Krista Endsley, Sage

The weakening economy has created a ripple effect across all types of businesses, including the charitable sector. Due to funding uncertainties, many nonprofit organizations and government agencies are more hesitant about expenditures, and keeping a closer eye on budgets and cash flows. Yet, they are under growing pressure to do more with fewer resources.

Typically, systems are in place to help each department meet these challenges and work effectively. Key staff members enter, manage, and report on this data -- but it can be difficult to pull together snapshots of progress quickly enough to make real-time course corrections. To help relieve these demands, many organizations are turning to Business intelligence tools to retrieve, organize, and share knowledge for analysis and guided decision-making.

By having precise, up-to-date information at their fingertips, nonprofit professionals at every level can gain a deeper insight that allows them to strengthen stewardship, improve agility, and, ultimately, secure the success of their organization.

Randy McCabe, MPower Open

A bad economy can be one of the best things to happen to a marketing professional.

That may seem paradoxical, but times of constraint -- when revenues fall or simply do not meet budgeted expenditures -- force hard decisions that do not even seem like options during periods of prosperity and largesse. As Samuel Johnson, the celebrated 18th century English author, once said, "There is nothing like the prospect of being hung in a fortnight to concentrate a man's mind."

There is a powerful opportunity here. With the limitation of lower revenues and the pressure to cut costs, this is an ideal time to innovate around your operations and systems costs while still funding programs and activities and, yes, increasing investment in donor development.

Thon Morse, Kimbia

[This article was originally published on Kimbia's website.]

Today's challenging economic times mean a lot of nonprofits are looking for new ways to raise money. Many organizations realize the Internet presents a huge opportunity, but most have achieved limited success.

If your organization has yet to experience strong results raising funds online, the coming year provides an ideal window to experiment with new approaches. A good first step is dismissing some myths about online fundraising that may be standing in the way of your success:

• Myth #1: Online fundraising isn't as effective as offline techniques.
• Myth #2: People won't give online.
• Myth #3: Online fundraising means raising money through my organization's website.
• Myth #4: Technology is not the problem.
• Myth #5: Raising 10 percent of all gifts online is a great goal.

Peter Deitz, Social Actions

With the global financial crisis at its peak and a recession looming, many nonprofit managers are probably asking themselves, "How will my nonprofit raise money next year?" I suspect fewer fundraisers are asking themselves, "How will my nonprofit raise the money it needs four years from now?"

Current best practices will serve nonprofits just fine in 2009. Between email solicitation, direct mail, major donors, and grant-writing, the vast majority of nonprofits will weather the economic hard times. But a shifting communications environment and changing donor demographics could render those best practices ineffective at best, and obsolete at worst, as early as 2012.

So how should your organization prepare for the changes that are afoot?

Flickr Credit: PhilonHave you attended an NTEN webinar lately?

Over the last year or so, we've really bulked up our online seminar offerings, usually with at least one per week, and often as many as three for you to choose from.

We know technology tools and trends evolve rapidly, and you need to stay on top of what the nonprofit sector is doing and using to achieve their missions more efficiently. We also know that traveling to conferences and in-person seminars is often beyond the reach of most folks, be that because of location, time, or costs involved.

I bring this up because I get to give out a free webinar to a member today as part of this month's Member Appreciation festivities. But I don't want to stop there.

I want all nonprofit program staff, IT staff, fundraising and communications staff, and yes, nonprofit executive directors out there to stay on top of the tools and strategies that will make your jobs easier, and perhaps, as a result, the world a little better.

So, let's do this:

Member Appreciation month continues with another NTEN give-away, a free webinar:

Terri Dufner, we're sending you a coupon for a free NTEN webinar so you can build on your nonprofit technology skills and put them to use toward your mission.

Reminder: All NTEN members can attend our special free webinar this Thursday:

> 10 Tactics for Growing Your Online community.

Sure, you collect a lot of data, but if you don't use it effectively, it's essentially dead. And I'm talking "a tree falls on you in a forest and nobody's around to help" dead. This occasional blog series aims to give you some inspiration for creatively interpreting and using your data.

101. Track an Illness

When economic woes and job layoffs dominate the news cycle, we tend to examine our own careers and financial standing. Am I okay? Is my job safe?

Flickr Credit: RobbieG1It's times like these that being part of a community of professionals, a community of colleagues who share tips, insights, and even job opportunities, becomes even more valuable.

For us, the nonprofit technology professionals -- a niche that includes IT professionals as well as fundraising and communications folks, as well as the small nonprofit staffers who are jacks-of-all-trades -- to do our jobs well, there's the added need to stay on top of the fast-evolving technologies and trends.

Building that community and providing that professional development training is the idea behind NTEN, and the mission we pursue.

As the second week of Member Appreciation month starts to wind down, I'm glad for the opportunity to discuss today's particular NTEN give-away:

AdWords for Dummies, courtesy of Jossey-Bass/Wiley publishers.

Now, I can bring up Google's AdWords and how it could fit in with your nonprofit organization: