Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants – November 26th, 2007
Howard Lake | 26 November 2007 | Blogs
Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants – a weekly blog carnival comprising posts on a particular nonprofit theme. It’s the first time I’ve hosted the Carnival here on Givinginadigitalworld.com, and my theme for the week was ‘Engaging with supporters through online social networks’. In accordance with the ‘seven posts only’ rule – here are the top seven posts…
With Facebook still the hottest online social network in terms of discussion about new advertising approaches, here’s Wild Apricot’s Ten innovative ways nonprofits can use Facebook.
The rise of Facebook over the last year has tended to obscure the fact that MySpace, with some 200 million members, remains the world’s biggest online social network. In the light of this, the folks at Frogloop have conducted an interesting analysis of how 150 nonprofits are using MySpace and what others can learn from this when considering their own MySpace presence.
Taking a different tack, Kivi Leroux Miller’s post ‘Forget MySpace and Facebook and try sites for Boomers?’ is a great reminder to think first about just who you’re looking to engage with and only then then to consider which social networks might be right to help you achieve this – rather than simply following the MySpace and Facebook crowds.
Here in the UK, discussion about such Boomer sites has been fueled recently by the launch of SAGA Zone. However, as reported on NMK’s blog, UK-based charity Help the Aged has criticised the site for segregating older users.
Alternately, how about building your own social network site? In her post social networks, walled gardens, and decision trees, Elizabeth Dunn discusses the pros and cons of an organisation-specific social network vs a ‘big box’ site.
And finally, with the launch of Google’s OpenSocial perhaps it’s going to get a whole lot easier to develop online engagement programmes through a range of different social networks (or perhaps not?).
At Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology, Michelle Murrain gives a very handy intro to what Open Social means and what it might mean for nonprofits.
While John Bell encourages nonprofits to take advantage of OpenSocial to engage with supporters through the development of multi-platform widgets in his post on Nonprofit widgets in the age of OpenSocial.
That’s all for this week, but you can keep track of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, whoever is hosting, by subscribing to the Carnival feed.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.