Techsoup
TechSoup's new blog offers news, tips, and highlights from around the Web to help your nonprofit get the most out of technology.
Updated: 16 min 4 sec ago
Microsoft Office 2010: Our Favorite (New) Features
The latest version of Microsoft Office came out last month and since then we've been fiddling, playing, testing, and tweaking to learn all we can about the 2010 version of the popular office productivity suite. For many organizations, it's the standard-bearer software that lives on nearly every computer and is used daily by millions, so we think it's pretty important to have a good handle on how to answer the seminal question asked by resource-strapped libraries and nonprofits — "Should we bother upgrading?" Now we can't definitively answer that for you, since it depends on a number ...
The Opportunity: Why Don't People Volunteer?
This post was penned by guest blogger MeiMei Fox, who is a social media consultant, life coach, yoga instructor, and writer. She attended the San Francisco Online Community Report Meetup at TechSoup's offices last night where we featured Ben Rigby and his crowdsourced volunteering organization, The Extraordinaries. You can follow her on Twitter. Here's what she had to say about the event and getting people to volunteer... The Opportunity: Why Don't People Volunteer? They don't have time. Or so we say. Yet we play hundreds of hours of solitaire. We watch 1 billion YouTube videos and spend 270 ...
Nonprofit Guide to Going Green Review: Part One
The recently published Nonprofit Guide to Going Green is a robust handbook on greening all aspects of a nonprofit organization's program. It covers everything from greening your office and building to green management, fundraising, information technology, purchasing, travel, organizing events in an environmental way, saving water, saving electricity, recycling, and obtaining green certification. The book has several great checklists and some in-depth case studies that show how both large and small nonprofit organizations have implemented their greening efforts. The book is edited by three ...
Principles of Social Media Strategy Webinar with Beth Kanter: August 11
Beth Kanter (a very familiar name to readers of this blog!) will be hosting a webinar on social media strategy in partnership with The Society of Nonprofit Organizations on August 11 from 1-2:30 p.m. Eastern time.
From SNPO:
MyFax Adds Print-to-Fax and Offers Free Business Cards
MyFax, which Protus makes available to nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup, lets users send and receive faxes through email and eliminates the expense and paper waste of a fax machine, fax server, and dedicated fax line. With MyFax, your faxing capabilities are always on-line — your phone line is never busy, and your fax is never out of paper. Current subscribers to MyFax as well as newcomers to the service can now access a free new feature, the MyFax Print-to-Fax Assistant, and receive 250 premium business cards for free. MyFax Print-to-Fax Assistant (download directly from MyFax)The ...
Thousands of Small U.S. Nonprofits in Danger of Losing Tax-Exempt Status
UPDATE: A follow-up announcement on July 26 clarified that the IRS is offering a one-time relief extension of the filing deadline until October 15, 2010. In other words, if your organization missed the May 17 deadline, you now have three months to submit the required information and retain your tax-exempt status. UPDATE: IRS Commisioner Doug Shulman announced on May 18 that his agency will offer guidance soon for small nonprofits that missed the May 15 filing deadline. If your organization missed the deadline, you should still file your return as soon as possible. Some wise person or ...
Work from Anywhere with Tools to Stay in Touch
Whether you're getting some sun a thousand miles away from the officeor just want to work from home, there's an ever-growing field of tools available to help you work from just about anywhere. If you have Internet access (which, these days, you can even get via tethering to your mobile phone's wireless service), you can connect to a host of tools to help you stay connected whether you work in a field office, far from the headquarters, or if you just want to work from home on Fridays. All of the products below are available as donated or deeply discounted tools for nonprofits and/or public ...
Tips and Tools for Technology Planning: Webinar Follow-Up
Does your organization have working technology in place, but only one or two people who know how and when to use it effectively? Is there an old technology plan that was supposed to be implemented years ago, but other issues have always managed to push it back? Last Tuesday's TechSoup Talks webinar, Tips and Tools for Technology Planning went over many different strategies to get your organization or library moving towards specific technology and mission-related goals. Our speakers for this webinar have extensive experience in the field of technology planning, and did an excellent job ...
TechSoup's TechFinder and Recycled Hardware Lists Are Retired
After many long years, due to severely declining usage and technical security concerns, we have retired the TechFinder service on TechSoup.org. Additionally, since the Community Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher program has been relocated to Microsoft and they will be maintaining the list of registered refurbishers, we have also retired our Recycled Hardware Lists.
If you are looking for local refurbishers or for consultants, we have provided a list of links that point to other helpful resources.
Set Your Monitor to Sleep
Even if you don't want to set your entire computer to sleep, consider turning off your monitor at night and set it to sleep during inactivity (after two to five minutes) during the day.Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tested dozens of monitors and found that the average LCD (flat screen) display uses over 27 watts while on, but only 1.38 watts while in sleep mode. In contrast, the average older-but-cheaper CRT displays use 65 watts while on and still use over 12 watts when in sleep mode. Even in off mode, both types of monitors still draw approximately 1 watt of energy. To make your ...
Microsoft Webinar Full! Still Space for Business Planning Event Tomorrow
Holy cow! Our community of nonprofit and library professionals sure does want to know more about Office 2010! We've had overwhelming demand to attend the upcoming Office 2010 webinar we're co-producing with Microsoft next week. Unfortunately, it is filled to the brim but don't worry if you didn't get a spot! We will post a recorded version of the webinar and all of the corresponding materials after the webinar at http://bit.ly/ngowebinar and also on this blog (and our webinar archive page). You can also learn more about the new Microsoft Office from our resource page, wich features ...
How to Choose a Green Website Host
Green does not always have to cost you more, especially when it comes to technology. As you have probably heard, datacenters are the biggest green house gas generators in the IT world. Most small to medium size nonprofits and libraries don't have a data center, so you don't even need to think about it. But, where is your website hosted? Unless you have your own web server, I would bet your website lives in a datacenter owned by someone else. There are lots of green website hosts out there and their prices are competitive with their dirtier counterparts. How Do You Find an Eco-Friendly Website ...
Free Webinar Today! Tips & Tools for Technology Planning
Starting in a mere half hour, you can join experts from TechSoup and WebJunction to learn some tips on developing (and improving) technology plans for nonprofits and libraries. Register here now! You've heard that a technology plan can help you budget and better plan for future technology acquisitions, but with everything else you do all day, who has the time? Come to this TechSoup and WebJunction presentation where we'll share tips, tools, and tales from folks who've crafted their own tech plans without much discomfort, and all for the benefit of their organizations. In this webinar, ...
Be Extraordinary! Online Community Meetup on July 28 with Ben Rigby
What if you could make a difference volunteering for an organization in just a few minutes of your spare time? What if your organization could reach members on their mobile phones and crowd-source to get important service projects done? Join us at TechSoup headquarters on Wednesday, July 28 for our monthly Online Community Meetup, and find out just how easy it is to be extraordinary! This month we're excited to have speaker, Ben Rigby from The Extraordinaries, the micro-volunteering network. Ben will discuss his work developing the Extraordinaries platform as a means of ...
Check Out TechSoup.org's New Digital Catalog
If you haven't already, be sure to check out TechSoup.org's digital catalog, a fast, convenient new way to browse everything that TechSoup has to offer.
New Networking Hardware from Cisco at TechSoup
Thanks to Cisco, we've just added eight new networking products to the TechSoup catalog. There are four new routers, two new switches (with Power over Ethernet), and two memory upgrades for our security appliances. Cisco has also increased its donation request and budget limits, which should make more organizations eligible to request more donations. Read on to get the scoop on all these new offerings. Let's start with two of the new routers: Cisco 880 Series Ethernet Security Router Cisco 880 Series Wireless Ethernet Security Router The two 880 Series routers have replaced the discontinued ...
Free Planning Webinars Next Week: Technology Planning and Business Planning
If I were a manager or supervisor, two recurring responsibilities would keep me awake at night with fear, guilt, and indigestion: performance evaluations and planning documents. Passing judgment on one's friends and colleagues is never easy, and plans are detailed predictions about the future that you'll eventually be held accountable for. I'm afraid there's no easy cure for the agony of performance evaluations. Planning is a necessary minor irritation that protects us from the greater evil of short-sighted, uninformed decision-making. Fortunately, there exist a growing number of software ...
Social Media Tips & Secrets from Heather Mansfield
You've heard the maxims of social media before: "Join the conversation," "Engage your audience," "Be authentic!" — but what does all of that really mean? If you attended last Thursday's free webinar, 10 Social Media Tips & Secrets, you can now answer these questions for yourself. Of the nearly 400 people who listened in on Thursday, many say they gained real, actionable advice they could apply to their organization's social media use. The webinar featured guest speaker Heather Mansfield, who has been helping nonprofits build online communities for more than ten ...
Big Changes Can Come from Small Steps: Sleep Settings
One of the fastest and easiest ways you can immediately start saving energy and money is to turn on the sleep settings of your computer. The display and sleep idle features are very important for power savings and battery life. The display can consume approximately 40% of the power budget on the typical mobile PC and anywhere from 30-100+ Watts on a desktop PC. (From Microsoft.) Most of us are still using Windows XP, so unless you or your IT person turned on the sleep settings, you aren't using them. Climate Savers computing offers this six-step guide with pictures to help you turn on the ...
Bad Websites, Good Fundraising
One of my favorite parts of NCVS was meeting Joe Solomon of 350.org. Joe gave an excellent presentation on nonprofits and social media (more on that in a later post). One thing he said that really struck a chord with me was, "The best movements have the worst websites." I don't think he meant that completely literally (although it is often very true). He was saying that when people look at the website of a nonprofit organization, they're looking for evidence that it's a real organization with real people with whom they can really communicate. That genuineness is more important than any other ...
