Picks of the Week: September 11-17, 2011

Website of the Week -- Nonprofit VOTE

Founded in 2005, Nonprofit VOTE partners with America's nonprofits to help the people they serve participate and vote. The organization is a leading source of nonpartisan resources to help nonprofits integrate voter engagement into their ongoing activities and services. Nonprofit VOTE's goals include:

• Providing high quality resources for nonprofits and social service agencies to help them incorporate voter engagement activities into to their ongoing work.
• Building lasting capacity for nonpartisan, nonprofit voter participation.
• Promoting sustained increases in voter participation, especially among voters new to the process or with a recent history of lower participation.
• Engaging voters where they gather to work, learn, advocate and receive services.
• Broadening support for the revitalization of democracy and election reforms; and
• Strengthening the nonprofit sector and encouraging new civic leadership.

Nonprofit VOTE partners with state nonprofit associations, national service provider networks, foundations and other nonprofit conveners. We provide partners with programmatic support as well as access to our online resources, free printed materials and other voter engagement resources. Go to: http://www.nonprofitvote.org.


Publication of the Week -- The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox: A Complete Guide to Program Effectiveness, Performance Measurement, and Results by Robert M. Penna

From the publisher: The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox identifies stages in the use of outcomes and shows you how to use specific facets of existing outcome models to improve performance and achieve meaningful results. Going beyond the familiar limits of the sector, this volume also illustrates how tools and approaches long in use in the corporate sector can be of great analytical and practical use to nonprofit, philanthropic, and governmental organizations . An outstanding resource for organizational and program leaders interested in improving performance, there is nothing else like this work currently available.

• Shows how to identify and set meaningful, sustainable outcomes
• Illustrates how to track and manage with outcomes
• Offers guidance in assessing capacity, and using outcome-based communications
• Features a companion Web site with the tools found in this book

Providing the tools and explanations needed to achieve program success, this book is a complete resource for the nonprofit, governmental, or philanthropic professional striving for greater effectiveness in programs or organizations.

Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Use of Mobile and Location-based Services Rising

According to a new Pew Internet Project report, more than a quarter (28%) of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind. This includes anyone who takes part in one or more of the following activities:

• 28% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location.
• A much smaller number (5% of cell owners) use their phones to check in to locations using geosocial services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Smartphone owners are especially likely to use these services on their phones, with 12% doing so.
• 9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services.

Taken together, 28% of U.S. adults do at least one of these activities either on a computer or using their mobile phones—and many users do several of them. These figures come from a new national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and represent Project’s most expansive study of location services to date. To read or download the full report, go to: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Location.aspx.


Resource of the Week – Nonprofit Law Blog

The Nonprofit Law Blog Is published by Gene Takagi and Emily Chan of the NEO Law Group. The blog includes a number of nonprofit law articles and resources that will be of great use to staff and board members of nonprofit organizations. Go to: http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/home.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Creating a PowerPoint Presentation Using Word 2007/2010

To use a Word document to create a PowerPoint presentation:
• Format the document using Word heading styles
• PowerPoint uses the heading styles in your Word document to set up the slides in a presentation ̶ each Heading 1 becomes the title of a new slide, and each Heading 2 becomes the first level of text
• You must apply a heading format to the text you want to include in a slide
• You can manually insert heading styles or create a document using Word outline

To create a Word Outline:
• Click the View menu
• Click Outline in the Document Views group
• Type your outline using Tab to add subheadings (promote)
• Press Shift Tab to decrease the indent (demote)
• You can also use the Promote and Demote buttons on the Ribbon
• Save your outline

To Insert Outline Text from Word into PowerPoint:
• In PowerPoint, click the Outline tab in the left pane
• Click the Home tab of the Ribbon
• In the Slides group, click the arrow next to New Slide
• Click Slides from Outline