ONE/Northwest

Welcome to The Facebook Era

sfreedman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:35:56 GMT

This Is Not Your Mother's Facebook. Or, Maybe It Is.

There are roughly 70 million Facebook users in the United States. And that number is growing at 11% per month, including a whole new group of users over the age of 55 answering the question, "What's on your mind?" and doling out the thumbs-up.

Any person, organization, or business can set up a profile or page, add contacts (friends) and join networks organized by city, workplace, school, or region to connect with other people.

Individual users and organizations can send messages, update and share their personal profile, and easily post links, videos, and information on everything from local causes to supporting a politician to a clip from their favorite television show. And with a click of a button, friends can re-post the same link, ostensibly reaching millions of users with the same post.

Audience Considerations

There are many things to consider as you explore whether or not an investment in a Facebook presence makes sense for your organization. Likely the most important among the considerations is whether or not your existing or realistically targeted members and supporters are on Facebook themselves.

Demographics: Facebook’s user demographics can be quite different from the make-up of many conservation memberships. Seventy percent of the over 70 million Facebook users are under the age 35, with only five percent over 55. That said, the 35 and older demographic is growing every day.

People spend time on Facebook because they are receiving real value from their own Facebook communities. The value people receive is directly tied to the quality of their own personal network. Few people are turning to Facebook today to track organizations. It's viewed primarily as a place to connect with people. Understanding why people use Facebook can help as you explore ways to improve their experience and add value to their network.

Good For

Reaching and Attracting
With the right audience, campaign and strategy, Facebook can help you reach new people. Yet keep in mind that Facebook is a social networking tool so simply putting a page up on Facebook will likely not result in any meaningful new connections being made. You must invest in online communications strategy that is consistent and sustainable and fits into your organization’s marketing plan.

Communicating and Informing
For those individuals who are in your Facebook community, Facebook can be a great medium to receive news, events announcements, and calls to action. It is an easy platform for the staff of an organization to publish written content, videos, and photos. Facebook makes it easy for members to also upload news from their own website and/or blog to their Facebook news stream.

Listening and Learning
One of our favorite uses for Facebook is listening and learning what people are thinking and saying. Facebook gives us a window into what people are thinking about, what inspires them, what groups they are connected with and so on.

Remembering and Growing
Facebook offers some unique possibilities for organizations to remember and grow their relationships. We are only now beginning to understand some of the ways that Facebook connected with a CRM Database could serve an organization and its members.

What You'll Need

•    Facebook account
•    Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on your effort
•    Staff resources and time
•    Organizational social media guidelines
•    Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Cost and Time Considerations

Any organization can set up a Facebook page for free. The real cost of Facebook is the time it takes to build and sustain your network.

Through its application interface Facebook allows for the custom development of an application that a user can install and then use to invite others to participate with in some way. Development of an application is intensive and runs in the 10-100k range.

Connects Easily To

Website: Facebook connects to an organization’s existing website, blog, and other online mediums in a number of ways. Website content and content shared via mass email can be configured so visitors can easily share the content to their Facebook network with a single mouse click.

What Others Are Saying

•    To Nonprofits Seeking Cash, Facebook App Isn’t So Green, The Washington Post
•    An Introduction to Facebook Activism
•    Innovative Giving: The Nature Conservancy and (Lil) Green Patch, Fast Company
•    Faith in Facebook: A Success Story
•    How Marketers Tap Facebook and Twitter, Apps and Widgets, Advertising Age

Your Blog Is Your Friend

sfreedman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:31:27 GMT

Keeping It Real

Practically speaking, blogs are a place where organizations can communicate with participants in a style that is highly personalized and a bit less formal than what visitors would expect to see on an organizational website.

Technically, blogs are a type of website software that allow anyone to easily publish and syndicate written text, photos, or video. The most popular consumer options on the market are Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Movable Type, however, common content management systems (like Plone) offer easy to implement blogging functionality either as standard features (out-of-the-box) or as add-on products.

There are a few components to a blog post: the body content, a headline, tags (metadata to describe what the post is about), and reader comments.

Audience Considerations

As you set out to plan and focus your blogging efforts, it is critical to understand the audience you are planning to serve and engage via your blog.

Not everyone in your online audience is the same. Jakob Nielsen calls this "participation inequality," describing online audiences as communities where 90% of the users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of the users contribute a little, and 1% of the users account for almost all the action. Check out Groundswell's Social Technographic Ladder for ideas on how your target audience might be interested in participating in your social web initiatives.

Good For

Depending on an organization's target audience and objectives, blogs can serve many different roles. Most effective bloggers view their blogs as one node in the "blogosphere," and split their blogging time between posting to their blogs and participating as active members of other blogs with logical connection to the topics, authors, or audiences.

Reaching and Attracting
Blogs can serve a number of roles in supporting your efforts to reach and attract visitors to your website and new members to an organization or campaign. This includes search engine optimization and receiving traffic from other complimentary blogs on the web.

Communicating and Informing
Blogs provide a platform for an organization to publish written content, photos, and video that might be less formal than that which they would put into a program or resources section of their website. Depending on the target audience, blogs can offer a different kind of connection between individuals because they are generally less formal and allow participation from the community through comments. An organization might want to use a blog to publicize an event, do regular link round-ups on a specific issue or topic, or publish editorials on current events.

The higher level value that blogs offer organizations is the ability to direct and facilitate conversation about their specific area of interest. If the quality of the content is good enough, it will begin to attract a readership, both passive and active.

Listening and Learning
One of our favorite uses for blogs is for listening and learning. Posting a blog entry and engaging your supporters in conversation is a great way to directly hear from your constituents.

Remembering and Growing
Blogs can certainly play an important role in providing meaningful ways for members to participate and be heard by each other and your staff. In this way, they can play an important role in helping you grow your relationships with individuals.

What You'll Need

Appropriate blogging tool
Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on you effort
Appropriate staff resources and time
Organizational blogging guidelines
Appropriate audience
Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Cost and Time Considerations

Good, well-trafficked blogs have frequent, engaging, and insightful content. The quality of a blog is very much a function of the time and effort an organization puts into it. Organizations interested in creating a valuable blog should spend at least 4 hours/week to produce one to two blog posts.

Connects Easily To

Websites: Blogs can be set up directly within an organization's existing content management system driven website.

Other social web properties: Information can be easily share to and from most blogs and the most common social web properties including Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Flickr, and YouTube.

Other people's website and blogs: Blogs typically offer easy ways for the content to be syndicated and shared across the internet.

Database: Blogs that are built within an existing CMS website can be set up to share login information and other important user data with an organization's website.

What Others Say

A Few Good Examples

Micro-blog and Microbrew

tiffany — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:39:49 GMT

RSVPs for this event are now closed

We keep hearing that the environmental community is thirsty...for information on blogging! So we've invited some folks with real-world experience to give us tips on:

Twitter (and other micro-blogs)
Blogs
The blogosphere

The evening will feature three mini-presentations, with time at the end of the night for small group discussion. We'll have some microbrews to fuel the conversation.

Come thirsty and with all of those questions you’ve been afraid to ask for fear of public ridicule. We’re all about the group sharing and collaboration!

Questions? Contact Tiffany Devoy at
206.286.1235 ext 13 or tiffany at onenw.org

Micro-blog and Microbrew at ONE/Northwest
1402 Third Ave, Suite 1000
Seattle, WA 98101

IT World Magazine Recognizes Our Collaborative Work

jon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:36:52 GMT

You can call it a hack-a-thon, you can call it a Code Jam, you can call it an open source sprint. Whatever you want to call a group of open source developers getting together for a few short days with the goal of perfecting one application, call it effective. IT World magazine acknowledges ONE/Northwest as a leader in these low-cost, high-output collaborative work sessions:

"As another example, ONE/Northwest, a Seattle nonprofit that provides technology and communications strategy assistance to environmental advocacy organizations, organized a two-day sprint to focus on adding specific functionality to an add-on module for the Plone content management system. The half-dozen or so developers were local, with one exception. 'We covered travel expenses to bring lead PloneFormGen developer Steve McMahon to Seattle from his home in Davis, CA,' says Jon Stahl, director of web solutions at ONE/Northwest. 'Our total 'hard' cost was on the order of $300.'"

An open source sprint at ONE/Northwest exemplifies how we go about our business. Leading up to the sprint, Stahl carefully considered ideas and strategies from the Plone developer community. He then made sure the goal of the sprint was identified and reachable-in this case to add specific features to PloneFormGen to better support applications for online donations and online advocacy.

A few weeks after the sprint, PloneFormGen 1.5 was released.

The full article includes additional material from ONE/Northwest, and is a great introduction to some of the innovative work we drive in the open source software communities as we work to create tools that promote citizen engagement.

Diving into the Twittersphere

sfreedman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:44:33 GMT

All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

You've seen the good (Twitter as a tool for organizing in Iran), the bad (minute by minute updates on the gastronomical and recreational patterns of your friends), and the downright ugly (Ashton Kutcher v. CNN in a race for 1 million followers!). Whether you tweet every day or are still trying to figure out how your organization fits into the social media landscape, there's no question Twitter, and its buddy Facebook, are leading the social networking pack.

Twitter enables users to send and read updates to and from people and organizations they are interested in. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page, and delivered to other users (followers) who have chosen to follow the author and his or her content.

Twitter users can follow anyone or any organization without having to ask permission (unlike Facebook).

Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider texting fees.

Audience Considerations

Twitter traffic grew to nearly 10 million users by March of 2009 and appears to be growing by double digits on a monthly basis.

When you embark on any new online communications plan with your supporters and members, it's necessary to have strategies and editorial guidelines in place. Just as compelling content can win you followers, irrelevant postings and over-tweeting can clutter feeds and lose followers.

Good For

Twitter is a communications platform and as such can be useful in many different ways. Many organizations and businesses maintain a corporate or brand Twitter feed, but the most successful feeds are delivered in ways that keeps the communication personal and informal. In the same way that effective bloggers invest their time not only in writing but in reading and commenting on other blogs, most effective Twitter users spend their time participating with their network, not just talking at it.

Reaching and Attracting

Twitter can support efforts to reach and attract visitors to a campaign or website. If your organization provides content that is of value to your followers, it may get forwarded (RT: or ReTweeted) by your followers to their own Twitter networks. If the quality of the content is good enough, your organization's Twitter feed will begin to attract a readership, both passive and active.

Communicating and Informing

Twitter can provide a platform for an organization to publish or share written content that might be less formal than what they would put into a program or resources section on their website. Twitter is widely used to post links, send out action alerts, or post quick event reminders.

It's useful for getting the word out rapidly, in real time, when appropriate. This can lead to offline action. Check out the first Twestival for charity, where in less than two weeks a group of Twitter users organized a series of meet-ups around the globe in support of a nonprofit working for clean drinking water in developing nations.

Listening and Learning

Twitter can connect a small number of close and highly engaged members to foster a large network of coalition partners or grassroots supporters to work together to track activity, share insights, and take collective action.

Remembering and Growing

Twitter can play an important role in providing meaningful ways for members to participate and be heard by each other and your staff.

Target your tweets. Find public figures, including legislators, CEOs, and community leaders to follow and become followers of your group. You can find usernames on TweetCongress and WeFollow.

What You'll Need to Tweet

A free Twitter account
Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on you effort
Appropriate staff resources and time
Organizational blogging guidelines
Appropriate audience
Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Cost and time considerations
As with any social media tool, it's wise to remember Twitter is not the strategy; it helps you implement the strategy. Twitter is not the goal; it helps you reach the goal. Twitter feeds are only as good as the content published through them. The quality of your feed is very much a function of the time and effort an organization puts into it. Five to 10 hours per week minimum is a good place to start.

Connects Easily To

Websites: Twitter feeds can be fed to other websites using RSS. It is also easy to allow readers of your website content to easily share your post with their own Twitter network.

Other social web properties: Information can be easily share to and from most blogs and the most common social web properties including: Facebook, Blogs, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Flickr, and YouTube.

Other people's websites and blogs: Twitter provides RSS feeds which allows the content to be syndicated and shared across the internet.

What Others Are Saying

Seattle Meeting Spaces

jon — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:38:23 GMT

Following is a list of meeting spaces in and around Seattle. The listing is divided into spaces that we at ONE/Northwest know about, and places we've heard about from other sources. Please note that we make no effort to systematically update every piece of information on this page so it could be dated, incorrect or otherwise flawed. Please contact the location in question directly for current rates and information. Corrections or additions welcome -- please leave a comment below.

Places known to ONE/Northwest

Free or Low Cost
More expensive or unknown cost

Places we've heard about from others

BALLARD
FREMONT
GREENWOOD
LAKE CITY/WEDGWOOD
UNIVERSITY DISTRICT
SOUTH LAKE UNION
MAGNOLIA
QUEEN ANNE
BELLTOWN/DOWNTOWN
FIRST HILL
CENTRAL AREA
BEACON HILL
RAINIER VALLEY
RAINIER BEACH
WEST SEATTLE
WESTWOOD/ WHITE CENTER/ FAUNTLEROY/ ARBOR HEIGHTS/ SOUTH PARK
OUTSIDE SEATTLE

Places known to ONE/Northwest

Free or Low Cost

Wilburforce Foundation

Has a conference room for use on a space available basis, but only for Wilburforce Foundation grantees. Capacity is about 25. See http://www.wilburforce.org for information.

Phinney Neighborhood Association

Variety of room sizes available, cost varies per room size

http//www.phinneycenter.org/room-rentals.shtml

Seattle Public Library

Many branches of the Seattle Public Library have meeting space available. See http//www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=info_meetingrooms for more details. Please note that meetings in Seattle libraries must be advertised and open to the public.

Solid Ground

See http://www.solid-ground.org for details.

City of Seattle Meeting Spaces

Many Seattle parks have community centers with meeting spaces. See http//www.seattle.gov/parks/centers/index.htm for more details. Also see http//www.cityofseattle.net/parks/reservations/rentalGuide/ facilities.htm for a full listing of Seattle Parks & Recreation facilities available for rent. Please note that not every venue on this list is suitable for business meetings.

Contact the Department of Neighborhoods for a listing of all City of Seattle meeting spaces available for public use, including schools, libraries, community centers and other venues.

More expensive or unknown cost

The Mountaineers

Full-function conference facility and smaller meeting rooms -- often used for environmental community events.

http://www.mountaineers.org

Center for Urban Horticulture

http//depts.washington.edu/urbhort/html/info/facilities.html

University Heights Center

http://www.uhcca.org/roomrentals.asp

Good Shepherd Center

http://www.historicseattle.org/projects/gscmeetingroomrent.aspx

Places we've heard about from others

The following listings are broken down by neighborhood, and are mainly based on information gleaned from other sources. ONE/Northwest can’t vouch for veracity of any of the following information, but we welcome corrections, updates and additions via email at info@onenw.org.

BALLARD

Ballard Neighborhood Service Center

2305 NW Market St; Rob Mattson 684-4060

rob.mattson@ci.seattle.wa.us No cost; Small Conference Room for 16

Northwest Senior Center

5429 32nd Ave NW 98107; Office Manager 297-0403

$8-$33/hr; Limited parking @ Ballard Locks; Available 8AM-12midnight 7 days a week. Small Room 8 capacity; Art Room 15-25 capacity; Conference Room 20 capacity; Exercise Room 40 capacity; Main Hall 100 capacity; Large professional kitchen $15/hr

Loyal Heights Community Center

2101 NW 77th St; 684-4052 Cost varies.

Social room 100 capacity; Children's Room 75 capacity; Small Kitchen; gym 300 capacity

Sunset Hill Community Center

An historic 1920s building in Sunset Hill.

3003 NW 66th Street

(206) 784-2927

http://www.sunsethillcommunity.com/rental.html

FREMONT

Fremont Library

731 N 35th St (btwn Fremont Av & Aurora); (206) 684-4084 No cost; capacity 99

Fremont Neighborhood Service Center

908 N 34th St (east of Aurora);
No cost. Meeting Room 16-20 capacity. Not available on the 1st Mon or 2nd Wed of the month

Hale's Ales

4301 Leary Way NW 206-782-0737
Rooms above pub for community meetings

GREENWOOD

Greenwood Senior Center

Kitchen and dance floor available. Alcohol allowed.
http://www.greenwoodseniorcenter.org

LAKE CITY/WEDGWOOD

Lake City Neighborhood Service Center

12707 30th Av NE; Small Conference Room, capacity 30. Large parking lot in back.

Meadowbrook Community Center

10517 35th Av NE;
3 additional small meeting rooms possibly available. Parking on-site. Multi-purpose Room 150 capacity, Large Kitchen adjacent, divides into 2 rooms; Small Meeting Room 25-30 capacity; Gym 400 capacity (gym only available after hours).

UNIVERSITY DISTRICT

University Christian Church

4731 15th Ave NE; Shirley Towner, Events Coordinator, (206)-522-0169 events@uchristian.org
$25-$400, plus security, etc. Available for weekly meetings, social events, & concerts. Non-profits only.
Various Meeting Rooms capacity 10-75; Social Hall capacity 100-400 capacity; Lounges 75-173 capacity; Sanctuary 100-750 capacity

University Friends Meeting

(206) 547-6449
Two large rooms, capacity 200, one kitchen use possible. One library, capacity 10. NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS OR NONPROFIT EVENTS ONLY.
Comments from WEC "A nice room, big, with high windows letting in light and Japanese rice paper moveable doors It is $200, which includes the use of the coffee cart and kitchen area."

Lake Union Crew

LUC rents out their Great Room for special events and daytime business meetings.

http://www.lakeunioncrew.com/event.htm

Graham Center in the Washington Park Arboretum

http://depts.washington.edu/wpa/facility.htm

SOUTH LAKE UNION

Moss Bay Events

Moss Bay Event Center features panoramic views of the Space Needle and Lake Union waterfront, hardwood floors and seating for 160 guests, onsite parking and handicapped accessibility, curbside drop-off from Seattle's new downtown Street Car, wifi technology and wide screen projection, on-site event supervision and event planning. Your choice for catering - no requirements.

MAGNOLIA

Blaine School

2550 34th Ave W (btwn W Raye & Smith); Building Rentals 252-0640
Available evenings & weekends only. Parking available.
Room 143 50 capacity; Room 144 75 capacity; Lunchroom 800 capacity

Magnolia United Church of Christ

3555 W McGraw St; Marilee 283-1788 magnoliaucc@seanet.com
$50-$75, $20/1-2 hrs. Available to non-profits & public agencies
Pilgrim Hall 2,046 sq ft + stage area w/ kitchen, 100-200 capacity; Fireside Rm 600 sq ft meeting rm, 50 capacity

QUEEN ANNE

Seattle Pacific University

3307 3rd Ave W (& W Cremona); Judy Bruce 281-2187 jbruce@spu.edu
$50-$200 Free parking. Non-profits only. PCs w/ standard business software, LCD & overhead projectors
Classrooms 65 capacity; Area-style Classrooms 190 capacity; Seminar Rooms 75 capacity; Conference Center 450 capacity, theatre seating (780 total capacity)

BELLTOWN/DOWNTOWN

Port of Seattle

2711 Alaskan Way, Pier 69 (btwn Clay & Vine); Contact Connie Sroggins, (206) 728-3362, cscoggins@portseattle.org
Rates and availability vary--please contact for information. Government & non-profit agencies only.
Standard office & AV equipment.
Portside Café 25 person capacity.

All Pilgrims Christian Church

500 Broadway E; Claire Sandoval 322-0487 info@allpilgrims.org
Parking at Broadway Market Garage
Sanctuary 200 capacity, Ballroom 300 capacity, 2 Mtg Rms/Class 60 capacity ea, Basement Hall 100 capacity. (660 total capacity)

Environmental Works

402 15th Ave E (& E Harrison); Eileen Krotki, 206.329.8300 ext. 26, ekrotki@eworks.org

Available to non-profit organizations. Free registration,donations are accepted. Building orientation is required for registration.

1 Room with large conference table & chairs, fits 15 people. No parking onsite, street parking in the neighborhood.

No A/V equipment.

Spirit Studios

A lovely, old fashioned loft in Belltown, with a fun, quirky ambiance. Contact is Dan Kemmis (dke@majorpixel.com).
A large room, and also a more intimate room are available. Convenient, parking lot next door, cafés in the area that you could probably get to cater. The space is geared to host large screen demos/PowerPoint presentations.

Seattle Art Museum

Has a meeting/party room just off their cafe for about $100.

The Big Picture

http://www.thebigpicture.net
They have individual conference rooms or "living rooms" that are reasonable -- $175 for 3 hours -- considering how really, really nice they are.

Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park

http://www.nps.gov/klgo/, 117 South Main St. near Elliot Bay Bookstore. Visitor Information (206)553-7220.
From Betsy Edwards: The National Historic Park has a conference room that holds 30+ that you can use on the weekend for a small administrative fee of $25. You have access to bathrooms and it is quite nice.

Triad Urban Center

http://www.triaddev.com/calendar.html

Our 40,000 sq.ft office and conference facility located at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Cherry Street in downtown Seattle is perfect for small to large meetings, forums, fundraisers, presentations, almost any use you can imagine!

Available for reservation at the center is a large board room, small conference room, open community space and private office. Amenities provided include free wireless internet, a phone with conference calling ability in each room, beverages and lattes.

Please feel free to stop in and check us out! For questions, availability or to reserve a space please call 206.254.0780 or email info@triaddev.com

FIRST HILL

Seattle Science Foundation
550 17th Ave, Suite 600
Seattle WA 98122

To request space contact Jennifer Crane at (206) 732-6500 or jenniferc <at> seattlesciencefoundation.org
Cost is $2,000 per day for main conference room that holds up to 75 people and has multiple HD TVs for presentations.

Gossman Center for Advanced Pediatric and Perinatal Simulation
600 Broadway, Suite 304
Seattle WA 98104

(206) 215-5907 or tasha.burwinkle <at> swedish.org
Cost depends upon size of room needed. Audiovisual equipment available with rooms. Catering available. Contact the Gossman Center for more details or if you have questions.

Yesler Community Center

835 E Yesler Way; 386-1245
Small Kitchen, Gym 100 capacity, tables & chairs available.

CENTRAL AREA

Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center

104 17th Ave S (& E Yesler Wy); Monique Gill 684-4757
Non-profit rates, except for the theatre.
Small Room 12 capacity; Medium 50 capacity; Large 290 with Large Kitchen, Theatre 300 capacity

Douglass-Truth Library

2300 E Yesler Way; 684-4704; No cost; 50 capacity

Safeco-Jackson Street Center

306 23rd Ave S (& S Main), Suite 200; 545-6111
$10 refundable deposit
Open Mon-Sat. Free coffee & tea (8AM-12PM Mon-Fri).TV/VCR, overhead projector, & easels. Parking lot.
1 Large, Multi-purpose Room 80 capacity & 1 Small Conference Room 20 capacity

Good Shepard Lutheran Church

2116 E Union St; Glenn Adams 363-7508 LCGS22@juno.com
Cost varies. Parking available.
Auditorium 120 capacity; Library/Resource Center; Kitchen. Podium, microphone, stage, easel, coffe/tea, & piano available.

BEACON HILL

El Centro de la Raza

2524 16th Ave S (btwn S Bayview & Lander); 329-9442
$10/hr; 15+ people $30 min, plus refundable deposit. Available anytime. Parking lot, playground, sports court. Mural Rm 40-60 capacity; Dining Rm 72-100; Basement Conference Rm 12; Day Rm 40-60 capacity

Columbia Library

4721 Rainier Ave S (btwn S Alaska & Angeline); 386-1908 No cost; capacity 99

Mount Baker Rowing Center

3800 Lake Washington Blvd S (btwn 45th & 46th Av S); 386-1913
Cost varies. 1 Room 20 capacity

New Freeway Hall

5018 Rainier Ave S (& S Hudson); Rental Manager 722-2453
$40-$250, plus refundable deposits
Open Mon-Sat 10AM-9PM. Reduced rates available for benefits & community meetings.
1 Large Room, fully equipped Kitchen, dance floor, A/C, 10-125 capacity

RAINIER VALLEY

New Holly Library

7058 32nd Ave S (north of S Myrtle St); 386-1905 No cost; capacity 50

RAINIER BEACH

Emerald City Outreach Ministries

7728 Rainier Av S (btwn S Holden & Chicago); Glenda McDonald/Helen
Ono 722-2052 glenda@ecomseattle.org $35-$400/ 4 hours, plus deposit.
Available Mon-Sat 9AM-7PM. Limited parking. Sound system & AV equipment available at extra cost. Auditorium Upstairs, 400 capacity; Auditorium divided into 5 rooms, Room A 150 capacity, Room B-E 40 capacity each; 5 Classrooms/Meeting Rooms 25 capacity each; 2 Conference Rooms 18 capacity each; Computer Room 20 computers (total capacity 581)

Rainier Beach Library

9125 Rainier Ave S (& S Fisher Pl); 386-1906 No cost; capacity 99

WEST SEATTLE

West Seattle Library

2306 42nd Ave SW (btwn SW Admiral & College); 684-7444
No cost; capacity 24.

ArtsWest

4711 California Ave SW (& SW Alaska); Laurie Hastings 938-0963    laurieh@artswest.org
$10-$20/hr; theatre $175-$275 per 4hrs -- Reduced rates for schools & non-profits
3 hr free parking in lots behind building, 2 hr free street parking.
1 Rm 45'x18', sink, phone 60 capacity; 1 Rm 3/4 thrust Stage/Auditorium 149 seated; 1 Small Conference Rm 8 capacity

Camp Long Environmental Education Center

5200 35th Ave SW (& SW Dawson); Lynn Havsall 684-7434
Cost varies. Priority to outdoor recreation/education groups.
Lodge Room fireplace, french windows, hardwood floors, tables, chairs, firewood provided, 72 capacity.

South Seattle Community College

6000 16th Ave SW (& SW Juneau); Bob Sullivan 768-6613 rsulliva@sccd.ctc.edu
Cost varies.    Parking available on-site.
Jerry M. Brockey Center & Rainier Room 50-350 capacity sit-down, 50-250 capacity buffet

Youngstown Cultural Arts Center

    Call 206.935.2999 to set up a time to see the space at 4408 Delridge         Way SW, Seattle, WA 98106

WESTWOOD/ WHITE CENTER/ FAUNTLEROY/ ARBOR HEIGHTS/ SOUTH PARK

Fauntleroy Church UCC

9260 California Ave SW (south-east of ferry terminal); Jackie Gould 932-5600 jackie@fauntleroyucc.org
$20-$200/event; Non-profit groups only. 3 parking lots adjacent to the church. Fellowship Hall 200 capacity; Kitchen, Lounge 40 capacity; 4-5 Small Mtg Rms capacity 12-15. (total capacity 315)

OUTSIDE SEATTLE

King County Libraries

Many King County Libraries have free meeting places/rooms. You need to reserve in advance. http://www.kcls.org

Camp Burton on Vashon Island

http://www.campburton.com/facilities.htm
They can accommodate at least 175 people and they have a small beach as well as trails through the woods.

Camp Sealth, Vashon Island

http://www.campfire-usa.org/
rentals/sealthrental.htm
" Located on the southwest side of Vashon Island, just a 15 minute ferry ride from West Seattle, Tacoma or Southworth. Organized in cabin clusters, lodging and program space can be assigned to accommodate small or large groups. Main camp (excluding Wrangler) has heated overnight accommodations for 240, plus 225 in non-heated facilities. Rounds Hall, a large dining hall and meeting room, seats up to 400. Our newest unit, Wrangler, has overnight accommodations for 60. Guests provide their own bedding and toiletries for all Sealth facilities. To receive information about renting Camp Sealth, call 206 463 3174 ext. 21."

Shoreline Conference Center

http://www.shorelinecenter.com

Tukwila Community Center

http://www.ci.tukwila.wa.us/recreation/rentpack.pdf

Bakes Place at Providence Point

http://www.Bakesplace.org/
Owner Craig Baker is great to work with, and they have wonderful catering if desired. It is very nice space for up to a 100 or so. For day and evening gatherings (no overnight accommodations

The Palisades in Federal Way

http://www.seattlearch.org/FormationAndEducation/
RetreatCenters/Palisades+Retreat+Center/
"It's a Catholic retreat center that also rents to non-profits (non-religious).I can't remember exactly how many rooms it had but I believe we were able to sleep 60. I believe you use their food service, which was quite good and plentiful. We could bring in drinks (even alcohol was allowed) and snacks for our events. There are several meeting rooms of various sizes. When we used it in Feb, it had only been re-opened for 2-3 months--the facility is brand new now and very nice. Each room is individual, with private baths. We were quite pleased and would use it again."

Harmony Hill Retreat Center

http://www.harmonyhill.org (360) 898-2363.
Harmony Hill is two hours from Seattle and about an hour from Olympia or the Bremerton ferry, on the south shore of Hood Canal, with a spectacular view of the Olympics and Hood Canal. We have overnight accommodations for up to 30, with a possibility for additional accommodations at a neighboring retreat center. We can handle groups of 50 - potentially more - for day use, depending on activity. Harmony Hill also has beautiful gardens, three outdoor labyrinths, walking trails and beach access.

Sleeping Lady Retreat, Leavenworth

http://www.sleepinglady.com

Goodenough Community's Sahale Retreat Center

http://www.goodenough.org/Sahale.htm

"We have space for about 36 people (in the summer, there is camping for many more and a large meeting tent for up to 200). We are very flexible to meet your needs...we have great cooks, or you can cook for yourselves, have both individual and group sleeping rooms, a large hot tub, beautiful land for walks, etc. We also have skilled facilitators available for your use. We're about 1 1/2 hours away from Seattle near Hood Canal. Our office number is 206 323 4653."

Whidbey Institute/Chinook Learning Center

http://www.whidbeyinstitute.org

"Nestled on beautiful Whidbey Island with one hundred acres of evergreen forest and meadows, the Whidbey Institute's Chinook Center provides an ideal location for personal and organizational retreats, corporate or special events. Overnight accommodations include the Farmhouse, Granny's and four cabins near the woods accommodating 26 people, and a large camping meadow. Our meeting facilities include Thomas Berry Hall, for up to 175 participants; our dining room, which will accommodate up to 50; and the Bioregional room, for meetings up to 16. The Farmhouse and Granny's are also available for day meetings and will accommodate small groups of 10-20."

Cedar River Watershed Education Center

http://www.cedarriver.org/education/index.shtml

The Education Center has three spaces available for meetings, retreats, weddings, parties and other events. The Center’s beautiful setting, mountain views, and inspirational landscape make it an exceptional place for your organizations’ next planning session, community event or family get-together.

Dumas Bay Center, Federal Way

Since 1993, the City of Federal Way has owned and operated Dumas Bay Centre, a full-service conference and retreat facility. Dumas Bay Centre can accommodate a wide variety of events including conferences

http://dumasbaycentre.com

Snoqualmie Falls Forest Theater, Fall City

http://www.foresttheater.org 425-880-4469 or 425-222-7044.
From Dick Johnson: A great place in warmer weather is the Many organizations enjoy their 95 acres of land surrounding the outdoor theater overlooking the falls set in a beautiful natural park with access to the Snoqualmie River, trails to the foot of the falls, etc. It's a great place for weddings too. They have a commercial kitchen, BBQ shelter, a large covered picnic shelter to help make your retreat a once in a lifetime event.

North Cascades Environmental Learning Center

https://www.ncascades.org/learning_center/
conferences/index.html

Located three hours from Seattle in the peaceful setting of North Cascades National Park on the shores of Diablo Lake, North Cascades Environmental Learning Center offers a unique setting for a conference or retreat. It sleeps up to 50 people and has a classroom, two labs, a library, three lodges and a dining hall that serves fresh, local and delicious food. For more information contact North Cascades Institute at (360) 856-5700 ext. 209

Olympic Park Institute

http://www.yni.org/opi/conference/index.php

Meeting rooms and outdoor areas for seminars, retreats, weddings and other events with groups of 10 to 100
An outdoor campfire area and lakeside log shelter with a stone fireplace
Wireless internet access and audio-visual capabilities
Hearty, delicious meals
Overnight accommodations
Miles of lakefront park land and hiking trails

Credits

Thanks to all of the people and organizations who have contributed information or updates to this page, including:

Putnam Barber, Executive Alliance
Antonia Jindrich, Washington Environmental Council
Dakotta J.K. Alex, Break the Glass Ceiling Foundation

and various members of the Nonprofit Networking email discussion list

Writing Online: Best Practices

sknox — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:47:50 GMT

Following are some guidelines, tips, and hints for writing more effective web content. This is a wide-ranging article, but we hope it will help whether you are writing for a web page, email newsletter, action alert or anything else that will primarily be read online.

Do Not Copy Directly from Word!

MS Word and other word processors will add unwanted formatting information to your webpages. Paste content into Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac) to remove the formatting first. Read this article for more information on this topic.

Keep it short!

Above all other advice, this is probably the most important point. Online writing needs to be much shorter than other writing. Research shows that people scan much more than they read every word. Therefore, you want to make it easy for your visitors to scan for information quickly.

Subheadlines, lists and boldface make content easier to scan

Along with writing short, easily digestible chunks of text, you should also make good use of boldface, lists and subheadlines. These elements help guide readers' eyes towards the most important content, and make it easier to absorb large content.

Another way to break content up on a page is to use a bulleted list. Write a short sentence and then support it with bullet points. Example:

Here's some ways you can reduce your carbon emissions:

Commute to work
Drive a fuel-efficient car
Turn your thermostat down when you leave the house
Turn lights off at work when you leave for the evening

You don't need to end sentences in a bulleted list with a period. They tend to stop the eyes from scanning anyway.

Use hyperlinks effectively

Write short, to-the-point pages and link to other pages on or off your site to allow visitors to find more information. The average time new visitors spend on any one page is around 30 seconds. Take advantage of that short attention span by providing lots of links to explore.

Web usability experts discourage the use of the phrase "click here" for links. Instead use an accurate description of the linked content worked into a sentence. For example, instead of

"To see our most recent annual report, click here"

try

"For more information, see our most recent Annual Report."

This is a usability issue because if a vision-impaired person is using a web reader, "Annual Report" will tell them about the content, while "click here" gives them no real information about where the link will take them.

Build trust with citations

Many people are wary of linking off to other website for fear that their visitors will simply spend time on other sites instead of theirs. This is not necessarily so. You want people to think of your site and the center for good information whether that information lives on your website or not. The idea here is to build confidence in your site visitors that if they want information about a subject, they'll come to you first. People prefer websites that provide "click worthy" links to good information.

It is particularly hard for people to assess the accuracy and quality of information they find online, so consider citing your sources whenever possible.

Use active voice

Never use a passive voice construction like "Marketing and communications plans are being developed." Instead, try "We are developing marketing and communications plans" that make it clear who is performing the activity. Using the active voice is one of the best ways to write more clearly and more directly and to avoid getting caught in a dead, dry, bureaucratic voice.

Use "inverted pyramid" construction on top level pages

Sometimes called the "Model T" method, the idea here is to load your most important information at the top of the page and at the top level of your website. Often this is little more than a few sentences or bullet points. You are trying to capture the interest of your site visitors early on. Save the more specialized and lengthily pages for deeper levels of your site.

Downloadable file or webpage?

We all use word-processing software to generate at least some of our content. Often, web content is generated from a collection of various word processor documents, PDFs and spreadsheets.

When is appropriate to copy that content onto a webpage and when is it better to simply upload to original document so that your visitors can download it themselves? It's a difficult decision, with no clear right and wrong.

We suggest three criteria:

1) If the content is longer than about 10 printed pages, or intended to be read as a whole, you should probably post the document for download. Few people have the patience to read such long documents online -- they will probably print them out anyway. Long documents often benefit from the additional formatting that you can do in print. Finally, it can be very cumbersome to convert that much text to HTML.

2) If your original document contains complex graphics or layouts it is better to post it for download. Complex documents generally can't be faithfully rendered into standards-compliant HTML.

3) If your content is short and non-graphical, it is probably best to turn it into a straight-HTML webpage. It would be silly to make your visitors download a one-page Word document. If you have a longer document that visitors may only want to read a short section of, you should consider breaking the document into a series of shorter HTML pages.

Additional reading

Following are some online resources that contain more great tricks and tips for writing more effectively online.

How Users Read on the Web

Writing for the Web

Headlines are Critical Content

How to Communicate Effectively Online (PDF)

Got a favorite of your own? Leave a comment and let us know!

Five Ways We Listen

jon — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:59:54 GMT

Working at ONE/Northwest can sometimes feel like working in a busy train station. At any one time we may have thirty to forty client projects to manage, with many other internal projects in process. Despite all of this action (or maybe because of it!) we take deliberate efforts to make sure we are listening carefully to all of our clients, and then using what we've learned to improve and shape our work.

Five ways we do our best to listen to our clients:

1) Using Client Demand to Drive Innovation Investments

One way we listen to our clients is through our project work. The majority of our innovation on web and database projects evolves from us thoughtfully applying technology in response to real client needs.

For example, our pressroom, slideshow, image banner rotation and e-card add-on products for Plone were all tools we developed for a website project. They were then released as open source products and have been reused over and over again.

On the Salesforce database consulting side, innovations such as the modeling of leadership ladders, outcomes tracking and almost all items in our "Salesforce secret sauce" - http://www.onenw.org/services/database/onenw-salesforce-functionality came directly from real client needs.

2) Project Evaluations

ONE/Northwest evaluates all projects against specific metrics of productivity to understand what we are doing well and what we could improve upon. We regularly review those surveys and report the findings to our funders. Questions in our evaluation surveys allow us to hear from our clients where we are providing the most value and where we can improve our work.

2008 Project Evaluation Results

3) Confidence Check-ins

It is not enough that our clients are happy with our solutions -- we want to make sure they know how to use them effectively. As a result we do a check-in survey at least three months after a project is complete that asks clients how confident they are in the basic, intermediate and advanced tasks relating to their website or database system.

If we see a specific problem, we follow-up individually with a client. If we see a pattern, we adjust our trainings.

This listening allows us to also know who our power-users are so when we have ideas we want to explore, we know which clients to use as resources.

4) Usage Statistics

Salesforce also does a great job of letting us know how clients are using the database we built for them. Thanks to a few simple scripts, we can determine how often the staff of an organization is logging-in to Salesforce per month. Don't worry, we only record overall frequency, not individual usage, so we can gain a big picture perspective on how the tool is working and determine if follow-up training is needed.

5) Need Support?

One of the best ways we make sure we are listening to our clients is to make it easy for them to ask us for help. Questions from clients provide ONE/Northwest with a good indication of where they are struggling and where they are successful. We do a yearly analysis of the types of questions our clients have and if we are seeing a regular problem, we can address it for all of our clients.

These are just a few of the ways we are listening to our clients and using that information to become even better at what we do. We have our ears open over here and encourage you to pick up the phone or send us an email if you have an idea you would like to share.

Putting Email To Work

jons — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:30:38 GMT

by Michael Stein

This article was originally published in Grassroots Fundraising Journal

Oh, email! For many individuals and organizations, email has transformed both the quantity and quality of human communication. Simultaneously intimate and public, email is a daily symbol of the potential and danger that technology promises. To some, email is a simple and sublime medium to communicate in the modern world. To others and often the same people it is a reviled and bottomless pit of unwanted spam that infuriates and frustrates.

Nonprofit organizations of all sizes and budgets are exploring how to integrate email into a comprehensive communications and fundraising strategy. Some are far along the road of doing so; others are just starting out. This article provides an overview of why and how to use email in your fundraising program.

THE BENEFITS OF EMAIL

Email is a flexible and easy-to-use medium for both the sender and the receiver. Email is important precisely because it's regular, constant, and often the way most people engage with the internet. It's fast, cheap, easy to use, and informal. There's also that quality of its being "viral" that is, email is content that's easy for your readers to pass on by forwarding. As many organizations can attest, this can exponentially expand your network and reach.

Email brings immediate response, allowing us to gauge how well we're reaching our constituencies. The benefits of that immediacy goes both ways: now your community can have more access to you and provide the gold of any good relationship: a dynamic feedback loop.

Email can also provide content in its own right. The voice, style, presentation and format are all critical to your success. Email is fast, but that doesn't mean that you can jot off emails without foresight and the help of an editor.

Recently, one organization, MoveOn.org, has demonstrated how effective the personal email voice can be. MoveOn has a database of two million email subscribers, but each mailing they send feels as though it's written to just the reader receiving it because each communication is written in a direct, simple, clear and personal voice. One way they achieve this is by keeping each email focused on one central thought.

The same virtues of email also highlight its limitations. While it's fast and easy, it's also rather "disposable," as it's easy to delete. The very quality of immediacy can negate its power and impact. When sending email, we are dealing with the dreaded domain of unwanted email or "spam," a sensitive issue for many email users.

That "send" button warrants perhaps more caution and respect before we use it. From a communications point of view, it's important to be sensitive to when it's appropriate to use email, and when the phone or regular post mail is better. From a communications point of view, it's important to be sensitive to when it's appropriate to use email, and when the phone or regular post mail is better.

INTEGRATE EMAIL INTO YOUR FUNDRAISING MIX

There are several reasons that email should be seen as the foundation, or basic unit, of your online fundraising practices and strategy. The key to understanding email and leveraging it to suit your needs is to recognize how it gracefully complements all aspects of your communications from your website to the forms people fill out when they mail in a donation and the ways you ask for donations. Simply stated, email is now a vital part of all of your outreach and communications.

Email can complement your fundraising efforts by enabling you to create campaigns, conduct seasonal fundraising, and work across mediums by integrating it with your other fundraising strategies, including direct mail, web, phone, face-to-face solicitations, and events.

Email can be effective at augmenting some of your current fundraising practices. For example, you may choose to send an email newsletter at the same time that you're mailing a direct mail appeal , or send a personal email "thanks" after you've made a phone call. More and more, supporters and donors are becoming comfortable with being contacted in multiple mediums. Email is now ubiquitous enough that you can even make the "ask" in email. Asking for financial support via email is most effective when that donor originally donated via your website.

In all these instances, the idea is to use email to cultivate dynamic, strong relations with your donors and prospective donors.

HOW TO USE EMAIL TO EXPAND YOUR DONOR RELATIONSHIPS

There are three major formats to reach your members or prospective members through email: email newsletters, action alerts, and donation appeals.

1) Publish a Regular Email Newsletter to Reach Out and Touch People

The email newsletter is arguably the most effective use of email at this time. It's malleable, dynamic, and easy to produce. The email newsletter is where using email shines. You can keep your community in the loop, present a personal and branded mode of communication, conduct a very efficient and inexpensive method of regular updates, and get as fancy or plain as you want to.

One common email newsletter formatting question for organizations concerns the "plain text or HTML" issue. HTML stands for "Hypertext Markup Language," which is the basic programming language for creating web pages. HTML when in email enables messages to appear with complex formatting of fonts, columns, and embedded images.

There are increasing numbers of inexpensive tools to use to create your own HTML email template, and several internet vendors specialize in HTML email creation and delivery. Recent studies demonstrate that recipients receiving messages in HTML are more likely to pass the message on and to "click-through" to the organization's website.

However, not everyone has the kind of sophisticated email application required to view HTML. Fortunately, most vendors who send email newsletters use what's called an "HTML sniffer," a feature that automatically substitutes a plain-text email message if the recipient's email program cannot handle HTML. Keep in mind, too, that the more graphically fancy your newsletter is, the longer it takes to download regardless of the email application.

[ONE/Northwest provides several email newsletter solutions to Northwest environmental groups.]

2) Use the "Action Alert" Model to Mobilize Supporters

The action alert is perhaps the first real application of email by nonprofits, beginning with simple text emails circulating among lists of affinity groups and communities. The action alert has evolved, thanks to the advancements in vendor technology, to provide more leverage and options for how you choose to mobilize your constituencies.

For example, you can now efficiently target action alerts to specific individuals by narrowing your list by any of your database fields, such as zip code, state, or issue interest. Technology also allows you to create follow-up emails based on previous responses to earlier action alerts. So, for example, you might filter your list by all the people who sent faxes from your website last month.

3) Don't Fear Using Email to Make a Direct Appeal for Donations

Most donors give simply because they're asked. It's that simple. Email can be effectively used for donation appeals. Email tends to work best when it's used as part of a coordinated effort across multiple mediums. For example, you may be raising money to send a delegation to the state capital by conducting a variety of fundraising activities, such as house parties, a print mailing, and a phone campaign. Adding an email component to this campaign and encouraging people to forward the email to five friends will help spread the word and tie in well to the other activities.

Other occasions that work well for email appeals are seasonal occasions, such as an annual fund drive, an awards dinner, or a holiday. Again, online fundraising works best when it's coordinated with a real-world activity.

MoveOn.org is a vivid case study in how personal, direct, and simple email solicitations can work. MoveOn follows a few basic guidelines that ensure their success: they solicit on rare occasions that tie in with real-world urgencies (such as the invasion of Iraq); they make the pitch transparently clear and tied to a specific campaign; and they communicate with clear language and from a distinct person.

HOW TO GET MORE FROM EMAIL

There are several other uses to which you can put email.

Use Email to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Email notices are particularly effective at getting your email reader to visit your website. If your organization's website is rich in resources and content, with frequent changes or additions of information, you can use email notices to inform people when you have made updates to your website.

Specific update emails can be a simple and quick way to drive traffic to your website, while providing a service to your community. This is also a good way to use your email newsletter, as it can provide hyperlinks to new content on the website.

While your website is extremely important, it's vital to view your email and website as integrated and working together. View email as the outreach aspect of your website and your organization's content; it's what goes out, and on the website is where the substantial content resides. Emails are tasters, reminders ideally used for short messages, time-specific items, and action prompts.

The email should drive traffic to your site with links. Using technology to track your email "click-throughs" allows you to measure how well your email efforts are working . When you send an email out, how is the traffic to your site affected? If you don't see a rise in traffic, how can you modify your email messaging to enhance traffic?

Segment Content to Communicate Better

Many organizations decide to tailor their email messaging to their various constituencies and communities. If your organization has lots of rich content to share, it's extremely effective to package this content to specialized lists.

For example, the nonprofit think tank Redefining Progress begins with a simple link on their homepage that the reader can click to receive electronic updates about the group's work. The visitor is taken to a sign-up page where they can select from a menu of newsletters based on issue areas. This enables Redefining Progress to segment their list based on issue area, while learning more about their community and catering to the distinct needs of their diverse constituencies.

What does this have to do with fundraising? Everything. Stronger traction with your members and community through more personalized communication translates into higher yields when it comes time for fundraising. It also increases the value to the reader of participating in the organization.

Evaluate Your Email Effectiveness

It's essential to evaluate your email practices continually to gauge their effectiveness and whether you are meeting your desired outcomes. Assembling a profile of your email practices can inform decisions about features like formatting, content, and timing.

Measure the number of new email newsletter subscribers and the number of unsubscribers every month, charting them in a spreadsheet. When you notice spikes in either subscriptions or unsubscriptions, look at what was happening with your e-messages during that time to identify how your approach is working and what may need to be modified.

Many email vendors used for sending electronic newsletters have built-in features for tracking whether the email is received, opened, and whether the recipient clicked through to your website or took some other action, such as forwarding the email to others. You will find this information to be enormously valuable and it's exciting to have such a "live" reading of how people are responding to your communications. Email is one of the few mediums that can allow you to do that.

Use Email Respectfully

Issues of privacy are increasingly important for people on both sides of the email screen the sender and the receiver. Therefore, when you ask for people's email address, let them know exactly what you intend to do with that information.

The most important things to make clear in a first email are whether or not you will share their email address with other partners, how people can unsubscribe ("optout"), and how people can contact you with complaints.

The last thing you want is for people to feel you are abusing their email address. This fear can be easily avoided by making your practices and intentions transparent from the get-go. A good method is to create a privacy statement on your website that people can review when they sign up or give you their email address.

Avoid Spam Filters with Effective Practices

After all your work, you need to know how to avoid having your lovingly crafted email newsletters and other email communiques relegated to the "trash" bin by a spam filter. Spam filters are programs email users can set up that automatically delete email messages according to criteria the user establishes.

A large factor in avoiding having your message deleted has to do with the From, To, and Subject lines in your email communications. The "From" line should clearly identify your organization so that there is no doubt in the recipient's mind about who the email is from. The "To" line should show the name of one recipient, rather than a "suppressed list." The "Subject" line should identify the email newsletter and maybe the issue date.

For example, each email from MoveOn.org comes from one of their staff, and this name appears in the From: line in the email, thereby reducing the likelihood of interpreting their emails as spam.

Collect Email Addresses Everywhere You Can

Does your website offer a box where the visitor can enter their email address to receive further information by email or subscribe to an email newsletter? When people join your organization, whether by postal mail or online, is there an email field to enter?

Collect email everywhere, both online and off. An email address is a basic piece of data about your donor, member, supporter, or affiliate. Therefore, you want to do everything in your power to make sure you have this data.

Do an inventory on how you collect data and information about your prospective supporter. There should be a sign-up option on all your website pages and on all your giving forms, phone calls, mailings, at all events in other words, at every opportunity.

While you're collecting email addresses, be sure to have people also give their full name, postal address, zip code, and possibly interests. It's also useful to know how they found their way to your organization.

EMAIL IS ABOUT CULTIVATING RELATIONSHIPS

Using email for fundraising is much more than literally soliciting for support. It's about cultivating relationships, keeping the feedback loops intact, and thereby ensuring a stronger base of support. Email is a versatile tool that can be leveraged to greatly enhance and complement all aspects of donor and member relations.

Once this broader picture is firmly in place, it may become more evident how each aspect of how your organization uses email can be linked to your overall fundraising efforts. The range is wonderfully broad: from collecting email addresses on your website to a carefully executed online fundraising campaign that uses email as its central vehicle. As a core component of a broad stakeholder communications strategy, email can be the glue to hold your donor relations together and create traction in your communications to yield wonderful results.

Finally, email is not intended to be a substitute for "live" relationships meeting with your donors and other supporters, whether one-on-one or in group settings. What email does is add another method to be in touch with people. So be careful not to start depending on email as an all-purpose fundraising communication vehicle. The harder work of real relationship building still needs to be done.

Michael Stein is a technology writer and internet strategist with two decades of experience working with nonprofits, foundations, labor unions and technology companies. Michael is the author of three books about the internet including "The eNonprofit: A Guide to ASPs, internet Services and Online Software. Find him online at http://www.michaelstein.net/

Re:Green - The Ecological Roadmap - Part 3

shawnk — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:52:24 GMT

You've heard about the Greenest Americans, Caretakers, Fatalists and other ecological values groups the American public can be divided into as identified in Re: Green - The Ecological Roadmap. Through the process of conducting the segmentation study and multiple focus groups that provide the research basis for Re: Green, Earthjustice's Social Capital Project discovered five key barriers to engaging the public in environmental protection and how best to overcome them. Learn more about the barriers and details on how they play out with all of the ecological values segments in the executive summary of the project. Want more? The Social Capital Project has made the data open source for nonprofit organizations. Contact Meredith Herr (meredith@socialcapitalproject.org) to sign up for the Social Capital Project's research intranet site. Email Cara Pike for more information about the Social Capital Project's move to the Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon (cara@socialcapital.org).

Organizing Your Filesystem

sknox — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:53:42 GMT

Like any good spring cleaning, it's a good idea to take a periodic look at the content items that populate your Plone website. You may find that there are old News Items, Events, Pages, Images, or other types of content that you aren't using any more. While your site visitors may not be aware of the volume of old content on your site, it can make simple site maintenance a real chore.

You should have as many content items as possible organized into folders. If you have more than about 20 or so items in the root directory, you probably have old or unfiled items in there. For starters, always be sure that your Images are in the Images folder, News Items are in the News folder, and so on.

A disorganized filesystem is confusing to look at and navigate around in. A new staff member would have a hard time learning how to update content on a site like this because they wouldn't know which content items were important and which ones were not.

Another common cause of disorganization are content items that are empty or blank. You may have folders that are empty, and/or pages that are blank, or news and events that are old and could be deleted. If several people are posting content to your website, you'll probably have more than a few of these. Weeding out unused content items periodically will make managing your website a bit easier.

Stay on top of your content, especially orphaned content items. Take an hour or so every six to twelve months to review the state of your site's content. Remember that you can easily copy and paste content items into folders to keep your Contents view uncluttered. Read this article on LearnPlone.Org to learn how to perform these operations.

Action Alerts: Best Practices

sknox — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:22:16 GMT

An effective action alert requires focus on the specific action you want your supporters to take. An action alert is not a newsletter - it's a request for a single action, not a series of articles about different issues.

Also, in order to run an effective action campaign, best practice is to test your email sends with a small group and find out what works before sending out to your entire list. Every action alert has a different subject line and is about a different issue so you'll need to test every time.

Finally - don't take your email subscribers for granted! Just as your friends pay attention to you when you're telling them something interesting or valuable, so will your supporters. If your open rates stink, this indicates that your supporters aren't interested in or don't value what you're sending. Only send email that you believe (and your stats prove) that your supporters want.

Here are some ways to improve your next action alert:

A good subject line is critical. It's your chance to catch the attention of your members and supporters. Pick 2-3 subject lines that you think are good, test, and go with the one that gets the highest opens and clicks.
Keep the content short and action focused. Limit your email to 3 or 4 SHORT paragraphs. If you can't do that, don't send the email.
Link to the requested action early in the email, either with a "Take Action" box, or other highlighted or bolded text. Do not confuse your reader with more than one action - prioritize for them and only offer the most important action. Use clear wording for your action link such as "Take action", "Tell your representative", or "Send a letter."
If possible, use an action button, aligned to the top right of the alert. Be sure to include a text link just below the image as well.
Images should be used sparingly. In fact it's best to use none at all, with the exception of a take action button and a banner image. An image of the email author works in some contexts, if included with the signature.
Action links should be on their own line, not in the text of one of the paragraphs.
Use bold only to emphasize the really important parts of the alert. Go back and read the bolded sections. If you understand the meaning of the alert just by reading the bold, then you're all set (most of your recipients will scan the bold first).
Boring emails do one thing: train your supporters not to open mail from you. Think carefully before you send an email - is this email meeting a need or providing value for the recipient? If your action alerts are timely and interesting, if you're providing information or opportunities that your supporters actually want, you will see the results in your click-through and open rates.
Write as if you are talking to a friend. An informal tone is better than "policy-speak." Remember - this is a call to action, not a press release. People are most likely to respond to requests from friends - the more you seem like a "friend" the better.
Include a sense of urgency. Include a date if it's appropriate (i.e. contact your senator by . . .)
Check your facts. Be convincing and use emotional appeals, but be sure your facts are correct. You do not want to discredit yourself or your organization by making a mistake (and mistakes on the web can last a LONG time).
Thank those who take action and report back to them the results of their efforts.
Include the ability to forward the action to a friend after the recipient takes the action.
Make sure that everyone involved in your alert process gets immediate feedback about open and click-through rates. Review those alerts that perform well (and vice versa) and then use what you learn for your future efforts. If you're spending any time sending out action alerts, make sure your time (and that of your supporters) is invested well!

"Practical Plone 3" Features Contributions from ONE/Northwest

jon — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:20:26 GMT

Several ONE/Northwest staff members are now published authors!

Packt Publishing has released Practical Plone 3: A Beginner's Guide to Building Powerful Websites, which features substantial contributions from several ONE/Northwest staff members.

Practical Plone 3 is the first book about Plone 3 aimed squarely at beginning website developers. It has 21 chapters covering a wide range of topics including: installing Plone, using its basic features to build websites, customizing its look-and-feel and more.

Practical Plone 3, like Plone itself, is a community project, and was written by a team of 13 authors. ONE/Northwest was strongly represented in the mix, with contributions from:

Veda Williams, who wrote the chapter on customizing Plone's visual design and helped manage the overall project.
Jon Stahl, who wrote the introductory chapter, plus chapters on building forms and managing portlets.
Sam Knox, who wrote the chapter on Plone's basic editing features
Jon Baldivieso and David Glick, who served as technical reviewers

Practical Plone 3 can be purchased online directly from Packt Publishing, via Amazon.com, or at your local bookstore.

David Glick Chosen For Plone 4 Framework Team

jon — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:41:16 GMT

The Plone community has selected ONE/Northwest's David Glick to serve on the Framework Team for Plone 4, the next major release of Plone. David will join six other accomplished Plone community members and the Plone 4 release manager to guide the development process of Plone 4.

The Plone framework team evaluates proposals for major improvements to Plone and votes on which should be included.

Being selected for the Framework Team is a huge honor in the Plone community, and a recognition of the many contributions David has made to the Plone project since starting at ONE/Northwest in 2007. We're very proud of David's work, and pleased that he'll have the opportunity to play a major role in shaping the future of Plone.

Video from Email Crafting and Best Practices Workshop

tiffany — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:16:32 GMT

We had a great turn out for our Email Crafting and Best Practices workshop--thank you to our speakers and to the brave folks who let us dissect their emails. If you want to check out the video from the evening, click here.