Here's your weekly dose of TA. Enjoy.
Tools and Resources
- Infographicreator.com offers a free version (with their logo at the bottom and for online viewing only).
- Take a look at Nonprofit Tech for Good's 2018 Cause Awareness & Giving Day Calendar if you do fundraising. (image from Nonprofit Tech for Good)
- Need data from a website? Try Listly. It scrapes structured data from the web and converts from HTML to Excel. The free version allows users to scrape 10 pages per month. Paid subscriptions start at $1.99/month.
- LightBox Collaborative's Evergreen Editorial Calendar is a must-bookmark and use. Better: Download and personalize for your organization. Can be used for many things including advocacy and fundraising.
- There's a terrific discussion on Hacker News: Hacker News equivalent for other fields. I love Hacker News, techie or not. I'll definitely use this list to expand my information sources.
At work
- Facebook's News Feed announcement (Mark Zuckerberg's take on it) is creating quite the kerfuffle. Here are a few takes on it: Facebook drastically changes News Feed to make it "good for people" (and bad for most publishers) (NiemanLab); If Facebook stops putting news in front of readers, will readers bother to go looking for it? (NiemanLab; and What does Mark Zuckerberg's pledge of fixing Facebook's issues mean for the fate of news on the platform? (NiemanLab). Have you thought about what changes mean to your business or organization? Leave a comment.
- Best books for new, first-time managers.
- Is crowdfunding all it's cracked up to be? How Will The Rise Of Crowdfunding Reshape How We Give To Charity? author Ben Paynter writes,
The result is a vast pool of money that’s fundamentally shifting who is funding charitable work and how that work gets done. Viral campaigns may reach more potential donors but those givers often respond in an emotional as opposed to rational way: You’re paying to alleviate someone’s suffering, not the broader societal problem it represents. The result has left nonprofits scrambling for new ways to share their own community-minded messages within the medium.
Crowdfunding Has Created A Whole New Consulting Industry quotes Ethan Mollick, a professor of entrepreneurship at Wharton School of Business:
Only 10 percent of projects raise 25 percent or more than their goal, Mollick said. "And the worst thing in the world for you is you've just raised $50,000, but you secretly knew you were going to raise a million dollars and your project cost $200,000 to make. That's a disaster," he said.
Learn something
- Here's the Wild Apricot list of free webinars: 37 Free Nonprofit Webinars for January 2018. Some that look particularly, from the second half of the month: Bridging the Gap - Staying Productive Inbetween Development Directors (January 18), Where Do I Go From Here? Engage Volunteers in New Ways (January 24), and Inspire Your Board to Give and Get (January 25).
- Nonprofits and others can learn from I’ve Sent Out 1,018 Open Records Requests, and This Is What I’ve Learned. Harvard's Shorenstein Center summarizes:
Sandhya Kambhampati, a data reporter at ProPublica, explains what she learned from sending more than 1,000 open records requests to governments in Illinois. One helpful tip: Ask for other people's Freedom of Information Act requests. "If you know what records have already been granted, you can request the same records and not have to wait months for your data. So ask for the agency's FOIA logs," she writes.
Good reads
- It's not "citizen journalism," but it is "citizens taking notes at public meetings with no reporters around" is a must-read. Certainly funding for a formal project is nice, but having a place where residents can post their notes from government meetings and events would enrich society.
- LISTEN: The Most Successful Union Organizer in America Thinks Traditional Organizing Is A Lost Cause. Listen and consider what Rolf has to say for unions and how you can take advantage of his lessons for your work.