TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
In this section you can link through to a variety of resources on technology. If you would like to add a link please email nfpn@nfpn.com.au
Trends, Statistics & Perspectives
The NTEN Club - The NTEN Club is an opportunity for pro's and accidental techies alike from the Sydney area to share advice, resources, local news, you name it. Basically, it's an opportunity to network with peers and colleagues in your local community while getting soem tips and advice for you work.
Dialing in the VoIP Strategic Advantage - By Kevin Werbach - Voice over Internet Protocol has the potential to be the next disruptive technology changing the way businesses communicate. Are you thinking of ways VoIP can bring you competitive advantage? An excerpt from Harvard Business Review…read more
Untangling the Web - By Robert Schrimpff - Robert Schrimpff presents highlights from a recent survey undertaken by netXtra in which 100 membership organisations including charities, professional membership bodies (PMBs) and trade associations (TAs) took part…read more
Articles
Marketing Metrics Report – (Vision 6) This report is the second in a series of reports being produced every 6 months on the Australian email marketing landscape. This report aims to: Provide the Australian email marketing industry with general benchmark data; Help marketers gauge and improve upon their own email marketing results, and Uncover general trends, provides interpretations and presents factors that have the biggest impact on the success of email campaigns... read more..
10 Tips for Reducing Spam – Junk email, also known as Spam, has become a significant nuisance for almost everyone with an email account. And as bad as it’s been, it is getting worse: Earthlink reports that over the past 18 months, they have seen a 500% increase in spam emails, to where it’s now reported that 45% of all email can be identified as Spam according to anti-spam software vendor Brightmail... read more.
Choosing Research Points the Finger at PowerPoint – By Science backs up the death by PowerPoint theory
Presenting with PowerPoint – 10 do's and don'ts
Turbo-Charge your Google Search – By Frith Gowan. Searching on Google is easy and fun, even addictive. But sometimes you may type in a simple query only to find yourself faced with thousands of results, none of which seem to provide the information you need. This may not be a big deal when you're looking up your 7th-grade crush on a whim, but when you're researching issues for your nonprofit, the stakes are higher... read more.
Choosing a Membership Database That Works For You – By ONE/Northwest - One of the most challenging technology problems that any nonprofit organization faces is how to manage its membership database. It's a particular challenge for grassroots groups who are lucky to have a development director, let alone a database administrator! At the same time, having a database system that works well with a minimum of fuss can spell the difference between a sustainable base of membership/major donor income and chronic financial crisis.…read more
Conference & Corporate Blogging as a Marketing Tool – By Tara Hunt, Marketing Watchdog Journal - What we learned from experience—plus good sources and examples. Having been one of those "radical" bloggers for the past couple of years, I surprised even myself when I suggested that my workplace use a blog for our annual conference…read more
Guarding Precious E-Mail Lists, How to protect the privacy of association members while honouring supplier needs - By Bob Walters, Meetings and Conventions Online - Not long ago, suppliers could buy a list of e-mail addresses, put together an HTML marketing piece and hawk their products and services quickly and inexpensively to a targeted audience. That’s changed with the advent of spam filters…read more
Help Yourself – By Sherry Budziak, Executive Update - As Michael Treacy and other business thinkers have noted, expectations set in one industry carry over to another. Your members can transfer funds online, pay their bills with a few keystrokes, and find out how many minutes are left on their cell phones — all by themselves, without ever having to go through a third party. Associations also must strive to offer this kind of convenience to their members…read more
Is Your Association Digitally Fit? - By Ryan Ozimek - Establishing a good online philosophy is centered on tailoring the capabilities of the Internet to your unique needs, and even if you're armed with all the best technical advice, you won't be able to effectively use the Internet until you determine how your association fits into the online world…read more
Jump on the Blogwagon - By Sue Pelletier in Association Meetings - Blogging is going mainstream. Just ask the California Library Association. CLA recently started a weblog, or blog, to update members on upcoming events, encourage action on important issues, send news about changes in policies and procedures, and help create community between CLA staff and its membership…read more
Look Ma', No Web! - By Tracy Krughoff - The Web is a critical mass-marketing channel for associations. Target audiences expect a virtual medium they can access to learn about an organization. However, as Web usage has advanced and increased, the public has become inundated with information. To rise above the noise, associations must develop a marketing strategy that combines their Web sites with other messaging techniques to reach current and future members…read more
Human freedom and free software: Why choices about technology matter to human rights advocates - By Patrick Ball and Miguel Cruz, The Human Rights Databank - Human rights advocacy depends on the ability to gather, analyze and share information, and computer technology is central to each of these activities. For many human rights workers, word processing, spreadsheets and databases comprise a substantial share of their day-to-day activity, while e-mail and the Web have dramatically altered the practice of outreach, fundraising, and fieldwork…read more
No More Telephones? - in NFP Techno
Nonprofits Aren’t Immune to Computer Crime - By Llyod Doney - Computers are making crime easier at nonprofit organisations. Here’s how to keep it from happening to you…read more
Online Community Building Through Discussion Boards - By Carolyn Cross on the Nonprofit Good Practice Guide - Discussion boards are a useful feature on a Web site as they allow an online community the means to talk about current events, post questions, and retrieve answers – often for free. By providing a meeting center for those with like interests, a message board can allow a Web site’s content to be self-renewing. This brief article discusses four considerations before implementing a discussion board and provides a resource list with links on getting started…read more
Six Simple Strategies To Improve Efficiency, Customer Service And Revenues – By Suzanne Carawan, iMIS - Many non-profits are rethinking long-held assumptions about strategy and growth, and are beginning to operate like their “non-loss” counterparts – focusing more on improved efficiency, increased customer service and improved revenue performance as integral to their organisations’ missions. This report examines six specific best practices borrow from for-profit businesses by organisations at the forefront of this nonprofit evolution…read more
Some Rules For Using Email As A Communication Tool - By the ourcommunity.com.au team - Once you have built even a small database of members/supporters who use email, begin contacting them regularly by email with quality information about your activities and issues. A word of warning about "spamming" before you progress any further. Spam is junk e-mail. Previously many people who have purchased something over the Internet, had their e-mail address published on a web site or have subscribed to a news service or who have participated in news groups or mailing lists, get spam. This is because these public sources can be harvested for e-mail addresses. Some ISPs and other Internet businesses have sold lists of their customer's e-mail addresses to spammers. This is now considered to be very bad form. Spammers have been known to use programs to randomly generate e-mail addresses…read more
The EMA Media Centre: Exploring the Frontiers of Learning - By Maynard H. Benjamin, CAE; The Journal of Association Leadership - The subject of how associations deliver their education to members has always fascinated me. I have a background in computer science and marketing and worked early in my career with interactive learning systems, both in the military and as a consultant. When I became an association manager, the subject came up again as the Envelope Manufacturers Association (EMA) wanted to develop a series of new technical education programs…read more
The Email Savvy Organisation - By Michael C. Gilbert in Nonprofit Online News - There is such a thing as the 'Email Savvy Organization' and it's possible to identify the systems and practices that characterize it… read more
The new technology sea – are you sinking or swimming? - by Peter Dowse - Today the world moves fast – very fast. It’s sometimes hard to keep up with the latest and greatest, let alone try to analyse and evaluate these products and services. With the influx of new technology in the marketplace, it makes sense to look at your customer base and ask yourself the question “Can I use any of these new technologies to benefit my customers and therefore my business?”…read more
The Top Seven Strategies for Website Success - By Philippa Gamse, Canadian Association - Whether you’re concerned with business-to-business, or business to consumer, whether your organisation is large or small, commercial or nonprofit, there are some fundamental questions around your Website and technology strategy that should be addressed…read more
Web-Based Voting, Balloting & Polling – On the Association Executive online - Will the next generation of technology savvy voters cast their votes from the convenience of their PC? Of course they will. Will your organization be ready?...read more
Web Design Good Practices – By Carolyn Cross in the Nonprofit Goodpractice Guide – 10 tips for creating websites that work…read more
Website Development - Know what you want, first!
What Makes a Great Association Website – By Raphael Badagliacca, NYSAE - However "new" a form of expression or medium may be, the rules that govern how well it achieves its basic communications goals remain as timeless and classic as ever. In reviewing websites for excellence, there are some considerations that have entirely to do with the medium itself, such as how quickly graphics display, but on balance, the communications challenges are the same as they have always been. Can you capture my attention? Can you reward my involvement? As a result, can you get me to come back?...read more
7 Secrets the Web Industry Doesn't Want You to Know. (Craig Reardon) What web developers won’t tell you – but you need to know – when you want to build a website. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the world’s technical community. Where would we be without Facebook, Google. eBay, YouTube, Microsoft and the others? ... read more.
Four Ingredients that Help Build Strong Online Communities(Collin Douma) As marketers continue to strategize around the notion of community-building for their brands, it’s important to consider which tools and concepts foster a ‘sense of community’ and keep an online village from becoming a digital ghost town... read more.
10 Ways to Maximise Returns on Email Marketing. (Brad Howarth) As marketing budgets shrink in the slowdown, it is a good time to revisit the tried and true strategies like email marketing. Search engine marketing and social networks may be the hot topics of online marketing, but some of the most effective tools are also the oldest... read more.
Policing Your Online Image. (Michael Stein) The other day I noticed one of my clients had an account on Facebook and I asked her how she was using it. "Mainly", she said, "to police our staff to make sure they haven't posted anything that would reflect badly on our organization". -- "You could also take the opportunity to post stuff yourself that would promote your organization and mission", I prompted... read more.
Tools & Templates
Learn how to attract relevant website visitors for free via Search Engines - 85% of new website visitors find you via search engines and over 90% of Google searches use the top three listings. A good search engine ranking can therefore be the difference between zero new visitors (prospective members) and a deluge. www.Search-Marketing-Australia.com.au is a free online resource that presents information in an easily digestible format to help you understand how to establish and improve your search engine rankings. Learn how to open the flood gates visit: www.Search-Marketing-Australia.com.au.
Evaluate It Free Resource Kit - Are you interested in making your community website, online interest group, Internet training program or other information technology (IT) projects more successful and sustainable? Would you like to do this without wasting valuable time and resources? EvaluateIT is the online resource kit you need…read more
Free Search Tools From Google – By NFP Techno – Google is now offering free search tools to non-profit organisations and educational institutions. Sitesearch helps visitors to search your website whilst Websearch helps them search the internet. It is understood that the offer is likely to apply only to organisations registered with the Charity Commission. Google has achieved a reputation as the leading search engine worldwide. Google will host the search results but organisations can customise the design of the page to complement existing website design…read more
Use Your Mind Not Your Wallet! - Before you spend your first technology dollar on knowledge management, make sure you know what it is, and isn't. The idea that knowledge management requires a heavy investment in technology is inhibiting association executives from stepping boldly into the "Knowledge Age" at a time when commercial competitors are suddenly eager to provide soft services that associations have offered by default…read more