Nonprofits and Weblogs

By Michael C. Gilbert


I continue to be baffled by how long it's taken nonprofits to catch on to blogging. In 1998, I was teaching web strategy workshops in which I described a number of strategies for failure on the web. The main advice that I offered was for nonprofits to adopt a news page format, with reverse chronological entries linking to deeper content on site and elsewhere online. It's such a simple concept, but very few nonprofits adopted it.

In my communication workshops, I still find that nearly every nonprofit organization is rather afraid of the idea of blogging. It's threatening to them to have their staff blogging, it's too much work to have their leaders blogging, and it seems irrelevant to have their stakeholders blogging. Obviously, I support all three of these blogging strategies and I think that together they represent a resurgence of a community based form of organizing, whether in support of social service or social change. But I think the vast majority of the sector isn't there yet.

The people who are paying attention are the nonprofit techies, which represents an important change. A few years ago at conferences I started asking my colleagues in the nonprofit technology field if they had a weblog. I guess I thought it was time, but people looked at me strangely, so I stopped asking. Sometime in the year or two after that, they started blogging. This is really rewarding for me personally, because among this wave of bloggers are some very thoughtful people who take a systems perspective to nonprofit technology. The online conversations that are starting around those issues are exciting.

There are a great many different possible models for nonprofit blogging. Right now, I think the highest payback for individual nonprofits is to...


For the full article:

http://news.gilbert.org/clickThru/redir/5801/15131/rms

I could not agree more.

Jack

2005 CCIR Conference presentation

Simon and I had a great time doing our presentation. We were both pleasantly surprised by the very good attendance, considering we were the last presentation on the last day of the conference. Our attendees were engaged and full of questions and comments, a pleasure to work with them.

I have posted the Powerpoint slides on my site here.. We will continue with this blog for a short while to give people a chance to try it out.

Jack

Top Ten Blog Blunders

Jakob Neilson has published a list of the top mistakes bloggers make. These include

1. No author bio.
2. No author photo.
3. Nondescript posting titles.
4. Links don't say where they go.
5. Classic hits are buried.
6. The calendar is the only navigation.
7. Irregular publishing frequency.
8. Mixing topics.
9. Forgetting that you write for your future boss.
10. Having a domain name owned by a weblog service.

Here's one in depth. For 'boss', you can read 'funder' if you like.

"9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
Whenever you post anything to the Internet -- whether on a weblog, in a discussion group, or even in an email -- think about how it will look to a hiring manager in ten years. Once stuff's out, it's archived, cached, and indexed in many services that you might never be aware of.

"Years from now, someone might consider hiring you for a plum job and take the precaution of 'nooping you first. (Just taking a stab at what's next after Google. Rest assured: there will be some super-snooper service that'll dredge up anything about you that's ever been bitified.) What will they find in terms of naïvely puerile "analysis" or offendingly nasty flames published under your name?

"Think twice before posting. If you don't want your future boss to read it, don't post."

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

Why have a corporate Blog?

Here's a discussion about corporate blogging. A lot of the material is directly translatable to the not-for-profit sphere.

http://www.corporateblogging.info/basics/why/

Follow the link for the whole article, but the top three tips are:

"Become the Expert
Position yourself and your company as the thought leader of your business.

"Customer Relationships
In a forum where your main objective not is to sell, you'll have a more personal relationship between you and your customers. Blogs are a fast way to join the customers' discussions, provide tips and insights or receive feedback.

"Media Relations
It's every PR-consultants dream to create a channel where media regularly check what you have to say, instead of media just being passive - sometimes indifferent - recipients of press releases."

Philippine Bishops ordered to blog!

"BISHOPS are never too old for high technology.

"Thus, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) announced Wednesday that it has directed every Filipino bishop to create their own blog to expand their reach to the faithful.

"As defined, a blog a Web site that contains dated entries in reverse chronological order (most recent first) about a particular topic. Functioning as an online journal, blogs can be written by one person or a group of contributors. Entries contain commentary and links to other Web sites, and images as well as a search facility may also be included.

"Mark Inigo Tallara, information officer and media relation assistant of the CBCP, said "our aim is to make every bishop accessible to the faithful, particularly to the youth that's why we want each of them to have their own blog."

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/man/2005/10/13/news/bishops.to.have.individual.online.journals.html

Web forums good for health, study finds

A study published this week by University College, London, found positive client-health outcomes for health information websites which contained internet community forums--benefits which were not apparrant for sites which contained information alone.

Here's part of the BBC's coverage of the study:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4352626.stm

"They looked at these people's use of interactive computer websites and programmes, which contained information services plus online support groups, chatrooms, or tailored advice based on a person's details, affected people with such chronic diseases.

"Interactive sites were of greater benefit to people than those with information alone, or not using sites at all.

"The researchers found such sites have largely positive effects on users, making them feel better informed and more socially supported.

"Overall, people who used such sites appeared to see improvements in the way they looked after their health and in their clinical condition."

This supports my view that online communities can be as real (in psychological terms) as any in real life.

I think this observation can be valid for more than just health information sites--many specialized I&Rs might help their clients by hosting an online forum where the members could support each other.

A summary of the study can be found here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pcps/research/ehealth/documents/infopac_study_execsummary.pdf

Preview of our Presentation

Simon and I previewed our presentation/workshop to Isabel of ISV at the Wine & Cheese event this evening and we were greatly pleased by her interest in the concepts we will be talking about tomorrow afternoon (3:00 pm in the Granville island Hotel).

We hope to see you all there.

Jack

The router is up!

We got the router up finally.

The afternoon is moving along and I will be going to the Canadian Taxonomy workshop in a while.

jack

At the Conference now!

Hello:

We have the internet cafe up and running (but not with our router yet) thanks to ISV.

So the internet cafe is now open for conference attendees, and I will try to post throughout the day.

The idea behind this blog is to show how a blog can be used to promote a non-profit organization and to inform stakeholders, colleagues and the public of what that non-profit is doing.

Jack Vickery

Introduction

We will be using this blog to demonstrate some of the ideas that will be covered in the presentation "Communicating with the Web" at the CCIR Conference Oct 24th and 25th in Vancouver BC.

We are:

Jack Vickery

Jack is the principal of Vickery Consulting a private practice consultancy in the Lower Mainland working with a variety of non-profits as system administrators, webmasters, and help develop Internet and Email Strategies to fulfill their missions.

Contact info:
Email: jack@vickeryconsulting.ca
Web: www.vickeryconsulting.ca
Telephone: 604-681-4014

Simon Ladell

Simon is the Community Education Manager for Vancouver agency the Seniors Housing Information Project, and is the former manager of Information Services with Ontario I&R service Volunteer & Information Quinte. His past includes stints in marketing, in the software industry, and writing both journalism and Science Fiction.

Contact info:
Email: simonl@seniorshousing.bc.ca
Web: www.seniorshousing.bc.ca
Telephone: 604-520-6621