While we wrote a brief post introducing ourselves during our first week of service at NPower, we thought a more in-depth description of our goals and overall mission for the year might be in order.

Because the AmeriCorps VISTA program never goes halfway in pursuit of its mission to “build capacity in nonprofit organizations and communities to help bring individuals and communities out of poverty,” we have some pretty ambitious goals for the year. Thankfully we're being hosted by NPower , whose mission - “to strengthen the nonprofit sector by catalyzing innovation and driving adoption of technology solutions” - dovetails nicely with our specific assignment.

So what is that work exactly? Here is a brief summary of our mission for the next 12 months:

• Coordinate one of the teams on the NPower Best Practices project in order to contribute to the creation of a model for nonprofits - a comprehensive guide that will ultimately provide invaluable assistance for decision-making (check out this post by Alison Carl White for more information).
• Toward this end, kick-start and conduct the Capacity Building Assessment of the Puget Sound region nonprofit community to develop a comprehensive assessment of organizational infrastructure for nonprofits in the area.
• Perform in-depth technology assessments for 30 local nonprofits, develop technology plans, and work to implement them.
• Cultivate relationships with skill-based volunteers from corporations, universities, and HandsOn Action Centers.
• Conduct technology trainings for community leaders and nonprofit staff.

How you can get involved

Obviously, these ambitious objectives means we are going to be busy folks!  We're going to need partnerships. If any aspect of this mission interests you, there are a number of specific ways you can plug in to our work. More details will be coming in the next few weeks:

1. If you're connected to a nonprofit organization and would like to help shape our Best Practices work and gain a glimpse into your organization’s specific technology strengths and needs, you can sign up to participate in our Best Practices Assessment Survey (more details on sign-up coming soon!).
   
2. If you have technology skills you would like to contribute, you can consider joining our team as a skills-based volunteer (more info on how to get involved will be posted on this blog as it comes available).
   
3. If you know of nonprofit or community organization staff interested in receiving technology training, you can participate in the free workshops we will be conducting this year. We would love to get your input on what kinds of tech training you or your nonprofit might be interested. Please consider filling out this short (less than 5 minutes) survey to help shape the content and location of the trainings we will be offering during the next 10 months.

A little more information about the program partners

AmeriCorps VISTA is coordinating the assignment of VISTAs and providing training and support on our mission to alleviate poverty in the United States.

HandsOn Tech is a national program focused on increasing the nonprofit sector's effective use of technology to increase community resources and improve outcomes for low-income communities.  It is an initiative on the HandsOn Network (the action arm of the Points of Light Foundation) that is in its inaugural year.  Eight teams around the country are working to “develop technology plans and create a vital infrastructure of volunteer leadership” in Atlanta, NYC, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Google has provided funding for the program, including 24 VISTA positions. All of the program staff were flown to headquarters in Mountain View, California, for a week of training on cloud computing resources and nonprofit change management.

- Abby Nafziger, Elissa Thomas, Stephen Eggers

While there's certainly no shortage of Google Analytics articles for nonprofits lately, most of them cover the foundational elements. Many of these articles provide great value for groups trying to understand Google Analytics and its strategic use. My recent favorites are:

• Five Web Reports Every Nonprofit Should Know via NetWitsThinkTank
• Google Analytics for Nonprofits Part #1, Part #2, and Part #3 via Connection Cafe

However, a few of my favorite tricks are missing so I wanted to put them together for folks looking to move a bit beyond the basics:

1) Tracking Document Downloads

For many organizations it is helpful know all the information about page visits, bounce rates, etc. However, many organizations also offer a lot of high quality resources via downloaded documents. Since these documents are not pages within the template that contains the Google Analytics code they are not captured by default. There is a way.

The best breakdown I have found to detail the process of tracking document downloads was over at the Blast Advanced Media blog. He gives a detailed breakdown of exactly what to do to track the following types of downloads on your website:

• PDF in new window
• PDF in same window
• How to automate it for your entire site (slightly more technical)

Get the nitty-gritty details over at the Blast Advanced Media blog. This site is a jackpot for those looking to get more advanced in your use of Google Analytics.

2) Annotations

There is nothing worse in metrics analysis then having that "ah-ha" moment when you make a connection between various bits of info only to come back a week later and forget what it was. Or, even worse, if you are part of a team of folks and those "ah-ha" moments never get shared until it's too late.

Enter Annotations. Annotations are notes that you can save, publicly or privately, that are associated with a particular day.

Create An Annotation

On the main dashboard click on a particular day you wish to add an annotation to and then select "Create Annotation" from the popup window.

Annotation Details

Fill in the information that you want to capture.  Remember, this is information you want to make sure makes sense later when you look back so include as much detail as you can, even a bit of interpretation not just what happened but why you think it had what impact.

Use Annotations

Whenever you include this date in the range of data in the chart the annotation will show up at the bottom of the screen.  Develop good habits around when and how to incorporate these moments of insight and action into your review and analysis process.  You do have a review and analysis process right? If not, no worries as long as you make that part of the new habits and processes you are developing.

3) Alerts

I love it when technology does the work for me. Google Analytics has the ability to track certain activities and send you an email when something significant has happened. Nothing improves efficiency like only having to go check in on my analytics when there is something significant to check in on, other than my usual monthly scan that is.

Where Are Alerts?

Alerts can be found under the Intelligence section of the main navigation in the upper-left. You will notice is is still in beta but Google has a habit of keeping features in beta for a very long time. I have yet to run into issues with anything in this area. You will notice you can set the criteria for different intervals as well.

Create The Alert

As with everything else in Google Analytics you can create and monitor things at a very broad level as well as dig in pretty deep into segmented data sets if you so desire. I encourage you to play around with the various options you can set in the conditions.  There is a lot of power in what you can set up.

Better Information to Make Better Decisions

These are a few of my favorite tricks in Google Analytics for nonprofits. They really help take you beyond the basic numbers on the main dashboard and help find the greater level of value from the tool that most organizations need, better information and more efficiencies from their technology.

What are some of your favorite tricks and tips to go beyond the basics?

- Ash Shepherd

We strive to keep our website updated and relevant to the needs of our constituents. The site stays current because we create new content, update our existing content, and archive the older stuff that no longer serves our highest priority goals. To help you learn from our experiences, we created a web-based training seminar (webinar) and a half-day course to teach best practices and a simple process for maintaining your website. The focus of these trainings is to help you improve the relevance of your site without having to undertake a redesign and overhaul the code. However, if you would like to redesign your site and hire some really friendly experts to write some code, then we provide that service, too!

You can learn how to keep your site relevant from the experts at NPower Northwest in a couple of ways:

• Watch a free recording of the Keep Your Website Relevant webinar and download the Content Planning and Maintenance spreadsheet template in our Knowledge Center, or

• Sign up for a half-day training course on Web Content Maintenance in our Seattle office

In the Keep Your Website Relevant webinar recording, we talk about visualizing the structure of your web content using site mapping or mind mapping techniques. It's fairly easy to draw a site map or mind map on a whiteboard or butcher paper. One collaborative method of mind mapping is to get everyone together to write ideas on very small sticky notes. Then move the sticky ideas around on a whiteboard, and draw lines with labels connecting the clusters of sticky notes. Prioritize the ideas with big numbers in a bright color of ink and cut the low priority items. When you're done moving things around, then you can try drawing the map using a software application. In the webinar recording we show a site map that was drawn in PowerPoint and mind map that was drawn in MindMeister.  You can learn more about mind mapping techniques from Wikipedia, and review a list of  software packages for drawing and sharing mind maps.

Let us know if these techniques work for you! Share your stories and feedback about this training in the comments below. If you have any questions about our training offerings, email us.

- Christin Boyd

NPower has always offered a suite of services to keep the technology infrastructures of local nonprofits running strong. But those services just got even better with the introduction of more proactive monitoring through our Stable & Secure Managed Services. Thanks to an investment in new technologies, the NPower team is now able to monitor more of the technology systems of our clients remotely, meaning we can keep an eye on your systems and often detect issues before they begin to affect your work.

So far six savvy clients have signed on to the new and improved set of services: Camp Fire USA Central Puget Sound Council, Downtown Action to Save Housing, Humanities Washington, Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, Seattle Milk Fund, and Social Venture Partners International. You can read all about our new subscription-based Stable & Secure Managed Services program and download the informational flier on the Managed Services page of our website.

As a part of United Way King County’s Day of Caring, NPower Northwest organized a Tech Coaching day and matched 23 nonprofits with 25 social media experts for individualized sessions.  As VISTA volunteers, we were delighted to get out into the community and observe several of these sessions as they happened all over Seattle on September 16, 2011.  Here are a few highlights from those visits:

• Terri Ann Johnson (@ann_terriann), a recent Seattle transplant from Minnesota and Social Media & Events Coordinator for Bill the Butcher, worked with Ann Erickson, Office Manager/Social Justice Advocate for The Church Council of Greater Seattle. Terri and Ann started off by using an editorial calender activity provided by NPower Northwest to help Ann think about her organization's specific social media goals and determine which goals were or were not being met. Ann had two primary goals for her session with Terri; the first was to establish guidelines for staff/volunteers in regards to curating the Church Council of Greater Seattle’s online presence. This can often be a challenge for nonprofits who may have a wide variety of voices from the organization interested in engaging with social media. Ann’s second goal was to focus on finding ways to increase engagement between her organization and its constituents. Overall, both Terri and Ann enjoyed their time working together and discussing the many ways social media can be used in the nonprofit world.
• At El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill, Jess Estrada (@jessestrada) from Banyan Branch conducted a social media audit with El Centro staff members Yuni Castorena, Tyrone Hall-Dale, and Deanah Watson. Jess was trying to get a sense of the organization's audience, communication channels, and current strategy. She explained how their website can work in concert with social media technologies - press releases can be uploaded to the website and Twitter and Facebook posts can point readers to El Centro de la Raza online updates. Jess also pointed out that media organizations will often solicit stories from the Twitter community, emphasizing the potential for El Centro to capitalize on those opportunities to increase awareness of its vital programs and advocacy efforts.
• Back near the NPower office in the Central District, Dave Sharp (@davidlsharp) from College Success Foundation was consulting with Jane Griffin, Rebecca Kuenzel, and Cicely Nordness from Catholic Community Services Youth Tutoring Program (CCS YTP).  After a lot of information sharing from the YTP group, Dave drew out some strategies to help them find ways to share success stories that could inspire volunteers and donors. Dave refrained from urging the nonprofit staff to lock in on one particular tool. Instead, he recommended allowing the content to determine the channel: if the group had a compelling video of the organization's work they could consider posting it on YouTube; first-person accounts from students who had been helped by the program could be channeled into a blog. He emphasized being clear on goals and crafting a sound strategy before jumping on board the social media bandwagon haphazardly.
• Up north in the University District, Teen Feed received awesome tutelage from industry expert Maren Finzer (@marenfinzer). As an organization that relies heavily on volunteers to serve homeless youth, they focused most of their time on the social aspects of their web presence in an effort to reach out those in need and those who wished to volunteer.
• Elsewhere in the U District, Burke Museum staff was receiving some excellent ideas from Zan McColloch-Lussier of Mixtape Communications (@zanarama) regarding their website and blog. Their discussion covered targeting specific audiences and determining which channels were used when discussing events and new blog posts. The recommendation was not only to make small site change, but also to track the effectiveness of those site changes to ensure future growth. Another interesting topic that was discussed at the Burke was the idea of utilizing eye tracking software (a resource that a University of Washington organization would likely have access to) to determine the effectiveness of their website layout.
  

All the sessions involved a lot of focus and excitement. The day culminated in a celebration with several thousand people in attendance at the after party at Century Link Field, where we met the mascot for the Seattle Seahawks, Blitz:

- Stephen Eggers, Elissa Thomas, and Abby Nafziger

Last Friday NPower participated in the United Way of King County’s Day of Caring. Over 11,000 individuals from over 122 companies volunteered with 416 projects through King County. Our project involved 25 social media coaches working alongside staff from 23 area nonprofit organizations to improve their social media practices. The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re so happy to have been a part of this monumental day of volunteerism in King County.

The NPower team fanned out in the Seattle area to visit a handful of the locations where our coaches were serving. Director of Community Engagement Peg Giffels visited League of Women Voters of Washington where volunteer Dana Chaffin was assisting staff from local and national chapters. Dana was giving a ton of great tips including:

• Hone the call to action with succinct language.
• “Own” the titles to key content (example: “Voting Tip of the Week”) and create tags so people know what they’re reading.
• Break content into small pieces.
• “Like” your own posts so your friends will see it too.
• Try a fun challenge from time to time. For example, “We can’t hold this event until we have 100 likes.”

Just up the road in Wallingford, volunteer Jamie Quick was working closely with FaithTrust Institute’s Communications and Marketing Director Doug Sorin to improve their strategy. Jamie was sharing some good advice around beefing up their Facebook presence in advance of a website and eNews campaign to drive traffic to their profile. “Give them some content and action steps and they’ll come back. Don’t put a lot of effort into sending them to your page before you’re ready with a way to engage,” he recommended.

Our Americorps VISTA team also made some site visits and will be sharing their coverage on the blog later this week. Want more day of Caring coverage to tide you over until then? Twitter users can re-visit the activity from the day by searching the hashtag #DayofCaringKC, there are hundreds of photos on United Way’s Flickr photostream, and you can view the NPower-specific photos on our Flickr photostream.

- Mandi Moshay

Phinney Neighborhood Association (PNA) is a valuable resource to the residents in and around Phinney, Greenwood, and Ballard, providing a myriad of programs and services aimed to connect and educate people from all walks of life. Unfortunately, their technology was out of date, limiting their productivity. Storage limits on their old server meant that they were often faced with the necessity to go through “emergency” deletions of old files in order to accommodate new ones. Luckily, a skilled volunteer was able to conduct a thorough technology assessment, and with buy in from leadership, PNA turned to NPower to implement the necessary upgrades.

Utilizing Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS), NPower migrated many of PNA’s systems to the cloud, meaning their storage concerns were wiped away and staff had the flexibility to work from anywhere. Our team also replaced their server and workstations, increasing the efficiency of their entire system. Read more about the work we’ve done for PNA and how services and support from NPower have impacted the organization in our full case study.

I should start out by saying that before beginning this VISTA assignment I hadn’t really heard of the concept of “change management” and assumed that it was just another buzzword to help people build fancier resumes. Like many of us, I can think of several situations where instead of real change happening, a new product or idea is rolled out, a training takes place, new accounts are created, new procedures are developed and in around three months everyone is back to using the old software, procedure, account, etc. It doesn’t take too many turns through this cycle, to make change seem like a highly unlikely phenomena.

But, caveats aside, I found this book surprisingly readable and full of good ideas on how to create sustainable change at both a personal and organizational level. Structured around the idea that change requires connecting with people’s rational side, emotions, and their surrounding environment, the Heath brothers coined the terms "direct the rider," "motivate the elephant," and "shape the path" to capture this idea. The best part of this book for me was that the Heath brothers make their case for their ideas not through lectures, but by giving compelling examples about interesting or unexpected ways that people (ranging from ordinary Joes and Janes to upper management CEOs and governmental officials) have helped move organizations and societies through seemingly impossible changes.

One of my favorite examples fell under the advice of “tweak the environment." Just as traffic lights control our driving, complex grocery store lay-outs increase the likelihood that we won’t buy just that needed gallon of milk, and the smooth and even path attracts the most walkers; the environment plays a crucial role in our patterns of behavior. In this example the employees at a management consulting firm were resisting filling out the new online time sheets. As the billing process lagged, it was easy for the executives to grow frustrated at the stubborn behavior being exhibited by the consultants and begin to ratchet up pressure on the employees to switch to the new program.

However, a consultant, called in to help manage the issue, persuaded the executives that perhaps there was something other than stubbornness at play. After observing one of the employees attempt to fill out the online time sheet, the consultant noticed the strong negative reaction the employees had to the “wizard” which popped up when they attempted to fill out the document. Designed to help aid the process, the wizard was actually annoying the employees to the point that they reverted back to the “easier” paper time sheets as a way to avoid dealing with it. In other words, the problem wasn’t actually stubborn employees, but an unexpected roadblock that made staying with the old paper time sheets an easier experience than switching over to the online time sheets.

In the world of technology it can be easy to assume that it is people’s stubbornness or, even worse, lack of intelligence that causes them to resist the newest time-saving software or computer upgrade. But this can be a grave mistake and cause us to miss the environmental factors that might be at play in regards to a particular issue.

In my work during this coming year, I'm sure that finding ways to help nonprofits pursue sustainable change will be just as important as finding the perfect technology for them to use. So if you are looking for a book to help inspire you to change your life, your boss, your employees, your community or maybe even the world, I would recommend giving Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath a shot.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about prepping for the all-important year-end fundraising appeal. An article from The Collins Group Blog offers several helpful considerations to ponder when planning your final fundraising push of 2011. That inspired us to share a few tips to utilize your technology to make the most of that December ask.

Website: Take the time to tighten up your web copy and test your donation portal. Making sure the messaging on your donate page is compelling, timely, and creates a sense of urgency will be just as important as having the technology in place to take online payments. If you haven’t received an online payment in a while, run a test donation of a dollar or two through the system to make sure potential donors won’t hit any roadblocks that could prevent them from following through with their gift.

Social Media: When it comes to communicating your impact, you can’t really over-do it. Donors want to know where their money is going and what difference their contributions are making in the community. Lay the foundation for your end-of-year ask by reporting on the great work your organization is doing in the community via your blog, Facebook page, or Twitter stream.

Database: You’ve got buckets of data available in your database – use it to your advantage! Consider taking the time to segment your donor lists and send targeted appeals to each audience based on giving level, geographic location, or the program they’re most interested in. The more personal the ask, the more likely you are to get a donation.

Have other considerations or suggestions? Add them to the comment section below.

- Mandi Moshay

Last week our office was awful quiet as three of our database consultants hit the road to attend the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The conference, put on by Salesforce.com, is part networking, part traditional presentations, and part hands-on workshops aimed to improve the use of Saleforce.com and its applications. Tens of thousands of individuals made their way to the Bay Area to share their experiences, learn from their peers, and, as was the case with the NPower team, drink tons and tons of free lattes.

While Salesforce.com is a popular CRM system in the for-profit community, the nonprofit sector had a strong showing at the conference, and even had an entire section of the center devoted to special sessions that related directly to nonprofits’ use of the system. The conference had a strong Northwest showing as well – our team saw some of the regular attendees from the Seattle Salesforce.com user group that periodically meets at the NPower office and hung out with our friends from Groundwire.

Sadly, our team missed out on seeing Metallica (the venue was at capacity), but they did manage to have a worthwhile experience despite that setback. Here are some of the highlights:

• NPower Northwest client Nicholas Merriam of Building Changes presented a session on user adoption, sharing the strategies that his team used to get their staff on board with their new database and tips to prevent regression back to the days when when each program relied on its own database and a contact might need to be updated in six different places.
• Laura enjoyed the session on using Salesforce mobile for fieldwork and was interested to learn about the ability to develop mobile apps on the Salesforce platform relatively inexpensively.
• Nineta was a fan on a session that talked about “usability” – developing on the Salesforce platform from a user’s perspective to make the interface more appealing and simpler to navigate.
• V and Laura took the Salesforce.com developer certification test and passed, meaning they now get these fancy badges on their website bios!

Our team came back excited to implement what they learned to do even better work for our clients. Dreamforce was an amazing learning opportunity for them all, and a fantastic resource that more nonprofits should consider taking advantage of.

Want more Dreamforce action? Visit their website to view videos from the sessions, or search the tags #df11 (conference tag) and #dfnp11 (nonprofit conference attendees tag) on Twitter.