On
Friday evening, I watched something amazing unfold online - all while
trying to get my kids into the bath and get their rooms ready for bed.
Saying things like, "Hang on guys, I'm trying to copy and paste some of
these tweets!" had little effect, but I couldn't help it. This was
exciting, powerful, historical - This was Beth Kanter at Gnomedex!
For me, it all started with a simple tweet from Robert Scoble providing a link to a Ustream.TV feed of Beth's presentation. Click, and I was watching Beth rocking the Gnomedex 8.0 crowd with her tales from the front lines of the nonprofit social web. She was discussing her fundraising efforts in 2006 and 2007 that were geared towards sending a Cambodian woman to college, and then it happened.
Her challenge was simple: Can this room of highly connected gnomedexers get 250 people to donate $10 by the end of the conference?
She tweeted this challenge
to the masses, and a few attendees kicked things off by donating
onstage. That's when the real-time social web flexed its muscles, and
the tweets, retweets, and donations began flying around the
Twitterverse.
At the conclusion of the 90-minute presentation,
$2,657 had been collected from 112 online donors (not to mention the
$902 in cash given onsite). The goal had been to reach $2,500 by the
end of the conference, and the real-time social web had done that (and
then some) in 90 minutes. Hello world, meet the future!
We already knew the social web could get things done, but Beth's successful experiment
demonstrated that it can be used to get things done RIGHT NOW. A well
connected online community can make things happen when called to
action, and nonprofits are in a great position to harness this power
for social change. Combined with an engaged online community, real-time
technologies like Twitter, Ustream.tv, and smart phones can be used as
an immediate system for change.
I'm glad Beth is our nonprofit tech ambassador, and that she continues to inspire anyone who will listen. I'm glad that Scoble, Chris Brogan, Danny Sullivan, Chris Pirillo
and the rest of the tech elite helped bring so much mainstream
attention to this cause. I'm glad nonprofits can use this as an example
of how emerging technology is changing fundraising forever.
In the time it took me to bathe my boys and put them to bed, a young student named Leng Sopharath was given the life-changing gift of education. That 90 minutes of furious tweeting, texting, and giving will ensure her housing, tuition, and medical bills are paid as she continues her college journey.
Is this a one-time thing that can only happen when well-connected geeks decide to make a difference, or can this be repeated by other nonprofits? I'm not sure, but I can't wait to find out. In the mean time, I'll be sure to read Because a Little Bug Went Ka-choo to my boys a few more times, and remind them that the butterfly effect actually has wings.
I don't know about you, but my iPod has an insatiable appetite for new podcasts. Not a 12,000-calorie Michael Phelps-sized appetite, but it certainly appreciates being fed useful podcasts rather than old Led Zeppelin records. OK, it likes the old Zeppelin records too...
There are bunch of nonprofit podcasts out there to feed your mind and save your commute. I subscribe to Nonprofit Jungle: Guide to Smart Communications, Nonprofit Management & Fundraising, and the CPNS-QUT-Nonprofit Podcast. Sometimes nonprofit podcasts come in other shapes and sizes, like Marc Pitman's Ask Without Fear! Radio Show. It's live the first time, but after that you can download and take each episode with you wherever you go.
Here at Blackbaud, we're filled to the brim with amazing employees and customers that have served the sector for years. We use our flagship podcast, The Baudcast, as a means of capturing this thought leadership and delivering it to the world. Every two weeks, The Baudcast brings together a panel of experts to discuss recent news, trends, and happenings in the nonprofit space. It's a fun show that I'm proud to produce, host, and edit. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's available for download at Blackbaud.com or the Itunes Music Store.
Here is a rundown of the last four episodes:
- The Baudcast, Episode 13
A fundraising-focused show featuring direct mail, list trading, data modeling, personalized touches, planned giving, attracting millennial donors, social networking, 2008 Conference for Nonprofits, NetWits Live @Portland, The United Way, and more. Participants include Chad Norman, Melanie Milonas, Jamie Holaday, Marc Pitman, and Ken Meifert (National Baseball Hall of Fame).
- The Baudcast, Episode 12
This episode's panel discusses Blackbaud NetCommunity 5.5, efficiency through integration, multi-channel messaging, BBNC API, BBNC Idea Bank, social networking, Blackbaud Delivers, NetWits Live @Portland, Socialthing, VoteTheBay.org, and more. Participants include Chad Norman, Steve MacLaughlin, Melanie Milonas, Garrett Keating (United States Naval Academy Alumni Association and Foundation), and Michael Sola (Chesapeake Bay Foundation).
- The Baudcast, Episode 11
A lively discussion on the Target Index of National Fundraising Q1 2008 findings, CAN-SPAM rule changes, the NTEN We Are Media project, PCI compliance, eTapestry in Spanish, the Kintera acquisition, the iPhone 3G, and more. Participants include Chad Norman, Steve MacLaughlin, Melanie Milonas, Jamie Holaday, and Chris Harris..
- The Baudcast, Episode 10
This episode's panel discusses the 2008 Giving USA data, generation Y working at nonprofits, the 2008 Blackbaud Higher Ed Forum, Firefox 3.0, BBNC Idea Bank, Blackbaud Interviews podcast, Reward Your Passion grants, Blackbaud customer fan video, and more. Participants include Chad Norman, Steve MacLaughlin, Melanie Milonas, and Jamie Holaday.
We're already setup for a ripping good time discussing social networking on episode 14 next week - I'm looking forward to it. I often send out tweets asking for questions while we are taping (
follow me on Twitter), so be on the lookout. I also hope to begin broadcasting the show live on
Stickam this fall.
So, keep your iPod happy and healthy by downloading some nonprofit podcasts today!
Making the decision to go with a fixed width or fluid width for your website can be agonizing. The geek in you welcomes the challenge of designing a site that fills any browser, while the marketer in you wants the absolute control over the layout afforded by fixed width design. In the end, fixed width often wins out.
Now that millions of iPhones are circulating in the wild, you need to take a look at how your site is rendering in this pocket-sized format. Ideally you should be developing a special version of your site optimized for the iPhone, but in reality you will probably only have time to tweak a few things.
One thing to look at is how many pixels you've chosen for your fixed width site. I've noticed that fixed width sites designed to support a 1024 pixel width look better than those set to support an 800 pixel width. The content fills the screen and the text is more legible (see screenies below). This might be an easy CSS change for your site, which will make it instantly more readable on the iPhone. So, if you've needed one more reason to help convince a stakeholder that a move to a wider site is needed, this just might help.
