1 JUNE 1, 2013 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.thenonprofittimes.com

S P E C I A L R E P O R T: H O T W E B S I T E S

Doctors are always asked which specialistthey would entrust with a familymember. Chefs are asked where theylike to go to eat. Few will admit to the

guilty pleasure of watching Duck Dynasty, Hard-core Pawn, Storage Hunters or reruns of Leave ItTo Beaver.

It is in that spirit that The NonProfit Times askedsix nonprofit technologists where they like to hang

out on the Web. When you are home alone andwandering the Web, you migrate to the comfort-able and to what you find entertaining.

Here’s what is remarkable about how these tech-nologists answered. It was the straightforward,basic, in-your-face sites to which they returned.They know where to go to be wowed. They don’tgo there on their own time.

Here’s what they had to say. – Paul Clolery

NONPROFIT TECHIES FINDCOMFORT IN THE FAMILIAR

A Lap Of The Internet:Tech Sites For NonprofitsBY CHRIS BERNARD

T echnology changes fast, doesn’t it? Andthere are so many pieces to it that it’sdifficult to keep up with any one of

them, much less all of them. But in my role atIdealware, I’d be remiss if I didn’t try. To thatend, there are a number of sites I visit regularlyto keep up to speed on the ever-evolving worldof technology, especially as it applies to the non-profit sector.

Here’s what a typical lap of the Internet lookslike for me.

A number of individuals put a lot of time andeffort into writing about technology for nonprof-its, and I like to visit their sites regularly.

On Beth Kanter’s blog (www.bethkanter.org),some of the sector’s leading experts share theirvoices on wide-ranging topics from philanthropyto social media, all from the perspective of how nonprofits can use different technologies and medi-ums to better reach and serve the people they need to, from volunteers to funders to constituents.

John Haydon has a blog, too (www.johnhaydon.com), where he discusses social media for non-profits. He’s always thoughtful and smart as hell, and I always learn something. Marc Pitman, the“Fundraising Coach,” writes about that topic on his site (http://fundraisingcoach.com), and oftentouches on the technology that can help. He’s also a really good guy.

Over at TechSoup (www.techsoup.org), I scan the blog for news and information about technol-ogy, and usually learn a thing or two about specific tools. If you work at a nonprofit and you’re notfamiliar with TechSoup and the discounted prices they offer on software, you’re missing out.

I usually visit a few straight-up tech sites that aren’t nonprofit-related, but that cover technol-ogy that is useful to everyone, including the people doing the boots-on-the-ground work at non-profit organizations. Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com) and Engadget (www.engadget.com) are good,as are ArsTechnica (http://arstechnica.com).

Tech is not the goal -- it’s just one of the tools we can use to reach the goal. For nonprofits, thegoal is changing the world, right? That’s why so many of us spend so much of our time workingwithin the sector. It’s useful to read about all the great things nonprofits are doing to make the worlda better place, so I check the latest news at The NonProfit Times (www.thenonprofittimes.com).Technology on its own is useless without context. I also read the technology sections of the New YorkTimes (http://nytimes.com) and Boston Globe (http://boston.com) for information about how the for-profit world is using technology, because much of it applies.

If technology isn’t your passion but a necessary evil, don’t worry. You don’t have to keep up withtechnology -- just with the people who do. NPT

Chris Bernard is the editorial and communications director of Idealware in Portland, Maine.

3 JUNE 1, 2013 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.thenonprofittimes.com

S P E C I A L R E P O R T: H O T W E B S I T E S

BY AMY SAMPLE WARD

Ihave many websites that I subscribeto via RSS or even visit directly regu-larly. Some are pretty typical: blogs,

news sites, and so on. There’s one thatdoesn’t quite fit the mold, though. Itmight not be the sleekest design or thefanciest set-up, but I am a regular readerof PostSecret.com. Every Sunday I visitthe site to read the new postcards se-lected from many mailed in each week.

I go back every week for a few reasons.First, I love the very real sense of commu-nity that Post Secret has developed overthe years. (I’m one of many who visit thesite every Sunday). You see postcards thatreference cards sent in previously, postedemails or responses to particularly pas-sionate or poignant postcards, and evenstories of the impact the community hasmade on a single person’s journey.

It is a great reminder that even in a

very simple design, if the community isthe center of your work, you can still letthe community shine through.

PostSecret.com is also a fun juxtapo-sition of handmade objects that are ex-tremely personal and real, existingonline where anyone can browse them.You can click on an image and see thenear-to-real-life scanned size of someoneelse’s postcard. When organizationsthink about storytelling online, I think itis important to find ways to bridge theon and offline world. That’s what bringsus closer together.

The thing that really keeps me goingback, though, is that the content really isall new every Sunday. I know that thereare new postcards waiting for me to readand I make sure to visit the site. Someorganizations have created similarschedules with their communities, stick-ing to a content calendar and creatingexpectation and engagement with thecommunity. For example, Idealist.orgposts discussion questions about non-profit jobs (hiring, looking for jobs,working in the sector) every Monday.Some community members might onlybe there for the question, but they knowwhen it is coming and can participate.It’s the same with PostSecret.

I’m not sure I’ve thought so muchabout PostSecret.com until now, butfrom the community visibility, on and of-fline connection, and regularly updatedcontent, I think it’s a great example tohighlight. NPT

Amy Sample Ward is membership direc-tor of the Nonprofit Technology Network(NTEN), an independent blogger and acontributing editor to The NonProfitTimes.

PostSecret -- For AllThe World To See

JUNE 1, 2013 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.thenonprofittimes.com 4

S P E C I A L R E P O R T: H O T W E B S I T E S

BY ALLISON FINE

I love Meetup.com. I know it’s not a sexy choice of this week’s glittering, mind-blowing FourSquare meets Pinterest multi-platform app. But, it continues to be one of the most importantsocial developments of the past 10 years.

I met Meetup’s founder, Scott Heiferman, in 2004 when he was just getting started. Meetup is awebsite that enables people to self-organize online around their passions, hobbies and interestsand meet locally to discuss politics or knit together or kayak. As one of his first successes, Scott’sorganizing platform gained traction by enabling supporters of Howard Dean’s candidacy for presi-dent to self-organize local efforts.

Meetup perfectly fit a need: It was free,easy-to-use, and allowed unmet people to self-organize when and how they wanted. It wascompletely counterintuitive at the time to theconventional wisdom that people were afraid ofmeeting strangers and didn’t have the time andenergy or interest in self-organizing.

Yahoo and Google then created Meetup-likefeatures. Well, there’s the end of Meetup, Ithought. But Meetup continued to grow expo-nentially in the number of meetups organizedaround the country and the number of people participating in them.

And then Meetup announced it would start to charge organizers a subscription fee for using thesite. Once again, I imagined Meetup’s death knell. Yet, once again I was proved wrong. Meetup con-tinued growing at a rapid pace.

There is more to learn here than just my suspect prognostication skills. Meetup is simple to use,and it’s fast and inexpensive. More importantly, it is home to a critical mass of people who are opento and enjoy meeting unmet like-minded people, and that makes Meetup a safe place to join.

This month, within fives miles of where I live, there are Meetups for people interested in attach-ment parenting, for kayakers, wedding and event professionals, motorcyclists, meditation, single les-bians, the Tea Party, ballroom dancing and photography. That’s just a sampling. There are many more.

Once people come together because of one shared interest, it is likely that there are additionalareas of mutual interest. Maybe someone else has a daughter interested in botany school, and an-other bird watcher had a breast cancer scare last year. This is a community – a group of peoplewho connected online, met on land and now care about one another. It is a source for a new kind oflocalness, the kind that used to be generated by bridge clubs or being a member of a church, butones that aren’t bound by agendas, bylaws, boards, annual dues, committees, or fundraisers.Meetup makes us free to connect with other people in real, on land, and meaningful ways first be-cause of similar interests and hobbies, and then simply because of our shared humanity. NPT

Allison Fine is a senior fellow at Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action and is co-author of the best-selling The Networked Nonprofit, and author of the award-winning Momentum: Igniting SocialChange in the Connected Age.

Meeting Up With PeopleOf Like Interests

BY DANIELLE BRIGIDA

When confronted with thequestion, “What is your fa-vorite website?,” I struggle. As

senior manager for social strategy forNational Wildlife Federation, I visit thou-sands of sites each week and rely heavilyon multiple resources to do my job well.I love many of them, but it’s not actuallyany one particular news, company or or-ganization website site that gets my di-rect traffic every day.

My favorite site that consistently keepsme going back for more is my RSS (RealSimple Syndication) reader, Feedly.com,which aggregates information from my fa-vorite sites into one place.

There are four things that keep megoing back to Feedly (or an RSS Reader):

1. Personalized Organization: Mostwebsites don’t let you control how yousee their content, but on Feedly (and

other RSS readers) I am allowed to cre-ate folders that organize how I see alarge number of feed subscriptions. Ialso draw inspiration for social mediaupdates from NWF.org content andother content available on the Web. Tostay sane in this endeavor, I tend to pullmy information from multiple sourcesand organize sites by topic or with extracontext.

2. Monitoring Mentions: Part of myjob is to pay attention to where NationalWildlife Federation and our brands arementioned online by subscribing tosearch engine results to certain key-words. This is vital in helping me notonly see what blogs we are mentionedon, but also in certain social media sites.Without visiting my aggregator, I wouldhave to do a lot of this manually.

3. Access to Multiple References in

One Place: I was always taught to relyon many references, and I find that hav-ing access to multiple science, environ-mental and outdoor blogs in one placeis too good to be true. This is constantlyuseful for me when I’m looking for con-tent to share, comment on, or get in-spired by.

4. Time Saving: There are times forexploring sites through navigation, butmostly I’m a search bar kinda gal. I usu-ally need to reduce the amount of time Ispend looking for content or relevantnews. I rely heavily on Feedly to deliverme content in one place that will be rel-evant and helpful. It is for this reason Isimply cannot resist logging into Feedlyevery day. NPT

Daniella Brigida is senior manager ofsocial strategy and integration at the Na-tional Wildlife Federation in Reston, Va.

Feedly -- Satiating TheHunger For The Web

5 JUNE 1, 2013 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.thenonprofittimes.com

S P E C I A L R E P O R T: H O T W E B S I T E S

BY LIZ EDDY

Irecently caught myself looking atFacebook photos from a vacation in2009 of a friend of a friend. How I

got there was a blur. I couldn’t help butfeel slight shock at how quickly I wassucked into the black hole that is the In-ternet. I decided to be proactive andbookmark pages I could get lost in andnot feel totally lame about. It was pro-ductive procrastination, if you will.

DonorsChoose.org is in my bookmarks. In the time it takes me to walk to the

subway, I am able to support a publicschool classroom with the supplies theyneed with the little money I have to

spare as a young New York City profes-sional. The process is quick, transparentand meaningful. When a school reachesits goal, DonorsChoose.org sends thematerials straight there. Each donor isthen taken on a personalized experiencethat makes a donation feel valuable andappreciated. The return is even worthhanging on your fridge.

Three reasons I love this site:1. Closed loop. They do a fantastic

job of never having any dead ends.When you sponsor a project, you hearback from that teacher. It is a terrific ex-perience. Each teacher sends a letterwith insight into exactly where your do-nation went and how it has directly im-

pacted the students. They leave you withno questions -- so refreshing. Plus, if youdonate $50 or more you get hand-writ-ten notes from the students. Honestly,there is nothing cuter or way more re-warding than that. Not only are you sup-porting a class somewhere in thecountry, but you get to know each stu-dent and teacher personally.

2. Testing. It might not be apparentto everyone, but those guys are a/b test-ing everything. It’s pretty impressive tosee the minor changes they make everyday that lead to increased conversionpoints and donations. They have simpli-fied the process and regularly update toensure the user experience is as flawlessas possible. Big props to CTO OliverHurst-Hiller for this.

3. Use of photo. It’s very visual. A pic-ture really is worth a thousand words.When you donate, you get a photo of theproject and students you supported. Youcan see their science fair or art show, aswell as all of the students who learnedand created because of your support.You are one step away from being rightin the classroom. And, you don’t feel sobad stalking these photos.

While I still love Facebook (and I’lleven admit I liked an entire album of Boophotos) I’ve added a new option to myiPhone exploration. DonorsChoose.orgwins with its specificity and simplicity. Nomatter what, they offer choice for donorsto support classrooms nationwide. Withthis clear mission, donors can feel confi-dent in their relationship with the organi-zation and have fulfilled expectationsevery single time. NPT

Liz Eddy heads up special projects atDoSomething.org in New York City.

DonorsChoose.org --It’s Back To School Time

BY MICHAEL JOHNSTON

I think my favorite nonprofit website rightnow is www.invisiblepeople.tv. It’s notthe site itself that impresses me but how

a brand has been created that meets the in-creasingly demanding requirement from thepublic -- to be authentic.

Any nonprofit is expected “to do what theysay they are going to do” and to tell their mis-sion-related stories as “close to the ground” aspossible. Mark Horvath, the founder of InvisiblePeople TV, has taken his personal experiencewith homelessness, his expert TV producer/di-rector ability, and social media commitment tocreate an amazing online presence.

More and more, the place for nonprofitsonline starts with content. Mark has made ahuge commitment to have homeless peopletell their own stories. This constant stream ofevocative, personal videos is the foundationfor the organization’s online marketing.

The contrast between Invisible People TVand other charities is obvious. The first differ-ence is the veteran oversight and directionbrought to the video content. Too many non-profits either rely on video advice/creationfrom their own staff or from outside advertis-ing agency video experts. The difference withMark is his veteran, mainstream TV experi-ence. He knows how to have video stories beauthentic, heart-felt and mission focused.

And, he has found a way to keep the con-tent fresh and never-ending. How many or-ganizations agonize about whether clientsshould tell their stories to the public? Mark’sleaped over that hurdle to the benefit of thosehelped by their own videos – and the work ofInvisible People TV.

He has taken this online video foundationand layered a strong social media presence ontop of it. Mark has made sure that his emailsolicitations, his web site, Twitter, Facebook,

and other social communities are always ac-tive and given constant new content to keepthe online community engaged.

And, back to authenticity. Mark is constantlytweeting and posting himself to keep the voiceof the organization actually his. In contrast,there are so many nonprofit organizations withsocial media content that is obviously mediatedand cultivated by professional social mediastaff who are interpreting and massaging themessage from inspiring leadership. Supporterswant to feel, and read, the actual words of lead-ership and they get that with Mark.

Finally, Mark takes his video content, socialmedia presence and connects it to new crowd-funding opportunities. He is currently askinghis community to help raise money to com-plete a broadcast quality documentary on thehomeless and to finish a homeless-themedgame to play on mobile phones. He’s using hispowerful video content and social media com-munity to raise money through indiegogo.

I think www.invisiblepeople.tv is the futureof nonprofit online success. It creates an au-thentic brand that relies on the direct storiesof clients helped (the homeless in this case) tobe the content foundation. And from that foun-dation, Mark uses his own voice in socialmedia (with video storytelling) to drive brandbuilding, community building and fundraising.

No more Soviet-style command and con-trol online marketing and fundraising. Mark’sway is the future. NPT

Michael Johnston is co-founder and presidentof HJC New Media in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

You Have To SeeInvisible People