Just a very quick post this time to draw your attention to the latest Digital Makeover video in which Danny from SYFAB provides an update on SYFAB's progress over the last month or so.

As reported in a previous post, as a first step in working towards a more immediate and interactive online funding service, Danny from SYFAB set up the Funding News Wordpress blog.  By providing news, comment and background information that is tagged, categorised and searchable, Danny hopes to create a much more useful resource than the old system of adding funding news to the home page.  The new blog also gives service users an opportunity to comment and feedback on the content.

There are plenty of advisory organisations like South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau, SYFAB, whose remit is to keep their service users abreast of the latest issues in a particular area. For SYFAB it is news about funding in South Yorkshire, but for other organisations it could be information about equalities in London, or service provision in rural areas. Creating regular digests on these "niche" topics can be an incredibly time-consuming job involving the regular scanning of various news sources to generate content, collate it, prioritise it, and re-purpose it in the appropriate form for the reader.

A slightly different post and video this time, reporting back on a fascinating meeting last week to brainstorm some ideas improve SYFAB's funding service using web based tools. It is amazing what you can come up with in a couple of hours when you get a few heads together.

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".

Millions of voices will unite to speak out about positive change in New Orleans during the week of August 25th - the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The “New Orleans 100” initiative will highlight and encourage discussion among millions about 100 of the most innovative and world-changing ideas to take root in the city since Katrina.

As mentioned in an earlier post, one of the early initiatives that SYFAB adopted as part of the Digital Makeover project was to set up their website with the Google Analytics.

In the most recent video, Danny Anthrobus describes the process of setting up Analytics on their website, and picks out some of the key insights that SYFAB have gained as a result.  A selection of these:

Whilst SYFAB's digital makeover is moving forward, I thought I would take the opportunity to have a look at some of the clever ways other nonprofit organisations have found to use new technology to refine the way that they are working.

Whilst South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau continue with their Digital Makeover, I though I would draw your attention to some research from nfpSynergy about charities use of the Internet. In their annual "Virtual Promise" research for 2007, I was interested to see that:

I am here to launch an exciting new  'Digital Makeover' project that I hope will be of great interest to all of those nonprofits out there that are grappling the possibilities of new technologies, and perhaps struggling to seperate the digital wheat from the digital chaff. The Digital Makeover project also aims to rope in social web experts, who are up for putting their considerable enthusiasm and know-how to good use in a practical context.