Picks of the Week: September 9 - 15, 2012

Website of the Week -- Alliance for Technology Access
The mission of the ATA is to increase the use of technology by children and adults with disabilities and functional limitations. ATA encourages and facilitates the empowerment of people with disabilities to participate fully in their communities. Through public education, information and referral, capacity building in community organizations, and advocacy/policy efforts, the ATA enables millions of people to live, learn, work, define their futures, and achieve their dreams. Go to: http://www.ataccess.org/

Publication of the Week --  Promote Your Business or Cause Using Social Media: A Beginner's Handbook by Dennis J. Smith
From the publisher:  Market and Promote Your Business Using Social Media with this award winning handbook for beginner's interested in using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ to grow, market and promote a small business or take any cause to the internet. Learn how to create a WordPress blog, start a blog talk radio show, upload videos to YouTube, Tweet on Twitter and build a fan page on Facebook with social apps and even eCommerce. - Learn how to add a shopping cart to your Facebook fan page and sell product right from your fan page. - Learn how to get your own personal Facebook URL. - Updated for Facebook Timeline. - Updated Google+ - How to get started with WordPress and your own blog. - Twitter Tips! - Covers the hot new social media site Pinterest! Now featuring updated Facebook Fan Page creation, Facebook Insights, Google+ and Social Media Tools!

Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.

Trend of the Week – Corporate Foundation Giving Trends
Corporate foundation giving grew the fastest across foundation types in 2011, according to Key Facts on Corporate Foundations (2012 Edition). Grant dollars rose 6 percent to $5.2 billion. Despite continued economic volatility, corporate profits have been at record levels, leading corporations to put more resources into their foundations. Looking ahead, just over half (53 percent) of corporate foundations responding to the Foundation Center's annual forecasting survey expect to increase their giving in 2012. To download the free report, go to: http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/pdf/keyfacts_corp2012.pdf

Resource of the Week – Nonprofit Collaboration Database
The Nonprofit Collaboration Database was originally developed by Lodestar as part of its work related to The Collaboration Prize competition, which it launched in 2008. Capitalizing on the wealth of material created through the collaboration prize nomination process, the Nonprofit Collaboration Database provides access to more than 650 entrants including all of the relevant information about and documents from the collaborations. The Foundation Center is now the new home of the Collaboration Database. The database has been organized so that you can search for information from a variety of access points allowing you to customize your search a variety of ways. For example, you can find all mergers among arts and culture organizations, or all administrative consolidations in Ohio and Arizona, or only those joint programming collaborations among state health organizations that were initiated by funders. The ability to search by multiple criteria, including key words, provides the opportunity to explore the database using factors that are most relevant to your needs. To access the Collaboration Database,  go to: http://collaboration.foundationcenter.org/search/searchGenerator.php.

Tech Tip of the Week -- Recording a Slide Show in PowerPoint 2010
Did you know you can record a Slide Show in PowerPoint 2010?  Here's how: 

·         Open the Slide Show you want to record

·         Click the Slide Show tab on the Ribbon
·         In the Set Up group click the Record Slide Show icon
·         In the Record Slide Show dialog box, select what you want to record
·         Click Start Recording