A chat with Susan Gordon, Non-Profit Coordinator for Causes. She tells us a thing or two about how Causes works, how a medical student used Causes to create a 3.3 million+ strong campaign to fight cancer, and how to get your fumigator to join your Cause.

Here’s an recent example of the “long tail” effect working for a non-profit.

Backstage Technologies is a small, “secretly Canadian” software company. They specialize in developing applications for Facebook - specifically, they’ve invented a way to simulate playing “scratch and win” lottery tickets. Careful, I said “simulate” - there isn’t actually money changing hands, you can’t win any cash.

I will give you some actual nuts and bolts, but let me first say this: all good online fundraisers have two basic directions they work in - in and out. ‘In’ is a webpage, where people visit you. ‘Out’ is as in reaching out, through emails, smsing, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook etc etc etc. You are aiming for flow between the two directions. Because - just like all really successful fundraising - this is not so much about asking a bunch of people for money. Actually, it’s about a personal exchange - exactly what the internet was made for. Hold that thought, here come the nuts and bolts…

(to read the rest of this post, click here!)

If the more you communicate, the more impact you can have, the more you potentially can create more support for your cause, get donors, etc, should funders look at nonprofits who are communicating more in a more favorable light?

And should every facebook event post, every myspace friend, be counted towards that communication quota?

Or are nonprofits in new media investing program money in something that has yet to show a serious $$ per person return? 

Are funders even looking at communication as something worth supporting?

What is your experience?

Engaging the youth!

What does it take? Whether you're on the board, on staff, or a volunteer, this is on every nonprofit's mind. And if you're looking around yourself at all, you're attempting to plan ahead. Developing support for your nonprofit means communicating. A lot.

What about making people laugh?
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=529102816568&ref=nf

Nikki Serapio of Involver left a comment on the July Net2ThinkTank question:  How Can Nonprofits Use Online Video to Raise Money? about Involver's Pilot Program that I thought you might want to know about:

"Just a heads-up to the social change community ... we recently launched a Pilot Program. We're accepting applications until Friday, August 15th.

The program is an opportunity for Involver to offer significant value through close one-on-one consulting. We want program participants to have an excellent user experience all around (in setting up custom video plugins, in creating their own branded Facebook applications, etc.), but we also want to make sure that, at the end, these initial campaigns are successful and reach and engage their intended audiences.

Josh Berry, an American surfer and activist fighting to defend the Chilean coast, talks to us about how the Internet allows him to be mobile throughout Chile and why Facebook is helping Chileans rally to defend their ocean.

Thank you kbaird for the photo!

We're developing a widget for GreenerOne that will allow members to display how many people they've helped to make a 'green' decision during their purchase.

We need the help of a facebook developer.

We're building out the backend to intergrate with GreenerOne product reviews and need somebody who can help us intergrate the widget on facebook. The widget is pretty straight basic, it's just a dynamic PNG generated when somebody loads a page and has info about the GreenerOne's reviews.

Change Everything - the site we built for Vancity Credit Union - never seems to run short on surprises.

Shortly after it launched in 2006, a self-organized drive delivered more than 70 big bags of warm clothing to homeless shelters in Vancouver's downtown east side. Not long after, a Change Everything member called EnviroWoman captured our imaginations (and those of folks like WorldChanging and The Guardian) with her tales of living plastic-free for a year.