More trends to consider

Thanks to all the people for their great comments on my inquiry on the big challenges facing nonprofits. If you haven't weighed in on that, please do. Great discussion!

I'm working on the April edition of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter, which will be about the new uses of technology.

At this point, I'm focusing on these six things as changes in the tech world and their implications for nonprofits:

1. Peer Review/participation. Peer review and participation is one of the huge strengths of the web. Nonprofits in the main have not grasped this yet--but need to, and quickly. Wikis are a great way to allow for participation as well.

2. Podcasts: Incredibly cheap to develop, podcasts have revolutionized marketing and education. I think we're on the edge of thousands of nonprofits doing podcasts to educate, to train staff and volunteers, and to market better.

3. Instant Net feedback. If you want to be aware of what's going on online (about your organization, your issue, your mission, your funding) there are a number of free tools to do that. Whether it's Google Alerts or RSS feeds, search has never been easier, and more timely.

4. Blogs. A terrific way to get engaged with the community, to find out what the community is saying about your issue

5. Software. There is a ton of good stuff out there now--and this includes open source applications.

6. Fundraising. Sites like DonorsChoose and Kiva have changed the game: they are P2P fundraisers. Here's the future right in your face.

What am I missing? Which of these is not important? Or most important?
Let us hear from you!

Fundraising, Firefox and other tech thoughts

There's a great Fundraising Toolkit available on Techsoup....these people are very good at what they do. This is a deep and wide set of resources for getting started, networking, going after grants and individual donations. Definitely take a look.


For newbies, Techsoup is an amazing resource for all things tech--as well as lower cost software---as well as pretty good soup recipes. Seriously. Check them out.

In other news, Firefox 2.0 is out, (and available in about 3 days) and I'm looking forward to taking it for a spin. I've used Firefox for 3 years now. No crashes, no bugs, no viruses. And a much, much better product that IE. In fact, the new IE-7 has tabbed browsing, something that has been in firefox for three years. In general, I love open source software. I use Firefox, Nvu (HTML editor), Thunderbird (email) and have just started running Open Office, which is really impressive. My experience with open source is that it has been cleaner, faster, safer and more innovative, and...it's free.

I really believe that nonprofits can benefit from using open source. Philosophically it's right up our alley, the cost is right and the quality is high. I urge all my clients to try one app, then another. I understand the IT people's concern, but I can tell you I've never had a client complain.

A great repository of open source apps (some VERY technical, others for regular users) is available on SourceForge. Take a stroll through it.