Help with nonprofit technology

NTEN--the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network has a series of regional conferences around the country this year. The offer great resources for nonprofit staff and for people who help nonprofit organizations with technology.

Regional conferences left in 2004 include Washington DC, Chicago, Boston and Phoenix. I'll be at the Chicago conference on October 19th.

More information is at http://www.nten.org.

sheldon

Yes nonprofit organizations can help get out the vote.

Please join the Minnesota Participation Project's launch of the November 2 Nonprofits Get Out The Vote drive. Have cake, enjoy music, and get free t-shirts, buttons, training, and materials that your nonprofit can use to Get Out The Vote on Election Day!

Outside of Minnesota? check http://www.november2.org/

Blogging for nonprofit organizations

Here are a couple resources for people in nonprofit organizations who are thinking about starting a blog. First, a couple points:

• A blog should be part of a communications and marketing plan. How will it fit in with your other communications?
• How will the blog help you address your mission? (Remember your mission? It's why your nonprofit organization exists.)
• It is going to take time to do. Not a lot of time. But with the typical overworked staff of nonprofit organizations, you have to think about it.

Resources:

• Techsoup--probably the best resource for technology information for nonprofit organizations--has great info on blogs. Just go to http://www.techsoup.org and type "blog" (without the quotation marks) in the search window.
• For a more business focus, specifically how blogs can help customer relations, check this site. Aimed at small businesses, it has great info for nonprofits.

sheldon

Gutting HIV-prevention education in US

The CDC has issued guidelines that would gut HIV-prevention education.

According to Doug Ireland in the LA Weekly:
"These new regs require the censoring of any content including pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula, audiovisual materials and pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings), as well as advertising and Web-based info. "
For more info.

So, if you think elections are not important for nonprofit organizations, think again. For information on how nonprofits can be involved, visit the National Voice website at http://www.nationalvoice.org.

(I also have another blog that, while it is on just about anything I feel like posting, it will be concentrating on political things in the next few weeks. It is at http://www.randomstufffromsheldon.blogspot.com/)

Money is evil, get a lot of it. Sex is dirty, save it for someone you love.

Kim Klein's keynote:
The Power of Fundraising in Determining the Future of the Nonprofit Sector. (Part IV of Alliance for Nonprofit Management 2004 Annual Conference stuff)(Kim is publisher of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal)

(So why do we always need these boring, long titles in nonprofit conferences?)

Kim had some great thoughts, great lines, and great observations. Here are a few in random order (for the most part, these are not direct quotes but do get the idea across).

• In our society, we DON'T talk about things that are important. Money is one of those things. That's why people don't like to fundraise.
• Money is evil, get a lot of it. Sex is dirty, save it for someone you love.
• Nonprofits are being asked to do more and more with less and less. Pretty soon, we will be asked to do everything with nothing.
• The estate tax (what the current crop of Republicans call the "death tax") is the oldest tax in our nation. It was put in place by the founders of our nation to keep us from becoming an aristocracy.
• Fundraising is like being stoned to death with popcorn (I really don't know what that means but it sounds great).
• Why is it that foundations are fighting the efforts to restrict their overhead spending but always want nonprofits to limit their overhead (administrative) spending?
• The War on Terror has become a war on civil liberties and dissent.
• Back to not talking about money: The only reason to restrict people from talking about salaries is to keep people from seeing the discrimination involved in pay.
• Che Guevara: "Be realist, do the impossible."

sheldon