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?

A monthly roundup of our favorite (zombie-related) nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. Zombie Harmony: For all your zombie dating needs.
2. Wait, there's an election going on? Don't know how we missed that. Good thing the Twitter Vote Report didn't: tweet your voting experience to help others avoid problems.
3. If you watch Colbert, you've probably already been to FiveThirtyEight, an in-depth poll aggregation site. Along with RealClearPolitics, it keeps political junkies better fed than a zombie in WalMart's brains aisle.
4. Pumpkin cookies!
5. Play2Cures, from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Pledge money to purchase online game tokens, which you can send to anybody. The mini-golf game nearly derailed this newsletter.
6. The New York Times has a cool visualization of how people around the world spend their money. You know, back when people were still spending money. Altruism gets nary a mention.
7. Mercy Corps' Action Center to End World Hunger.
8. Wow, some people take this zombie thing a little too seriously.
9. Google Labs is now available to Google Apps users. Now your entire org can benefit from tools like "Mail Goggles", which promises to stop you from sending regrettable e-mails after a couple of drinks.
10. Also, you can apparently use your Gmail account with OpenID.
11. The We Are Media Wiki. Yes, we helped make it. That doesn't mean we can't like it!
12. Sorry, no velociraptor-related items this month, but: would you survive a zombie invasion?

Your guide to the resources that will help you put technology to work for your cause. This month, all of the links are courtesy of We Are Media. Add your voice to the discussion today!

Share Your Story

And by "your", we mean your supporters, because with Social Media, they're the ones extending your brand. You just need to give them a little shove in the right direction sometimes.

If you haven't read Seth Godin's seminal "Flipping the Funnel", yet, you should start there. The Rapleaf Business blog also has some great advice on incorporating user generated content instead of working from scratch.

What's that you say? It may be easy for big groups, with photogenic interests -- like the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Habitat program or The Nature Conservancy's nature picture contest -- to use something like Flickr, but you're too small? Balderdash! Poppycock! Take a look at what the Learning Community is doing. Or the Women's Museum. Flickr makes it easy to get started!

Then, of course, there are blogs, and podcasts, and video, and... (Those are all "How-to" links, by the way, but) if you're short on time, here are 50 Web2.0 ways to tell a story.

Determine the ROI of Social Media

NTEN's own Holly Ross suggests a simple formula: (Time & Money Saved + Money Earned) - (Time & Money In) = ROI. That sounds about right. Money earned is easy, but how do you figure if you're saving time and money?

Well, The Social Organization has a piece on "Collecting All Social Media Metrics". That's a start. Dow Jones, of all places, has a white paper on "Tracking the Influence of Conversations". (We imagine many of the conversations they've been hearing over the past month involve Chicken Little.)

All you wannabe bloggers should get a kick out of "The ROI of Blogging". (And you have read Chris Brogan's "12 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss", right?) Then there are some straight ROI articles: "ROI: The Null Hypothesis" and "What's Your Return on Your Social Media Investment".

Geez, there's just too much to cover for one little section of one little newsletter. But that's why we helped start We Are Media! We hope that, after you've read through it, you'll consider adding to the conversation.

Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation

As social media grows in popularity, one fact cannot be ignored: if used well, it can generate impressive amounts of traffic and increase engagement around your cause or organization. If ignored, however, it can lead to tears of anguish and people punching their computers.

I spend a lot (and I mean a lot) of time trying to figure out how to use social networking, bookmarking and news sites to enhance the National Wildlife Federation's online presence. The work I've been doing with my large non-profit can be translated to even the smallest message.

There are several key techniques for dispersing information effectively. These overall strategies aren't anything new in the marketing world: Social media is just a new way to do old business. The tools may have changed, but the need for knowing your audience, having an end goal, testing theories, and acting on lessons learned remains the same.

Karen Curry, ACLU

The ability to have conversations with members and supporters is the most exhilarating part of the new media landscape for advocacy groups such as ours. We no longer just shovel stuff out there, not knowing if it ever reached anyone or what they thought of it. Advocacy is now a multi-way street, with information coming in and going out -- and nuance being added to the message as it evolves.

Consider Kenevan McConnon, a Colorado blogger. This May, having just gotten his rebate check from the government, he began looking around online for something to spend it on. Then, he spotted his ACLU renewal form. He had been putting off renewing, for no particular reason, but when he saw the notice sitting on his desk he had an A-HA moment. He realized he could spend his money on that most quintessential of all "made in America" items -- the United States Constitution --and decided to send the entire rebate to the ACLU.

But that was only the start.

Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer, SocialFish, LLC

Social media is all the buzz these days. For associations and non-profits wondering how to get in the game -- or how to figure out whether they should -- listening is the place to start.

Listening means finding the online social spaces where your audience is already communicating, monitoring the conversations that happen there, and gathering intelligence you can use to better understand your audience. Because social media is open and public by nature, listening is not only welcome -- it's expected.

Best of all, you can get started for free!

Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV Center for Media and Democracy

Election 2008 is remarkable for many reasons. For the first time in U.S. history, the candidates for president have raised more than $1 billion. Voter registration is headed for new highs across the nation -- with a firestorm of newly registered voters under the age of thirty. And early voting levels -- 2.2 million ballots as of this writing -- indicate a massive, record-breaking turnout on Tuesday, November 4th.

Because campaigns employ such a variety of communications tactics to win an election -- from door knocking to lawn signs to TV commercials -- it may be hard to determine exactly what role social media tools have played in this historic year. But, clearly, the campaigns have made social media a central strategy in their Donor, Volunteer, and Voter mobilization efforts.

As agents of social change, there is a great deal the nonprofit sector can learn from Election 2008.