Web Technology Articles
Building a Great Web Site to Raise Money & Awareness for Your Organization
Click to read the full article
Building Online Community (Transcript)
On Wednesday, August 15th, the NRC conducted an "Ask the Expert" e-training session. David Mimeles of Doubleknot, led the session on "Building an Online Community." Intermediaries and e-newsletter subscribers from across the country participated. Couldn't make the session? No problem! Check the transcript below.
Click to read the full article (PDF)
Building Successful Online Communities
The advent of the Internet has helped people with similar values, beliefs and goals participate in nonprofit online community organizations and associations without regard to geographic limits. With this growth in the number of Web sites catering to and competing for an increasingly sophisticated online public, there is greater expectation regarding the value provided by your organization's Web site.
Click to read the full article (PDF)
Easy Ways to Improve Email Response
It's estimated that 90 percent of prospective donors don't even open the envelopes of direct mail appeals. Yet, according to Rick Christ, senior advisor at npadvisors.com in Warrenton, Va., comparatively little time and effort is put into testing outer envelopes. The same is true with email.
Click to read the full article
Fourteen Ways to Write Winning Email
With millions of messages being sent everyday, email has become one of the most important means of communication today. And, it will grow in use in the future. However, with the ease and inexpensive nature of email has also come some misuses.
We have become sloppy in our writing. When sending a message to a friend or relative, that doesn't usually matter. However, in our work that could be a big deal. Sending an email message really is the only way some of us are being judged. You should always try to send messages of the highest quality, both in content and style.
Click to read the full article
How Good is Your Web Site? How Do You Know?
Even if you're an Internet novice, creating a quality Web site can be a fairly straightforward issue. But when you put it all together, does it make sense? Can your visitors find what they need? Is there a reason for them to return?
Chances are you're too close to your own site to look at it with an impartial eye. Yet evaluating the clarity and usability of your Web site is a critical step toward optimizing your organization's online presence.
Click to read the full article
Internet Fundraising - CAN-SPAM for Nonprofits: When the Rules Apply
CAN-SPAM is the federal law regarding the sending of any unsolicited email. And it applies to nonprofit and faith-based organizations.
Does your organization sell merchandise or deliver commercial offers from corporate sponsors to your donors or members? If so, email messages containing such offers are subject to these rules.
Click to read the full article
|
On the Web, Making the Most of Search Engines
The five most common activities performed by Americans online are email, product/service information research, checking the news, playing games and product/service purchases.
This information is provided by Catherine Seda in her book Search Engine Advertising. Although the book is directed primarily to for-profits, it offers faith- and community-based organizations a range of useful information about using search engines to increase awareness and cash flow.
Click to read the full article
Online Fundraising
"The Internet has forever altered how nonprofits will engage with their constituents"
-John P. Morgridge, Chairman of the Board
Cisco Systems
With this issue of NRC e-News, we launch "Tech Talk," a once-a-month discussion of how you can use the Internet to build your organization, expand your reach and deliver vital services. There couldn't be a more appropriate launch topic than the issue of online fundraising.
Online fundraising reached an estimated $2 billion in 2003, more than 60% above the amount raised in 2002, according to an online survey of readers of "The NonProfit Times". There was also a projected greater than 55 percent increase in the percentage of organizations that attempted to raise money online when the first half of 2003 is compared to 2002.
Click to read the full article
Technology Donations
Looking for rock-bottom prices for refurbished technology? Check out the Charity Advantage, a program of the American Nonrofit Technology Alliance. The Alliance is a large nonprofit technology initiative in the United States, open to 20,000 nonprofits, with members receiving a host of technology products and services at no charge. There are no membership fees.
Ten Tips for Raising Money Through Email
By Nick Allen.
Click to read the full article
Use Email to Build Your Organization (Article)
Email is the killer app on the web! Without a doubt, the use of email is the more commonly used and highest responded to use of the Web. Of the 63% of U.S. citizens who use the Web regularly, a full 93% read email nearly every day.
There is such a thing as the "Email Savvy Organization" according to Michael C. Gilbert of The Gilbert Center, and it's possible to identify the systems and practices that characterize it.
Click to read the full article
Using Email to Build Your Organization (Transcript)
Email can be a vital tool in building the reach and scope of your organization. Read the transcript of a 60-minute training on this issue.
Click to read the full article
Weblogs:
The following article describes weblogs (commonly known as blogs) and presents ideas on how they may be useful for the work of nonprofits. As with any new Web tool, tech organizations are first to embrace it, with predictions of transformation and efficiency. However, like other new technologies, blogs will face their own test of time, with the potential benefits being weighed against the financial and human cost of acquiring and maintaining the new system.
Click to read the full article
If you have trouble reading this e-newsletter due to formatting issues, or visible HTML code, or if you would like to discuss content-related issues, please contact Bill Freeman, NRC e-Newsletter Editor at wjf@daremightythings.com.
Hypertext links and other references to non-CCF products and services are provided for information only and do not constitute endorsement or warranty, express or implied, by the CCF, DHHS, or U.S. Government, as to their suitability, content, usefulness, functioning, completeness, or accuracy.