Picks of the Week: June 6 - 12, 2010

Website of the Week – CreateAthon

CreateAthon is a 24-hour, work-around the clock creative blitz during which local advertising agencies generate advertising services for local nonprofits that have little or no marketing budget. Since the program’s expansion from a single market to an international effort in 2001, 40 agencies have joined the CreateAthon network, holding CreateAthon events in their cities. This effort has benefited 833 nonprofit organizations with 1,809 projects valued at $7 million. Go to: http://www.createathon.org.

Publication of the Week – Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors by Patrick M. Lencioni

From the publisher: In yet another page-turner, New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed management expert Patrick Lencioni addresses the costly and maddening issue of silos, the barriers that create organizational politics. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. As with his other books, Lencioni writes Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars as a fictional—but eerily realistic—story. The story is about Jude Cousins, an eager young management consultant struggling to launch his practice by solving one of the more universal and frustrating problems faced by his clients. Through trial and error, he develops a simple yet ground-breaking approach for helping them transform confusion and infighting into clarity and alignment. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Nonprofits Increase Use of Social Networks

NTEN, Common Knowledge, and ThePort Network have released the second annual installment of the Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. This report’s objective is to provide nonprofits with insights and trends surrounding social networking technology as part of nonprofit organizations’ marketing, communications, fundraising, and program services. Between February 3 and March 15, 2010, 1,173 nonprofit professionals responded to a survey about their organization’s use of online social networks. Nonprofits continued to increase their use of commercial social networks over 2009 and early 2010 with Facebook and Twitter proving to be the preferred networks. Key findings include:

• Facebook is still used by more nonprofits than any other commercial social network with 86% of nonprofits indicating that they have a presence on this network. This finding is a 16% increase from 2009, when 74% of respondents had a Facebook presence.
• Twitter grew as a commercial social networking outlet of choice for nonprofits with a year-over-year increase of 38%, moving from 43% in 2009 to 60% in 2010, as measured by nonprofits who affirmed that their organization had a presence on this rapidly growing micro-messaging platform.
• LinkedIn and YouTube usage remained steady over the last year. YouTube moved up only very slightly from 46.5% in 2009 to 48.1% in 2010, and LinkedIn stayed steady at 32.9% in 2009 and 33.1% this year.
• MySpace, the big loser, suffered a 45% drop in popularity. Use dropped from 26.1% in 2009 to 14.4% in 2010.

To download a copy of the full report, go to: http://www.nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com. Free registration is required.


Resource of the Week – Free Nonprofit Webinars for June 2010

Wild Apricot, a Canadian based software development company has compiled a list of webinars on a number of nonprofit management topics being offered this month at no charge – useful for fundraisers, board members, administrators, active volunteers and volunteer coordinators. Go to: http://www.wildapricot.com.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Run PowerPoint 2007 Slide Show in a Window

Have you ever wanted to be able to run a PowerPoint slideshow in a window? There is a simple way to do this by adding a button to the Quick Access Toolbar. Here’s how:

• Click the Microsoft Office button
• Click the PowerPoint Options button at the bottom
• Click Customize in the left pane
• Under Choose commands from, select Commands Not in the Ribbon
• Scroll down and select Slide Show in a Window
• Click Add to add this button to the Quick Access Toolbar
• Click OK

To run a slideshow in a window simply click this button on the Quick Access Toolbar. Use cursor arrow keys to move between slides.