WHO WINS WHAT IN GAZA ?

This year's Grassroots Use of Technology Conference will feature a presentation by Emerson College Professor Paul Niwa on his work on the BostonChinaTown.org project.

What if the media viewed urban communities in a more holistic way? Instead of presenting a polarized community with one side for and another against this or that issue, what if it was able to capture the nuances and connections between residents, organizers and activists? Would stories be different?

Providing Professional Education in Social and Human Development

PRIA Continuing Education (PCE) has been established by PRIA, an international center for learning and promotion of participation and governance, for transferring its experience, knowledge and learning of over 25 years. This vast pool of knowledge and learning has been synthesized and packaged into distance education programmes.

Overview of Courses starting 1st April 2008:

Duration: 3 months

Eligibility: Bachelor's Degree

Nature: Certificate Programmes in Distance Mode

Key Features:

(a) National & International subject experts;

KnowledgeMessenger (http://www.knowledgemessenger.com) provides a complete set of website components and services that enable elected officials, schools and non-profits the ability to entice::engage::activate their audience. They seem pretty affordable too. Their website components and services include:

Entice
eNewsletters - send electronic newsletters to your audience
Blog - engage in a dialog with your audience with a Blog
Event Calendar - keep your audience informed of upcoming events
Content Management - add and update web pages on your website - no need to know HTML!

The online version of “The Internet Advocacy Book” by Michael Organ is a free resource for nonprofits and socially-progressive political organizations that use the Internet to advocate for their cause. The book is written as a "how better to" guide, with laser focus on the best uses of an organization’s Internet-advocacy time. Readers will find candid advice and insightful recommendations, without the bias or self-interest of sales reps. The “Internet Advocacy Book” is rooted in commercial expertise, but well translated for the needs and interests of nonprofit organizations.

Wonder if you should spend your time campaigning in social networks?

Care2.com has created a useful tool to find out whether using social networking tools is right for you and your organization.

You can use this tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. It works sort of like an online mortgage calculator. Just enter the starting assumptions in the yellow boxes below and the tool calculates results automatically.

Need some metrics guidelines? You might check out some of the online advocacy and fundraising benchmark studies. If you don't measure results strictly by fundraising -- maybe your results are based on advocacy or branding only -- you can just look at the "cost per friend" or "cost per email name" to compare with the costs of recruiting people elsewhere. You can also see how that translates into cost per action or email viewed (opened).

Green Media Toolshed is building and strengthening the communications infrastructure for the environmental movement. Green Media Toolshed is committed to providing tools and managing the communities' media assets (assets can be a variety of intellectual property, artwork, or hardware) to improve the effectiveness of communications between environmental groups and the public.

The organization is offer a free training to its members online/over-the-phone on Tuesday, September 18th at 2pm EST.

This training will focus on how to create an effective and strategic communications plan. The training will provide groups with a step-by-step guide to creating a successful communications plan, along with examples and evaluation techniques. No matter how large or small your organization, non profits need to make communications a priority.

Aidmatrix Designs Website Aiding in Hurricane Relief

Donors can Use One-stop Site for Products and Financial Resources

Aidmatrix, using its technology and expertise, has created a website for public use to channel aid relief to those needing assistance in the aftermath of Dean.

"As a nonprofit organization, some of our core values include globalization, humanity, opportunity," said Scott McCallum, Aidmatrix president and CEO. "We know people are suffering from the storm, and we are in a position to help. It's our duty to seize this disaster and turn it into an opportunity."