In recent years, I have participated in many “telemeetings” via phone, video, or the web – some were great and others were…well, pretty boring. With travel budgets trimmed, I suspect that many nonprofits will be doing more of these “telemeetings” in the future. So, how can we make these meetings productive and even enjoyable rather than just an excuse for catching up on our sleep?

Continue reading.

In case you aren’t crystal clear about what we’ve been up to here at NPower, our 2008 Annual Report should shed some light. Our online report is easy to access and can be downloaded any time!

Download NPower's 2008 Annual Report.

Grassroots.org provides nonprofit organizations with free valuable technologies and resources such as web hosting, graphic design, online marketing, and more to increase efficiency and productivity. Their capacity-building services are conveniently packaged in the Grassroots.org Toolbox: a suite of user-friendly tools designed to help nonprofits achieve, sustain, and expand a strong web presence.

Sign up today!

Webinars are a great way to share information long-distance, save your nonprofit money, and reduce your carbon footprint while still providing a valuable service to your constituents. Nonprofits use webinars for a variety of purposes and new online tools are making it easy for organizations, even with limited technology expertise. Here are 10 steps, by techsoup.org, on how to plan affordable, quality webinars at your nonprofit.

Continue reading.

The NPower network recently conducted a nationwide survey to identify the current state of technology in use across nonprofits and to distinguish patterns of needs in the technology community. Over 1,000 nonprofits from around the country responded. Here are samples of some of the findings:

• IT is still a small part of a nonprofit's overall focus as lack of funding and ongoing costs call for a higher level of quality and affordability in the nonprofit IT services arena;
• Many tasks that are critical to the success of a nonprofit are conducted in a manual manner as paper and spreadsheet based methods are widely used throughout; and
• There is a need for collaborative technology as many nonprofits are concerned about integration of separate systems, organizational sharing of key documents and overall data quality.

Read the report.