To help you find all the great NPower content you know and love, here is a handy-dandy cheat sheet:

• Miss the NPower blog? Check out The Commons, a blog that covers nonprofit technology and other important nonprofit topics such as financial management, human resources, capacity building and more.
• Looking for our tech how-tos and presentations? Check out the Technology Knowledge Center where you can keep up to date with our latest presentations and resources.
• Want to learn more about what we can do for your nonprofit? Check out our new services page.
• Interested to meet the larger blended team? Check out the 501 Commons staff page.

Finally, feel free to connect with us through social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+

NPower Northwest is now a part of the new 501 Commons blended family!

No more tech silos!

When NPower was founded in 1999, technology was something that came in boxes or required hours of writing code. While some of this is still relevant, we are also the generation of “there’s an app for that!” More and more powerful tools are ubiquitous, easy to use, and available at a low cost. This change has also been reflected in NPower’s approach to working with nonprofits and our mission to be an organization that could serve you and all your needs.

Multiplying life by the power of two

That search led us to 501 Commons. Long respected in the sector as a leader in capacity building and the first stop for nonprofit information and referrals, 501 Commons is the lemon to our lime, the peanut butter to our chocolate. By combining forces, 501 Commons can bring in volunteer consultants from the service corps, at below market rates, to help provide your nonprofit with a strategic plan, leadership training, or board development. Once in place those strategies will help streamline and prioritize your technology decisions, which means better websites, database and IT for everyone!

So what does that mean for you?

Our end goal is to make this transition as seamless and painless for our clients, supporters and you, as possible. Last week we completed the big move as we relocated to the 501 Commons offices in Lower Queen Anne. Now we are on to the larger work of merging websites, social media, databases, etc. We'll keep you updated along the way, and thank you for joining with us in this transition.

Wanna take action?

• Check out 501 Commons’ FAQ
• Read the bios of our new blended family
• Spread the word on Twitter, Tweet #501rocksnptech

It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon when Aimy, Jess, WA Service Corps VISTA members Liz, Rachael, and myself left the office early to embark on a scavenger hunt to familiarize ourselves with the local nonprofits in downtown Seattle. As relatively new VISTAs, some of us were still getting acquainted with the area we will be serving in. The experience proved to be fun and informative on many fronts. One stop had free cookies and milk! Each destination exemplified the variety of organizations within this community's nonprofit sector.

United Way of King County

Our first stop in Seattle brought us to Pioneer Square. We were greeted by Liahann Bannerman, the Volunteer Center Director of the organization. Liahann discussed with us the challenges of being a bigger player in the nonprofit sector. She also shared information on how to get more involved. United Way also hosts an annual event called “Day of Caring”, which is the largest day of volunteering in the state of Washington. This year there was a total of 12,122 volunteers from 138 companies completing 448 projects all over King County. Estimated volunteer labour was $1.3 million!

See the full details here: http://www.uwkc.org/ways-to-volunteer/day-of-caring/

Seattle Central Library

Our second stop was the beautifully designed Seattle Library (very close to United Way). The building was opened to the public in 2004. It is a true marvel of architecture and green energy. Even the escalators were unique! While we didn’t have time to peruse the shelves, we achieved our goal of climbing to the top and taking a picture of the lobby downstairs.

Library view from top floor

Springwire

Our third stop was a bit more difficult to find, as it was tucked away in a corner office in a building on Denny Way. But we were rewarded with its rebranded appearance, their office dog, and a fun set of employees; making this destination one of my favorites. We got to learn more about a nonprofit that focuses on one of the foundations of escaping the poverty cycle: communication.

You can learn more here : http://springwire.us/seattle/

We found it!

Peg (Deputy Director) tweeting about our visit.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

This may be the last stop on our scavenger hunt, but certainly not the least. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is focused locally on Early Learning, Family Homelessness, and Community Grants. The visitor center was a perfect example of how to make volunteering fun. The center was filled with movies, quizzes, and other interactive media that allowed us to learn how the philanthropic foundation supports its community. Definitely an uplifting way to end the work day!

For more information, visit their site: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx

Over 8 billion dollars in grants - yes, billions, with a “B” - in North America since 1999!

- Alex Green

What challenges have you faced in transitioning from college to a professional environment?

Jess - I think my biggest challenge was simply moving here to Seattle. I grew up in Massachusetts and deciding to move to a city 3000 miles away - one that I had never been to prior to starting HandsOn Tech, might I add - is quite the risk in itself. College is interesting because you have a bunch of people coming together for the common goal of graduating. I had classes with a lot of different people. We received similar educations and upon graduating, we all separated to go do different things. With the professional world, you have the opposite scenario: people from many different backgrounds and educations come together to work towards a similar goal. It's fascinating to see that change. That mostly answers the question, right?

Alex - Transitioning from college to a professional work environment has been an eye-opening experience thus far. It has been refreshing to move into an office with a group of people that all share the common goal of helping the community. Knowing this has been rewarding in itself, but it has also been great to meet everyone who works here. One thing that I have known about this nonprofit in particular is the great diversity of background and skill that exists here.

Aimy - The greatest challenge has been adjusting to a new workplace culture. When settling into an established organization, you want to learn about that organization and figure how you can fit into that structure.

What do you expect to face that is unique to a nonprofit environment?

Jess - Recognizing the value of resources, definitely. With nonprofits, any money spent on new tools is money not going towards the target audience of the nonprofit. Any time I spend with the nonprofits is time they aren't spending engaging with and helping the community. See a pattern coming up? While being wasteful is never good, being wasteful when it comes to nonprofits is especially damaging.

Alex - Being in a nonprofit that specializes in community capacity building, I expect a lot of our unique challenges to be with managing our client and volunteer relationships. What can we be training them that is relevant and will help them help the community and themselves? What strategies will we need to employ to reach out to nonprofits that don’t know about us? How can we do our best service in order to create the biggest impact on the community? I hope to be a part of some exciting changes that will continue to affect all nonprofits in Washington and more

Aimy - The process of incorporating changes within the dynamics of a nonprofit is unique. The information we will bring to these organizations call for new practices that challenge previous norms. Approaching these situations by highlighting its benefits to our nonprofits is important to ensure sustainability.

What new learning or skills do you hope to gain through your year as a VISTA?

Jess - Networking would be the big one. I'm in a new community and I want to get more involved. Learning how to reach out to people and organizations and to figure out how to keep up communication and stay in touch would be fantastic.

Alex - I am really hoping to learn more about hardware infrastructure in particular. Having had nonprofit experience from college, I have had first hand experience of how a poor technological infrastructure can affect an organization negatively. By the end of my Vista term, I hope to be more experienced in evaluating a company and how they are using technology effectively to store data, organize clients, and communicate with the rest of the community. I am also interested in researching social media as a means of community outreach.

Aimy - I hope this year will teach me about the inner workings of a nonprofit. As a technical writer, I would like to have the opportunity to practice the various promotional and instructional formats within tech writing through the context of a nonprofit environment. I hope HandsOn Tech, will develop my knowledge of technology and my understanding of nonprofit structure.

- Alex Green, Aimy Enriquez, Jess Fraser

The new VISTAs with their very own built-in captions!

Who are you?

My name’s Jess. I graduated from Boston University this past May with a degree in Biomedical Engineering and decided to spend this year volunteering in Seattle.

Hello my name is Alex. I recently graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in psychology. I decided to spend a year in service in the great Northwest state of Washington.

This is Aimy, I am a recent graduate from Western Washington University. I have focused my studies heavily on Creative Writing and Technical Communications. I am excited to learn about nonprofits in the Seattle area and use my skills to further their missions this coming year.

Why did you choose AmeriCorps? What drove you to HandsOn Tech?

Jess - When I picked my major, I knew one thing - I want to help people. I want to help create something that will actually matter and will make a real impact on people. Unfortunately, a lot of people I knew would see “biomedical engineer” and think not about the people and the potential applications, but “money.” By volunteering, I knew I would be surrounding myself with people who had similar ideals and goals to myself: people who wanted to make a difference and were willing to take the initiative to get something done. In terms of HandsOn Tech specifically, well, I did get an engineering degree. I like tech-related things and my background helped to show me all the capabilities of technology. I thought it would be great to be able to work with other nonprofits and help them utilize all of the resources that are available to them.

Alex - I chose AmeriCorps because I wanted to be working in an environment that had the shared goal of social change. I found it necessary to make a switch from something involved in just making money for its own sake. AmeriCorps was also an excellent opportunity to relocate to a whole new city, something which I have hoped to do since I started college. Paired with a degree in psychology and a tech background, I am hoping to make a real impact as a capacity builder that will be able to help improve technology in the non-profit sector of the northwest.

Aimy - I learned about AmeriCorps through an info session at my college. The experience inspired me to think seriously about the program. I knew I wanted to use my degree towards meaningful work but wasn’t sure how I would approach it. AmeriCorps seemed to be the most natural step for me as a college grad to gain experience while serving in my community. I feel HandsOn Tech is the best fit in regards to my interest and professional goals.

- Alex Green, Aimy Enriquez, Jess Fraser

Check back tomorrow for the second part of this FAQ, where the new team talks about challenges, expectations and what they are most excited to learn about!

Photo Source: Flickr user laffy4k

September Nonprofit Training Line-up

Public Relations Workshop - How to Get Noticed - Everyone loves free publicity right? Well who better to tell us how it’s done than Brown Paper Tickets, a local online event and ticketing company. From press releases to pitches that actually work, check out this local workshop [9/11] chock full of good advice. Cost: FREE

Quickbooks Made Easy (for Nonprofits) - With one day in Portland [9/11] and one in Seattle [9/12], this all-day workshop will sharpen your accounting skills and help you get the most out of this popular software for Nonprofits. Don’t want to stay the whole day? No worries, the workshop will be divided into an Essentials level morning session and a more Advanced level afternoon session. Cost: $99 for the whole day (Lunch included!) or $65 for part I and $45 for part II

Social Fundraising and Online Donations: Myths & Realities - NTEN is at it again with a great lineup of free webinars including this one by the whip smart (and hilarious!) Claire Kerr. Despite your Facebook page’s inability to instantly double your online donations, social media still plays a vital role in online fundraising. Register for this webinar [9/20] to learn about the tools & techniques that will help your nonprofit in the coming months. Cost: FREE

Fundraising: Getting Started the Right Way for Charities & Nonprofits - With over 30 years of experience as a fundraising consultant, Dr. Stuart Grover will cover topics ranging from why philanthropy tops transactions, why donor loyalty is so important and more. Beyond just a how-to approach, this workshop [9/24] will dive into issues of ethics and responsibilities. Cost: $10 (goes to defray the cost of lunch)

Dot Your i’s, Cross Your t’s: Editorial Style, Stylesheets, and Documentation for Grantwriters - Were you confused by all the complicating formatting of your last grant? The Puget Sound Grantwriters Association is here to help! This workshop [9/28] will take a comprehensive look at different styles and help you come up with a personalized style sheet and template for your organization’s next funding proposal. Cost: $75 for members, $95 for non-members

Can’t make it to any of those events?

Check out the plethora of presentations, webinar recordings and more in our Knowledge Center. From Google Analytics to Content Curation, we cover a range of tech topics and of course it’s all available from any location and for the low low cost of $0 dollars!

- Abby Nafziger

Whether we work in the nonprofit sector or serve it (as a consultant, bookkeeper, etc.), we’re a “driven” lot. That’s not to suggest that those exclusively in the private sector don’t have aspirations.  But working toward a mission and a sustainable bottom line – versus just the latter – does something to inspire the desire to succeed. Simply put, there’s a “passion” for the cause.

So where does a nonprofit professional or service provider go for learning and networking opportunities – key ingredients for success? Well, if you’re like most people, you could search your “in” and “junk mail” boxes for the endless stream of promos for seminars, conferences, social events, and the like.  Some of these are from groups you know. But others leave you wondering, “Is this a reputable org., one with a record of quality and real understanding of nonprofits?”

Check out all the exciting events coming up this fall!

To help nonprofit professionals find events they can trust, 501 Commons launched the Featured Events calendar last fall. The calendar and its events are:

• Affiliated with individuals and orgs. in 501 Commons' Statewide Nonprofit Resource Directory, so you know there’s a history of successful sector experience and know-how
• Well-organized and quickly skimmable
• Current and updated many times a week
• Numerous and diverse by nature (e.g., social media & computer trainings, fundraising workshops, award events, and more)
• Sometimes free, although they can cost a fee
• From all over the State…and a few beyond Washington’s borders

Google Analytics tells us that this webpage is a very popular one. Find out why and start looking for your next professional development engagement. Then, bookmark the calendar and check back often.  After all, isn’t it time to grow yourself, your network, and your nonprofit?

- Matt Fikejs, Information & Referral Program Manager, 501 Commons

Nonprofit Tech Trainings

• Facilitated 37 different tech trainings with community partners such as Google, Microsoft, Volunteer Administrators Network, Help Attack, Knowledge as Power and many more.
• Trained 224 individuals representing 170 unique nonprofits from the Seattle area on a range of nonprofit tech topics.
• Created 18 Slideshare presentations that were viewed 4,397 times and downloaded 20 times during the past 8 months. Our 3 most popular topics were Choosing a Database [705 views], Social Media Content Curation [575 views] and Free & Low Cost Tools for Nonprofits [499 views]

Tech Assessments & Strategy Maps

• Worked one-on-one with 13 nonprofits in our cohort model to provide technology assessment and strategy maps.
• Provided 3 hands-on trainings on Social Media, Google programs for nonprofits and Websites for nonprofits, with 36 total attendees.

Figuring out the future

Can you guess which one is from 2011 and which one is from 2012?*

As our team transitions into new things, we thought we would each share a bit about what’s coming up:

Abby - This year ended up being not only a chance to improve my tech training skills, but a crash course in online communications & social media, event planning support and much more. I am excited to be taking those skills on with me to a job at 501 Commons where I will join their Community Engagement team and help shepherd next year’s HandsOn Tech VISTAs in year 2 of this project.

Elissa - My work at HandsOn Tech allowed me to strengthen my training and research skills and reinforced my interest in data management. I am thankful for the opportunities I had to talk with the NPower Northwest consultants, attend classes and webinars on nonprofit technology topics, and connect with the Seattle Salesforce Nonprofit Users Group. I am thrilled to report that I just accepted a job with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at UW as a data indexer!

Stephen - This year has been a great opportunity to become acquainted with Seattle, learn and work with the nonprofit sector, and teach myself new skills. I’m currently looking at software development positions and perhaps one or two computer science courses at the University of Washington.

Thank you to all the many folks in the nonprofit tech community who have attended our trainings, helped us learn, signed up for our cohort and generally helped us figure out this crazy nonprofit world. We are sure we will see many of you around town in the coming months.

- Abby Nafziger, Elissa Thomas & Stephen Eggers

*Top photo is from our very first day at NPower back in August of 2011 and the bottom was taken just this afternoon (Aug 2012)when we decided to re-create that fateful day

This is a follow-up to our more general re-cap yesterday of NTEN’s Nonprofits + Data Summit last week in Seattle. Elissa attended a morning session entitled, “Taming the Data Monster,” presented by Nam-ho Park, Regional Director for West Coast Operations at Forum One. Here is her recap of what she learned...

Data is playing an ever-increasing importance in how nonprofits tell their stories, demonstrate successes, and provide context for the problems they are solving. Large and complicated data sets can be bulky and unwieldy, however, and many people are apprehensive about approaching them -- especially if they don’t have a technical background -- despite the potential benefit for their organizations.

Nam-ho Park gave a flawless presentation on how to think about data and how beginners can learn to communicate statistics and research findings to create a clear and compelling narrative.

6 ways to tell your story with data:

• Speak with numbers
• Reveal change
• Focus on the story
• Provide context
• Let users explore, discover, and control
• Let users tell your story

charity: water is a nonprofit that is highly effective at telling their story through publishing statistics. Lots of nonprofits are now paying more attention to numbers and highlighting them on their front page to demonstrate a measurable impact of their work. You can see the numbers change over time, too, which can be encouraging for donors who want to see progress.

A good question to ask, especially if your organization’s programs are not so cut-and-dry: “What is the tweetable version of your story?” Park pointed to an example of one of his clients who conducted research on a school system in an under-resourced, rural district of Appalachia. The 30-page report was not very accessible to the public, but the information was important and needed to be understood and communicated. Summing up the results in one sentence and creating infographics that capture the meaning behind the data is a great help in promoting the research. Numbers can be difficult to understand when not presented in context without other visuals to aid in comprehension.

caption: which is easier to understand?

3 simple ways to get started

• Get your staff excited
• Find your story
• Put the players together

For inspiration:

• Information is Beautiful
• Flowing Data

Some tools to check out:

• Pentaho
• IBM Many Eyes
• Tableau

The presentation slides are not yet posted on NTEN’s website, but a similar version can be found on slideshare.

- Elissa Thomas

10 Rules of Engagement - Karen Uffleman, Groundwire

Karen spoke eloquently about the process of building engagement and outlined her 10 rules as follows:

1. Understand your theory of change
2. Identify your key audiences
3. Know what you want them to do
4. Know what they want from you
5. Have a plan for what’s next
6. Use an engagement framework
7. Use an engagement platform
8. Don’t forget the middle of your pyramid
9. Love your data
10. Constituents = friends

One highlight from Karen’s talk (in addition to her brilliant Star Trek reference) was her reminder to know what your audience values and would be willing to pay for, even if you currently provide it for free. This can be a helpful reminder in the world of online communications.  For example, if your donor newsletter is only getting a 3% open rate, it is probably not considered valuable by those on the receiving end and most likely needs a re-evaluation. Karen’s session provided an excellent foundation for the following sessions and some keen insights into ways to base engagement decisions on good data.

Making the Case for Going Open Data - Tobias Eigen, Kabissa

The next session was split into a leadership and technical track.  I attended Tobias’s talk about how Kabissa, a nonprofit network in Africa that connects people & organizations for peer-learning and information sharing, went open data. “Open data” is defined as data that “anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it -- subject only, at most, to the requirements to attribute and share-alike.. The benefits to nonprofits are three-fold and include:

• Increased transparency: Supporters often like to know what is going on inside an organization. Allowing access to one’s data helps increase access and build the common good.
• Improved data tools: Others will be able to take your data to places that don’t occur to you or that you can’t afford
• Added scrutiny - More feedback from more people leads to better and more useful data

Tobias also included these 4 steps to opening up data

1. Choose datasets
2. Apply an open license
3. Make data available
4. Make your data discoverable

Donor + Mission Management Data - Cat Monaghan, Idealist Consulting

Cat gave an excellent overview of the process that needs to occur when selecting and implementing a data management system. She also reminded us that there are options beyond just super fancy CRM database or 50 excel spreadsheets. Here were 4 examples she gave of other unified system options:

1. CRM with apps that pull data into the system: donations, volunteer signup, etc. CRM = brain, other systems equal limbs
2. CRM not connected to outside data -- data moved manually into CRM
3. CRM with integrations created for data exchange with other freestanding systems (donor management, accounting, etc.)
4. Dashboard tools connected to freestanding systems that consolidate data into an at-a-glance, visual format.

User Adoption: Building a Culture that embraces Technology - Nicholas Merriam, Building Changes

Nicholas used his experience helping his organization, Building Changes, implement Salesforce with the adoption challenge that many organizations face when trying something new. He reminded us that adoption can’t be thought of in a vacuum but needs to coordinate with all levels of strategy. Here are a few of Nicholas’ adoption philosophies:

• If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
• Consultants help, but they can’t do the internal work for you
• People support what they help create
• Technology is only as good as the process it supports
• Leadership matters, but so does everyone else

Overall, the day was jam-packed with useful information and a great chance to share the joys and tribulations of nonprofit data with peers from the field. Thanks to NTEN for sponsoring this event, John Kenyon for his skillful moderation and all the awesome presenters! Also, coming up tomorrow will be Elissa's recap of her favorite session of the day!

For your added enjoyment, here are some of our favorites from all the live-tweeting that happened during the day:

- Abby Nafziger

Thanks for those kind words, Tara! Our team wishes you and West Seattle Helpline all the best.

- Elissa Thomas

Take your mission with you

While this can be a rather obvious concept, it can sometimes be difficult to actually enact. If your primary motivation on joining Pinterest is “because my board member told me I should,” then you need to re-evaluate your social media goals. One good way to get started with this is the fantastic Social Media Audit, put together by Ash Shepherd, which will help your org take a more strategic approach to your social media efforts.

Tell your story

There are lots of ways to connect with your donors and volunteers these days. The frequency and immediacy of social media means you don’t have to wait until your annual report to share the successes (and failures!) of your year. Often times it is the small stories and slice-of-life updates that gather the most attention on social media.

Local nonprofit, Treehouse does a great job of celebrating small wins and stories.

Build relationships

An important part of any relationship is being open to both positive and negative feedback. Creating a social media page, stream, etc. opens your organization up to receiving much more feedback from your supporters and constituents. While we all hope for the positive kind of feedback, it is also important to prepare for the negative kind. Check out Socialbrite’s post about how the YMCA of Metro Chicago does just that.

Increase engagement

There are many ways of increasing engagement on various social networks, but one of the recurring refrains is:  “visuals win.” Even if your org doesn’t work to rescue baby goats, elephants and ducks, you too can find ways to include more visual content in your status updates.

For example check out this fun image recently shared by the AmeriCorps VISTA Facebook page.

Get a routine

As nonprofit professionals, social media is often just one of the many daily tasks you need to accomplish; therefore, an important part of maximizing your impact is creating a routine. Three important parts of this are:

• Curating content: My personal favorite tool for helping me find interesting and relevant content to share is through RSS and Google Reader. For more information about how your nonprofit can benefit from using this or other feedreaders, check out our blog post: 5 reasons your nonprofit should be using Google Reader.
• Creating an editorial/content calendar: Having a plan in place that takes into account upcoming events, current campaigns and integrates all your online communication channels is a great way to increase the efficiency of your social media. Shai Coggins of Vervely has a wonderful post on Content Calendar 101: Tips & Tools to serve as a guide in creating your own schedule.
• Scheduling posts: Speaking of schedules, there are many different free apps that allow you to schedule tweets.  Just this spring Facebook rolled out scheduling options for all Pages. Planning out a week’s posts at a time can be a great way to reduce your overall social media time commitment.

Ways to learn more

The full slide deck for this presentation can be found over in the Knowledge Center and if you want to pick-up the handouts used, you can find those here. Thanks again to Pacific Continental Bank for this opportunity and to all the nonprofits who attended and contributed such good questions and stories. While our summer brown bag series wrapped up today, make sure to sign up for our monthly e-news to keep up to-date with all future tech training opportunities.

- Abby Nafziger

Check out our very new Google Plus page and follow along as we dive into this new social media channel

No Page without a personal Profile

Just like Facebook, you can’t create a public Page without first having a personal Profile. Thankfully, these two accounts won’t be linked publicly and even more important to nonprofit orgs, you can add additional managers to the public Page once you create it.

You can’t circle profiles until they circle you first

However, once you do make a connection with an individual, the information you can learn from them tends to be much richer than what you can learn about individual Facebook fans (that information only extends to what the user is willing to share publicly). Also, you can also circle other Pages and connect with fellow nonprofits without them circling you first.

Google Plus brings with it SEO benefits

One of the biggest reasons for the nonprofits to be on Google Plus is new personal results section of Google Search. If a user has enabled Google Plus, they will see an option to include the information from their circled friends in their regular Google searches. Now, obviously this improvement in SEO is determined by two things:

• How much of your nonprofit’s audience is using Google Plus
• If you have built up a significant Google Plus community.

Don’t think that you can just create the page and forget about it though, you must post regular content (if not daily, than at least weekly) if you want to be found by people (and being found by people is how you get the SEO bump.

Extra Resources

Whenever looking into a new service, social media channel or tech software, I love me some research. Fortunately, as is typical in the world of nonprofit technology, there is a lot of great information out there. Here are some of the links that I found especially helpful:

• Gideon Rosenblatt makes a strong case that Google Plus is for “Information Networkers” and that it more than most of the other major social networks rewards content curators. For more explanation, check out his excellent presentation “What is Google Plus? (Really)”
• Beth Kanter is the queen of content curation and can always be counted on to provide a great one stop shop on many issues in the nonprofit technology world. Her post Google + for Nonprofits, Invest Time or Not? Nonprofit Starter Steps, highlights the reasons why (or why not) your nonprofit might want to experiment with Google Plus.
• Heather Mansfield is another savvy source of nonprofit tech tips and tricks. Her How To: Create a Google + Page for your Nonprofit tutorial provides a good overview of how to actually set up your Google Plus nonprofit page. While the layout of Google Plus has had a few changes since this was published (mainly the addition of the cover photo), her set of screenshots will get you up and running quickly.
• Speaking of cover photo, the fine folks at Social Media Today, have all the cover photo dimensions and more for your Google Plus page.
• Last but not least, Debra Askanase curates a bunch of smart Google Plus resources and helps break down two big considerations for your nonprofit before jumping into Google Plus: Summarizing Google+ Pages: the Good, the Bad, the Possible.

- Abby Nafziger

The VISTA team was invited to present on social media at the 2012 VAN Conference on June 22 at the Lynnwood Convention Center. The theme of the conference was “Embracing Change,” a timely focus. There was a packed room for our presentation, entitled “Volunteers & Social Media: Boost Communication and Build Community.”

Many organizations already know how to use Facebook and Twitter or have a basic understanding of social media, but it can be a challenge to use it strategically. The presentation was designed to provide a brief introduction for newcomers to the social media world and to provide tips and guidance for the seasoned veterans in the room. The presentation covered:

• An overview of social media, including statistics
• Strategies to select a focus for a volunteer program (community building, storytelling, or information hub)
• Tips for better engagement with volunteers using Facebook and Twitter
• Ways to measure “return on engagement”

Social media for volunteer management

Nonprofit volunteer administrators can take advantage of free tools such as Facebook and Twitter to find creative ways to engage with their organization’s volunteers. Whether seeking to attract new volunteers or acknowledging current supporters, social media channels can play an important role in boosting communication and building community with nonprofit volunteers. Here are our 6 tactics for better engagement:

1. Make it easy to help.
2. Ask questions and elicit responses.
3. Acknowledge, acknowledge, acknowledge.
4. Be responsive.
5. Be human.
6. Make or share interesting content.

Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are providing new ways to engage with a different demographic of nonprofit volunteers. Websites allow organizations to show impact and connect with constituents in visually appealing and creative ways.

The Oatmeal thanks a donor on Twitter with a hand-made cartoon

Evaluating efforts

It is impossible to measure “return on engagement” for social media outreach if there aren’t strategies in place to collect information about engagement efforts. Some types of information are easier to quantify than others, such as counting the number of “likes” your organization has received from online fans or referral traffic from other websites.

Influence is harder to evaluate, and includes things like requests to re-post your content and invitations for you or your staff to write guest blog posts. Sentiment involves the general tone of user-generated content on your social media channels.

Helpful tools for measuring return on engagement for volunteer management are the sames we recommend for other forms of nonprofit outreach:

• Google Analytics to measure web traffic
• HootSuite and SocialBro for Twitter
• Facebook Insights

Interested in more free tech trainings?

If you didn’t make it to the social media for volunteer administrators training or would like additional information, here are some relevant training seminars we’ll be hosting in the near future:

• July 11 - Google Analytics Brown Bag
• July 18 - Search Engine Optimization
• July 25 - Social Media Intermediate Level
• August 1 - Facebook 101

If you’re looking for the slides from the VAN Conference presentation, head over to our Knowledge Center.

- Elissa Thomas

Elissa demonstrates our commitment to having lots of yummy food at our meetings.

A big thank you to all our pilot cohort participants

We’d like to give a shout out to the 13 nonprofits that we were able to work with, which included one (or more) interviews and Q & A sessions regarding technology and up to three hands-on technology trainings:

• Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets
• Southeast Seattle Education Coalition
• Eastside Legal Assistance Program
• Seattle RecTech
• Helping Link
• Hunger Intervention Program
• Literacy Council of Seattle
• Friends of the Children King County
• Youth Media Institute
• Communities in Schools of Kent
• Communities in Schools of Puyallup
• West Seattle Helpline
• Housing Development Consortium

Lots of helpful feedback

Since this was our pilot program, we asked for some feedback such as what worked, what was helpful, what possible next steps were, and what didn’t work so well. Here is what a few participants had to say:

• “The tech assessment gives us concrete recommendations that we can take to our Board of Directors. The various trainings were also helpful in the fact that they helped us better understand our options as far as social media, websites, etc.”
• “Our organization enjoyed the workshops that were provided and wish there were more. The Hands On Tech staff were very friendly, approachable, and happy to help the best way they could in answering our questions.”

Overall the biggest suggestion for improvement was an increase in the number of trainings and more help with implementation of various technology solutions. While there are changes we hope to make in the next iteration of this project, we were happy to receive a lot of positive feedback. We’ll be passing all of information on to the next round of AmeriCorps VISTAs, so that next year’s cohort program will rock.

Common problems and common solutions

We also spent some time discussing common problems and solutions facing nonprofits with small budgets that we discovered as we went through the technology assessment and wrote the strategy maps for each nonprofit. It was a little surprising to discover the same pain points among nearly all of the nonprofits, and many solutions are free or low-cost and involve a relatively small time investment. Check out our slides in the Knowledge Center if you’re interested!

Stay tuned for information about next year's program

If you didn’t get a chance to participate in the cohort during our first round, stay tuned as 3 brand new AmeriCorp VISTAs will be arriving in late August to continue serving the community and helping nonprofits with technology solutions.

Missed any of our previous updates?

• Announcing our AmeriCorps free tech assessment project
• Kicking off the tech assessment project
• Tech assessment social media training re-cap
• Tech assessment Google for Nonprofits training re-cap
• Tech assessment Websites for Nonprofits training re-cap

- Stephen Eggers, Elissa Thomas, Abby Nafziger