What are people saying about you online?

The Social Media Policy Toolkit You’ve set up your Facebook page and Twitter account, maybe a Tumblr, pinned your interests on Pinterest, and connected with the professional world on LinkedIn. How do you make sure that once your presence is out there, it doesn't get you into any trouble? That’s where a social media policy can come in handy. A social media policy is a document that outlines for you and your entire staff what belongs on social media--and what does not. No matter what size your organization is, developing your own policy can be an extremely worthwhile exercise, but there are a lot of questions to ask, and it’s often difficult to find the right answers on your own. Let us help. A well-defined policy can help you better understand your social media presence, create a voice that exemplifies your organization’s values, and protect you from questionable content. Starting February 19, we are offering The Social Media Policy Toolkit, a three-week course designed to help you create a social media policy in real time with plenty of support from Idealware’s experts. Over three weeks, we’ll break down all the critical elements of a social media policy and help you create your own. We’ll take our time discussing how you can create a policy that suits your organizational values, what to do if someone says something negative about your organization online, and how you can navigate that tricky intersection between the personal and professional that is a reality for the social media environment. Along the way, you’ll use Idealware’s Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook to make sure your policy is comprehensive and easy to use. At the end of the class, you’ll walk away with a clear vision for your organization’s online presence, and have a document to show for all your hard work. Want to hear more about the course? Check out this promotional video with your teacher, Andrea Berry, discussing a few topics from the session. Watch the video here>>> Ready to register? Click here. This course is our lowest cost intensive toolkit of the spring, and there's never been a better time to check out our online seminars. ________________ You received this email because you signed up for Idealware updates. If you are no longer interested in hearing from us,click here to unsubscribe. Idealware | 1 Pleasant St., Suite 4E | Portland ME | 04101

Tumblr: When You Work at a Nonprofit

http://workingatanonprofit.tumblr.com/

New Webinars to Start Summer Off Right from NYCON

April Showers Bring May Flowers and lots of NEW Webinars! New Webinars All Month Long!

Know Thy Self: Assessing Organizational Readiness When Taking on the World of Restructuring [Lunch & Learn Webinar] Presented by Doug Sauer, CEO,  New York Council of Nonprofits, Inc. Tuesday May 7th, 2013    11:00am to 12:30pm    Register Now      Affiliation discussions are a discovery process - uncovering and clarifying motivations, interests, organizational facts and circumstances, strengths and weaknesses. It is a process where potential partners learn about each other and yes, learn about themselves as well. Successful affiliation talks depend largely on each party being prepared, as transparency starts internally first. The more clarity your board and staff leadership can get as to the organization's true operational, fiscal, and "mission" health, the better positioned the organization will be in type of restructuring or collaboration. This webinar, led by our seasoned restructuring expert, Doug Sauer CEO, will guide attendees as to the questions that you should first ask yourselves and then extend to your potential partner.  Register Now Flexible Spending Account Program Through NYCON New York Council of Nonprofits, Inc. Tuesday May 9th, 2013    11:00am to 12:00pm    Register Now      Did you know that an  FSA (Flexible Spending Account) is a great way for you can help your employees  save money on day care and health care services as well as over-the-counter items for themselves and their family members. When you put an FSA in place at your organization, your employees can contribute money deducted from their salary, before taxes are withheld and use this money to pay for eligible expenses. This also means that your nonprofit pays less in payroll  taxes along with the wonderful benefit to your employees. Join us on May 9th to hear more about how this benefits your nonprofit, including all the plan details, the process of enrollment, plan features - including debit card, and more about NYCON's services as administration Register Now NYCON Membership Benefits Orientation [Webinar] Good for Prospective, New & Returning Members! May 17th or June 14th - Your Choice Register Now  In our "Get to Know Us" Sessions, NYCON staff will tell you a lot more about our membership benefits - and answer all the questions you have regarding our process, costs and what you get for FREE.  We will be talking about these benefits. Nonprofit Training, Education and Professional Assistance  Cost Savings Solutions for Nonprofits The Nonprofit Voice in New York State    Register Now  Life Insurance Program Through NYCON Presented by Eric Laughlin, Licensed Representative, Council Services Plus The New York Council of Nonprofits, Inc. Tuesday May 23rd, 2013    11:00am to 12:00pm    Register Now      NYCON is pleased to bring an affordable, accessible Life Insurance option to the employees of our Member organizations through MetLife. MetLife is the leader in Group Life Insurance and is in a unique position to help provide the right plan for you as employers - not just today, but over time - to meet the changing needs of businesses and your employees. Many employees purchase life insurance through their workplace, it's a critical part of a company's benefits package - helping employees achieve financial security for their families. You can help employees feel that security by adding Life insurance to their suite of benefits.Join us on May 23rd to hear more about how this benefits your nonprofit, including all the plan details, the process of enrollment, cost and more. Register Now Social Media Myth Busting: If You Build It, Will They Come? [Lunch & Learn Webinar] Presented by Andrew Marietta, Regional Manager, Central NY Office, NYCON and Valerie Venezia, Vice President, Membership & Marketing, NYCON June 14th, 2013 11:00am to 12:30pm  Register Now  Sometimes it seems like there's a new hot social media tool launched every day of the week. Figuring out what these tools do, how our nonprofit should use them, and frankly, if you need to use these tools can boggle anyone's mind. As busy nonprofit staff and board members we need to know what specific tool do we use for our specific goals? How do we measure success? This webinar will help cut through the clutter of social media mayhem and help you simplify, refocus, and target social media tools based on organizational needs and a focused message (and maybe even some actual metrics!)   Register Now

Ideal Ware:Best February 2013

Best of the Web: February 2013

The Idealware “Best of the Web” is a monthly roundup of the top nonprofit resources from the Idealware blog, our Facebook page, and our Twitter feed to help you make the right technology decisions.

Infographic: Social Media’s Impact on Giving in 2012 (Nonprofit Quarterly) 

A look at how social media has affected online giving.

How-to: Quickly Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices (NTEN)

How do you get the most bang for your buck when investing in the mobile web?

On Demand Tactical Technology Planning (Idealware)

All your tactical technology planning needs in one on-demand package to solve your organization's current problems and avoid future issues.

Secrets to Finding Out What You Need - Good Questions to Ask During a Technology Assessment (The Data Bank)

When you start by asking the right questions, your organization will be in the best place to plan for the future.

Getting Started With Data-Driven Decision Making: A Workbook (Idealware/NTEN)

Could you use more help thinking through how to use data to help your organization make decisions? This workbook Idealware prepared for NTEN is the perfect place to start.

I Could Be Your Next Monthly Donor. So Call Me, Maybe? (NTEN)

Tips on how to recruit, retain, and upgrade monthly donors.

5 Smartphone Apps for Nonprofits (About.com)

Use these apps to keep up with the rapid growth of mobile.

The eMail Guide Email Marketing Glossary (The eMail Guide)

The 325 email marketing terms everyone needs to know.

Power through schedules with 21 Google Calendar tricks (PC World)

Save time and increase your organization's productivity by becoming a Google Calendar whiz.

A Guide to Synagogue Management: Research and Recommendations (Idealware)
We looked at a variety of donor and constituent management systems to create an overview for a complex and niche market

Pew Report: How internet and social media have transformed the arts

How internet and social media have transformed the arts
By: Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger

Social media has become a new way for arts organizations to promote their work, attract new audiences, as well as advertise themselves. Audiences have become more diverse, attracting younger people to the organizations.

For the full story click here

"Developing a Strategic Communications Plan" Workshop

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

9 am – 4 pm

Every day a new communication tool emerges, and with limited resources the answer to the question, "Which tools should I use?" is always, "Whatever helps you achieve your goals." This workshop will take a step back from all of the bells and whistles and walk participants step-by-step through how to develop a communications plan, look at possible tactics to achieve their goals, and share a number of useful implementation resources. This workshop is offered by the Institute for Human Services.

Learn more >

Register >

Idealware Resource on Social Media

Idealware, a NYCON endorsed vendor, has released a report, Using Social Media to Meet Nonprofit Goals: The Results of a Survey" in which they surveyed 459 nonprofit staff members already using social media at their organizations to ask them what tools they were using and how effectively they thought those tools were meeting particular goals. View the results here.

STNED Quarterly Meeting - Tanglewood Nature Center

SAVE THE DATE: Thursday September 17th from 9:00-10:30 am

The Southern Tier Nonprofit Executive Directors Group (STNED) is a network of nonprofit executive and management professionals in the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes Region of New York State that provides education, peer support and the sharing of ideas to strengthen leadership and promote the collaborative utilization of resources.

The STNED group will have its 3rd quarter meeting on Thursday September 17th from 9:00 - 10:30 am at the Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum, 443 Coleman Avenue Elmira, NY 14903. www.tanglewoodnaturecenter.com. All nonprofit executive and management personnel from throughout the Southern Tier are invited to participate. There is no cost to attend and light refreshments will be provided.

Based on input from previous surveys and the 2nd quarterly meeting, the presentation and discussion at this meeting will focus on the nonprofit sector use of social media tools, presented by Sean Lukasik of Creative Agent.
Agenda

1. Welcome, introduction and brief tour of the Tanglewood Nature Center
2. What is Social Media: Facebook , Twitter, Linked In…..
3. “How the heck do I even get onto Facebook/Twitter?”
4. Applications and pros/cons
5. Goals of using social media

If you plan on attending the meeting, please RSVP by September 15th by clicking on stned@ihsnet.org, and include your name, organization and contact information. Feel free to include any questions you may have concerning STNED or social media.

For more information about the Southern Tier Nonprofit Executive Directors group, go to www.ihsnet.org and click on STNED in the left column.

We hope that you can join us for this educational and enjoyable opportunity to meet with your colleagues on the 17th.

Finally Entering the 21st Century

Here was a recent post from a human services list serve:

The Mental Health Association in Tompkins County is now on Facebook! We will be posting articles of interest concerning mental health as we come across them. Visit our page and sign up to be our fan/follower. Today's posting on Facebook has an article from the NY Times concerning the mental health needs of our service men and women and resiliency training.

You can also follow us on Twitter.

To find us on Facebook, search for The Mental Health Association in Tompkins County. For Twitter search for MHATompkins.
We have entered the 21st century at last!

How are you using online tools? Have you entered the 21st century?

Study Reveals Potential Donors Can't Find Info on Websites They Want

Robert Weiner of TechSoup made the following post, Jakob Nielsen Thinks Your Web Site Sucks, that many nonprofit EDs will find helpful:

Well, maybe it doesn't exactly suck, but potential donors can't figure it out. In a recent study of nonprofit Web sites, usability guru Jakob Nielsen asked participants "what information they want to see on nonprofit Web sites before they decide whether to donate?" The most heavily requested information was:

• The organization's mission, goals, objectives, and work.
• How it uses donations and contributions.

He found that only 43% of the sites he reviewed answered the first question on their homepages, and only 4% answered the second question. He did find that most organizations answered these questions somewhere within their sites, but said users often had problems finding this information.


He also looked at the "turn-off factors" that caused charities to lose out on donations and found that:

• 47% had usability problems relating to page and site design, including unintuitive information architecture, cluttered pages, and confusing workflow.
• On 17% of the sites, users couldn't find where to make a donation.
• 53% had content issues related to writing for the Web, including unclear or missing information and confusing terms.

The good news is that "once people had decided to make a donation and found the donation button it was fairly easy for them to proceed through the workflow and donate."

I think Nielsen is making a big assumption: that potential donors visit a nonprofits' Web site without knowing what the nonprofit does, and then look for this information before donating. But his point about the difficulty of finding the donation button on some sites is a well taken point.

You can read the whole study here.

Online Giving Continues to Increase

The Philanthropy Journal offered this info on a new study about the increase in online giving. As a new study relates, even as the economy began to slide in 2008, online giving continued to grow.

Among a group of 12 organizations, online donors increased by a median 39 percent from 2007 to 2008, compared with a decline of 3 percent among offline donors over the same period.

At the same time, online giving still remains a small share of giving overall, accounting for only about one in 10 dollars donated, says the 2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis from Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company.

Online donors tend to be younger, with a median of 11 percent of donors under age 35, compared to a median of three percent in that age group among offline donors.

They also are newer donors to the organizations they support, with about half of all online donors being new each year.

Online donors to the companies surveyed gave a median single gift that was $27 higher than offline donors during 2008, the survey says, and the gap was even larger for donors who had been giving for more than one year.

However, online donors are harder to retain, with retention rates for online donors falling slightly below those for offline, and new online donors being harder to keep than veterans.

But online donors likely are worth the effort over the long term, given that their average lifetime revenue-per-donor was a median $237, compared to $86 for offline donors.

Live from Jumping Into Social Media

The New York Council of Nonprofits (NYCON) is posting live from the IHS conference in Corning today. NYCON VP of Membership and Marketing Valerie Venezia is speaking right now about social media and networking tools. She is talking about the culture shift that nonprofits have to consider when integrating these new tools. You want to give consideration to these efforts, and how they fit within your mission. But, don't be afraid to "jump in." Nonprofits have to engage and immerse themselves in social media. This is the future.

Want to share your own feedback on this topic or how your nonprofit is using these tools? Post here or visit our wiki.