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Week 1 Quiz: IT Alignment
Questions:5
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Pass rate:75 %
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When service to mission and technology alignmen...
Multiple choice question
When service to mission and technology alignment are maximized, the organization is in a phase best labeled
Five Keys to Finding and Hiring Talented People
Steve MacLaughlin, Director of Internet Solutions, Blackbaud Technology is a wonderful thing. It enables nonprofits to deliver programs, services, and ultimately, meet their mission. But having the right people is absolutely critical to being successful. Given the choice between the latest technology or the best people, the choice should be obvious. I have interviewed hundreds of people in my career. Along the way I've learned some important lessons that are true for companies and nonprofits of all sizes. Here are some keys to finding and hiring the ...
Should Your Organization Outsource Its IT Functions?
By Julie Chapman, President, NPower Greater DC Region Increasingly, nonprofits are looking at outsourcing part if not all of their IT support. How do you know if this is the right choice for your organization? What factors should you consider? How should you go about finding and selecting a provider? Here are some thoughts from the team at NPower DC where we provide hands on tech support to small and large nonprofits across our region in a variety of mission areas. There are two compelling reasons to consider outsourcing. The first is that your ...
Is Your Data Social? (And Don't You Think It Should Be?)
At the Nonprofit Technology Conference last month, I got the chance to sit in on the session about the 2011 Social Networking Benchmark Report. As we talked through all the stats – how many nonprofits are on Facebook, what they're doing there, and so on – a great questions came from the crowd. "What do I do with all these interactions? How can I make sense of them?" My answer was that we're still a couple of years out, but we're getting closer and closer to processes and tools that will let us make sense of this. Social CRM has been in our vocabulary ...
Easy Credit Card Payments for Your Nonprofit (Sharing the NTC Bookstore Experience)
The NTC Bookstore and the wonderful NTC Bookstore volunteersIf you bought something from the bookstore at the NTC, you may have already met the credit card app, Square. We’ve received a lot of questions in person and over email about how Square works, so we thought we’d share our experience. Honestly, I’m not sure how the actual mechanics work. You plug a tiny reader, the approximate height and length of a donut hole and width of your finger, into the headphone jack of an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch and swipe a credit card through it. Voila! ...
Five Tips to Manage Your Professional and Personal Brand in Social Media
[Editor's note: The following first appeared in the March 2011 issue of NTEN:Change. Read the complete issue of NTEN's new quarterly journal for nonprofit leaders by subscribing to the journal for free!]By Farra Trompeter, Big Duck1. Decide your goals for communicating in social media.Consider your personal goals and those for the organization you work for. Where do these goals meet and how do they differ? How you use social media can help your contacts connect both to you and the organization, while also demonstrating your understanding about how ...
Technology Trends in Grantmaking: A Few Non-Analytical Thoughts
By Cynthia M. Adams, President and CEO, GrantStation Before you begin reading this blog post, let me throw in a disclaimer. Our researchers at GrantStation are incredibly good at their jobs. They all have strong research and writing skills, and a loyalty to finding the right information for our Members that is sort of stunning. So, everything I have to say about trends in technology grantmaking is based on subjective observations made by those people who spend their days researching grantmakers. What sorts of changes are we seeing in grantmaking due to ...
Demographics Are Destiny: How and Why to Diversify Your Staff Now!
By Jocelyn Harmon, Director of Nonprofit Services, Care2Unless you've been living under a barrel, you know the demographics of the U.S. are changing. Here are some key highlights from The Changing Demographics of America by Smithsonian. I encourage you to read the entire article. The United States of 2050 will look different from that of today: whites will no longer be in the majority. The U.S. minority population, currently 30 percent, is expected to exceed 50 percent before 2050. Most of America's net population growth will be among its ...
Elephants, Triggers, and Actions: Applying Behavior Theories to Our Nonprofits and Our Work
For those of you who have read Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath – or if you were at the 2011 NTC and saw Dan's Plenary – you've probably already started thinking about the Direct-Motivate-Shape the Path triumverate for helping people change their behavior. I've got another triumverate for you, courtesy of Dr. BJ Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University: B=MAT According to Dr. Fogg, B (behavior) happens when Motivation, Ability, and Triggers coincide. The concepts are similar to ...
Seven Tips for Techies in a Nonprofit Job Interview
By Amy Potthast, Director, Service and Graduate Programs, Idealist As a non-techie, I think I can safely say that a hiring nonprofit's current staff may have so little technical knowledge, they don't even know what skills are needed to do a job they want done. This lack of clarity on the employer's part can translate into some confusion and challenges on your part when you apply for a nonprofit job. I chatted with my colleagues on Idealist's web team for pointers to pass along. The following are some things you can do when you're interviewing for a ...
A Guide to Choosing the Right Donor Management System
We know that you know that you can't treat all of your donors and supporters in the same way. It's not a question of fairness. You need to communicate with a donor who has set up a $250 monthly recurring gift differently from the donor who gives you $15 each holiday season differently from the person who just joined your mailing list. The hard part is managing all that information effectively. That's where donor management systems come in – and no, Excel doesn't count. Also bad? Using the BCC: field to send out your messages.Navigating the choices you ...
Things We Like (March 2011)
A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources and other goodies. Read more posts on our blog. We had, ahem, a few problems with the wireless Internet at the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference. To try to help mitigate the problem, Holly made a funny video. After it aired on the big screen, even the Washington Hilton IT staff wanted a copy, so we posted it to YouTube. Fortunately, the NTC made up for the connectivity failures with general fabulousness, including the release of two of our favorite reports each year: The ...
Crazy for the Tools
By Steve Backman, President, Database Designs To close out our month-long look at some of the best tools for nonprofits, Steve Backman tells you about some of his favorite day-to-day software.Favorite software tools are all about managing processes fluidly. Essential categories need to be personal to the job – and actual choices, even more personal. My weeks are all about writing, communicating with clients, staying in touch with project teams, being able to touch lightly many things, bear down and provide assistance on a few, all while keeping tons ...
11NTC Round-Up: Your Posts, Highlights, and Take-aways
Last week, as I emerged from the post-conference haze of catching up on sleep and clearing my in-box, I started reading through blog posts from attendees and speakers. Then I couldn't stop! There are SO many posts to read that I figured I should round them all up in one place and share them. Hopefully, this means that all of the posts I haven't yet found will be added in the comments and we can all create a comprehensive list together.If I missed your blog post, I'm sorry! Please just drop it into the comments so we can all check it out!Session ...
We've Moved! Be Sure to Update Your Records
Hey NTEN! You've just wrapped up the biggest Nonprofit Technology Conference in your history. Where are you going to go now?
Just a few blocks away, actually. (But fortunately, not much farther from our favorite food cart pod.) Our new offices are at:
1020 SW Taylor Street, #800
Portland, OR 97205
While there are no amusement parks nearby, we're excited to have a little more space -- and an actual room to run webinars from, so you won't hear out background conversations while you're busy learning. Be sure to update your records.
You and Your YouTube Channel
We're big fans of the video work Mark Horvath has done with Invisible People, his site dedicated to giving homelessness a name. This is storytelling at its finest, allowing constituents to speak for themselves -- not just to raise funds, but to raise consciousness. And there's no reason your organization can't use video effectively, too. (If you already are, tell us about it in comment, below!) The recent DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards showed that great videos can be made even on a tight budget. Our upcoming webinar, "You and Your YouTube Channel" ...
The Challenges of Protecting Intellectual Property on Social Networks
By Geoff Livingston, Principal & Co-Founder, ZoeticaFacebook and to a lesser extent Twitter and LinkedIn have become the interstates of the social web. Nonprofits that want to connect with their constituents are almost obliged to participate on these networks. Causes and associations provide status updates on the networks, post links, publish content via tools like Facebook Notes, groups on Linked In and Facebook, and ask questions on all of the services. Yet, while the social networks hold tremendous benefit for nonprofits that successfully engage ...
Digital Ecology: The New Organization's Digital Footprint (Because Websites Are So 1996)
Do you remember the first website you worked on? I do. It was back in 1996, made in support of a psychology textbook. It had a green bar on the left side for no good reason, and forced people to move through activities linearly. It was terrible, and yet it stayed live for years, much to my chagrin. These days, we create new sites, microsites, campaign sites, program sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts... but only rarely have the time to think about how they work together – or whether they're still necessary. Philip Djwa's been thinking intensively ...
Boosting Board Collaboration: Getting Board Buy-In for Collaboration Tools
Chris Bernard, Senior Editor, Idealware (Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the feature article "Boosting Board Collaboration", which appeared in the first issue of NTEN's new publication: NTEN:Change, A Quarterly Journal for Nonprofit Leaders. Read the entire article and the complete issue by subscribing online.)While budget and board requirements will play large roles in determining which tools you use, don’t underestimate the importance of the human element in your decision. A board is made up of a group of people, and people have ...
