online event registration software, and CRM.
Technology Vision:
Many of the tools we are integrating into the Grassroots.org Toolbox are open source, and thus have been freely downloadable for years. However, “Free” though they may be, these tools cost thousands of dollars to install, learn, configure and support. In short, these tools may have no list price, but they are far from free to implement. The result? They're not empowering as many nonprofits as they could be.
- The Toolbox will automatically:
- provision and install these technology tools,
- configure them correctly for immediate use,
- host them permanently,
- -provide comprehensive training and support resources (both in traditional text and in new media, such as screencasts and training videos)
All for free.
To achieve this, we'll build an integrated user interface to manage Toolbox applications and services, under which we'll develop a flexible and scalable automatic provisioning system. We are assigning multiple staff members to develop exhaustive training and support materials in response to the needs of incoming clients and creating a publicly-available end-user guide for each of the tools we offer. The goal is the technological empowerment of nonprofit organizations everywhere.
Collaborative communities
Sometime last year I did a little reasearch into what some of these packages had to offer. I had several contstraints, wanting something compatible with the ASP & SQLServer platform I used as a business software developer, the appearance of a website rather than a blog and relative ease of construction.
Many of the packages were quite complex in the context of creating content and allocating permissions and in the end DotNetNuke seemed to satisfy most of my needs.
Most of them had a developer community doing interesting things with opensource and value added additions but when it came to collaboration in building content, there is still a little to be desired. I didn't get around to trying Drupal.
Whew - Web Site Launch
After quite a lot of work,my consulting company, working with The Cedar Cultural Center, just released a revamped web site. (August 23) The new site features music and video, a searchable calendar, and quite a lot more.
The Cedar is a well-established nonprofit music venue in Minneapolis, and features world music, roots music, and lots of other entertainers who are not supported by the major music industry.
The site is based on Drupal with quite a few stock and custom modules. There was a lot of collaborative work involved between my company and The Cedar.
The Cedar Cultural Center
The Cedar Cultural Center http://www.thecedar.org Minneapolis, MN |
The Cedar Cultural Center is a nonprofit music venue in Minneapolis, MN. August 23, 2006 The Cedar launched a new web site. The site was built in collaboration with Cruiskeen Consulting LLC Th... |
Choosing a platform for networking: an interview with Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Watch this space for more interviews with conference attendees throughout the next two days!
Deborah Elizabeth Finn is a Massachusetts based independent consultant who helps bridge the gap between "distraught technophic social workers" and technology. One of her current projects is consulting with the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers on their selection of a CMS/CRM (Content Management System/Customer Relationship Management) system vendor. Deborah is helping the organization make their selection and will then help the chosen vendor and the Council build a solid working relationship.
The Council released a Request for Proposals for the project that was crafted to include key hooks for the Open Source community and descriptions of the module types sought. They are also considering proprietary software if they determine that it best meets their needs.
Deborah hopes that a quality CMS/CRM system for the state's human service providers' association will be a showcase that can help the effort to build a state wide association of all nonprofit organizations generally.
For more information about Deborah's work, you can visit deborah.elizabeth.finn.com.
A Bird's Eye View of the Content Management Landscape
Do you dream of a Website that you can update with regular content? Jeff Herron and Usha Venkatachallam of Beaconfire Consulting map out the landscape of Content Management Systems that can allow non-technical staff to update Websites. This great article entitled A Bird's Eye View of the Content Managem
NC Conservation Network
North Carolina Conservation Network ncconservationnetwork.org |
Over a hundred and twenty environmental and conservation organizations make up the North Carolina Conservation Network. Heather Yandow, the Network's Director of Development and Communication's s... |
