I see lots of requests from nonprofits for HTML trainings. Why doesn’t NPower offer this type of class?  That kind of thing. And it’s true, we don’t offer HTML; nor are we likely to. To be honest, we don’t believe that any nonprofit should be hand coding websites using HTML.

Why you might ask? Because there are so many other options out there for us nonprofits to use. I highly recommend to any student that asks that their nonprofit use a Content Management System (CMS). If you hard code your site using HTML it has numerous drawbacks:

• It can be rigid & inflexible
• Takes a lot of time to make any kind of change
• Someone has to know how to code in HTML
• And they have to know the most current version or it may not display properly
• You have to keep track of all the pieces - how they inter-relate
• If you change a button or link, you need to make sure all references are change as well - manually!

Need I go on?

So how is a CMS better? Many of these processes are automated. Change a link in one place and it can automatically change everywhere on your site. Many are very user friendly, having a WYSIWYG system (What You See Is What You Get - although what you see isn’t always what you get).

There are lots of CMS’s to choose from. NPower has pretty much standardized on Plone - one of several open-source content management systems. Now it’s not the right choice for everyone and we know that. We also offer Dreamweaver training, which is very reasonably priced thanks to funding from Adobe. If you need help deciding, you can always ask us about the virtues of Plone. Idealware has both an online seminar on choosing a CMS and the corresponding review article. And there are lots of articles over at TechSoup.

And again, to be honest, we do a tiny smigend of HTML in a couple of our classes. The Website Foundations training here at NPower includes some basic HTML code when it comes to formatting. That’s because many CMS’s, or other websites, will let you use some basic code to format your text. Things like bolding, italicizing or adding color.

I love TechSoup. They do so much for us nonprofits:

• Discounted software
• Informational articles
• Discussion forums

Today I came across a great article that they had published in 2000 and updated again this month. It’s called “When To Use Consultants”  and if you haven’t figured it out by the title, it’s all about when your nonprofit should hire an IT consultant for tech support.

Now this isn’t anything new, NPower has been providing tech support for nonprofits since we began almost 10 years ago. But what I like most about this article is the emphasis on having a Tech Plan. Having been involved in nonprofits for the last 15+ year, I know this is something at a lot of nonprofit don’t do. Or if they do have a tech plan, it’s a small section of their stragetic plan.

Having a seperate Tech Plan though is important. It can really make a difference between your technology being a barrier, something you have to struggle with - or an effective tool, something you hardly have to even think about.

And I’m never shy about promoting some of the great work that we do here at NPower. And Tech Planning is just one of the services we’ve been helping nonprofits with.

Sometimes the hardest part of creating a chart in Excel isn’t creating it at all, it’s deciding what type of chart to use. There are so many options, which one showcases your data the best?

If you have Excel 2007 then the folks at the Microsoft Office Labs have a little something to help make it easier. Recently they created a plug-in for Excel 2007 that will suggest the right chart for your data. It’s called the Chart Advisor. I installed it myself and played around with it a little, not much mind you. It seemed pretty cool and easy to use.

Keep in mind that the Microsoft Lab stuff is “beta” and isn’t guaranteed to be stable. Some users have experienced issues, so use at your own risk.

The weather has certainly turned, early if you ask me, and the kids are back in school. What about you? Now is the perfect time to hone up on your skills and here at NPower we’ve decided to make it even easier.

I know, our training classes are already a pretty good deal. They’re cheaper than the Corporate training companies AND we use examples that are nonprofit specific. Of course it helps that we’re a nonprofit too.

So I sweet talked the boss and we’re offering a 2 for 1 special til the end of the year on select classes. If you and a co-worker both sign up for the same class* on the same registration form, you only pay for one of you.

With the economy the way it is, I’m hoping this helps nonprofit staff get the skills they need to use technology to better meet their mission.

*my disclaimer - OK it’s not every class but you can find a list of qualifying ones at http://www.npowerseattle.org/education/fall-2008-training-special

Well Adobe announced CS4 on Tuesday and I must say I’m excited. Well at least about the newest version of InDesign (what else?). It has some really cool features that I’ve been waiting for.

What, you might ask?

• Integration with Flash
• Updated Links panel

Those are the 2 biggest for me personally. The Flash integration, while nice, isn’t something that’ll appeal to everyone. But the links panel update is! Finally when you put graphics into your documents you’ll get useful information. And the biggest piece is size - finally InDesign will tell you what the resolution of your graphic is! That alone, to me, is worth upgrading for.

If you want a nicely done synopsis of the new features, check out InDesign Secrets. They’ve done a neat & tidy job of running down the new features in InDesign.

I wanted to outline one possible strategy for deciding which tool to use to send mail - many of our noprofits colleagues have THREE ways they can reach out to their stakeholders:

1. Sending from Outlook (or whatever else they use for a regular mail tool)
2. Sending from Vertical Response
3. Sending directly from Salesforce

All three of those tools have different layers/levels of integration - so it can be hard to figure out what tool to use. Here’s my recommendation:

• If the mail you are going to send is to a GROUP of people (say 20 or more) - I think you should use Vertical Response. They’ll handle spam laws and so on - and you can track your open rates and so on back in Salesforce.
• If the mail you are going to send is internal (say, to your co-workers) - I think you should send from your normal mail client - you probably don’t need a record of that correspondence in your CRM. Imagine the clutter if every note I sent to my team was recorded in Salesforce!
• If the mail you are going to send has information that your agency needs to know (this is the "hit by the bus" rule) and is going to a single person - then you should send it directly from Salesforce. That captures that knowledge for your agency, rather than silo it in your sent mail (or worse) in your brain. For instance - inviting a key stakeholder to a meeting, someone to join the board, or other information that your team may need to use.
• And if the mail you are going to send is incidental - say - inviting a board member to lunch, scheduling a coffee meeting, or something of that nature - you should send with your regular email tool.

It’s pretty likely that under any of these circumstances - your work won’t be finished! After that meeting, or after getting a response to that email - you might need to GO BACK to Salesforce to create an activity to record what happened! That casual coffee meeting might have generated a grant opportunity, your team might have mentioned a possible donor that you should contact, and your bulk email via Vertical Response probably generated follow up, too.

It’s easier by far to solve the "what email?" question with brain power, rather than with code. Despite the huge gains in technology - your brain can make that choice much more quickly and affordably than any code we could create - so - put your brain to work and create some protocol that suits YOUR agency!

The folks over at Contextures blog had a post today about a new offering from the Microsoft Labs. It’s called Email Prioritizer and it can do 2 things for you.

1. Delay any incoming email for a set period of time
2. Rank you incoming email so you take care of the important stuff first 

I like the concept but then again, I don’t get a lot of emails anyway. Be aware, this is a test product. Judging from the comments it may not be completely stable. And you need to be on an Exchange server.

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of posts on other blogs about delaying your Outlook messages when sending. Turns out there are a lot of people that hit that send button and then regret it immediately afterwards.

I don’t know about you but when I’ve tried the “recall” option in Outlook it never seems to really work. And there have been times when I’ve sent a message and then went - “Ops”. Mostly it’s because I forgot the attachment.

Well it turns out that you can change your Outlook so that instead of immediately sending your message, Outlook will delay sending for 5, 10, 15 minutes. Whatever time frame you’d like but you limited to minutes.

To do this you set up a Rule. Microsoft was a great step-by-step instruction page that will walk you through the process. You can check it out at http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/outlook/HP012328171033.aspx?pid=CH100776981033#2

Well the folks over at TechSoup and Idealware have done it again. Another great article, this time about page layout programs. If you’re not sure what that means, let me give you a quick breakdown.

A page layout program is what most of us would consider to be a graphic design program. Technically this isn’t true as a graphic design program is mean to be used to create graphics, hence the name. An example would be Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. A page layout program on the other hand is used to lay things out on a page. That’s what you’d use to create a flyer, brochure or newsletter.

This article talks about the options that are available to use when it comes to choosing & using a page layout program. Now anyone that’s talked to me knows:

1. I hate Publisher (my personal preference, not that the program is bad or anything)
2. I LOVE Adobe InDesign (again personal preference).
3. I NEVER EVER recommend using Word for page layout. It’s just not good at it.

Now  there are plenty of reason to use Word and some to not use Word. This article does a great job covering them.

The one thing it does fail to mention, and really one of the biggest factors in choosing a page layout program is printing.

How are you going to print your final product? Is it on the office printer or through a commercial printer. Why is this important? Well if your printing in house you can use what ever makes you happy and provides you with a lovely printed copy. Be it Word, Publisher, or Notepad for that matter.

However, if you are using a commercial printer; there are several factor that should weigh in on your decision making process when it comes to choosing a program.

1. Will the commercial printer take a file created in your program? Most printers will not accept a Publisher file. a) It doesn’t great high quality files (although I’ve been told that the newest version, Publisher 2007, can) and b) they don’t have it (Publisher that is).
2. Will it create high quality PDF files. More and more commercial printers are accepting PDF files for commercial printing (you should always ask first). But that doesn’t mean the program you are using can create high quality PDF’s. It may allow you to print/save/export your piece as a PDF but if it’s low quality, it won’t print very well on a commercial printing press.

And, as always, my recommendation would be InDesign. Since Adobe joined TechSoup, your nonprofit may quality for a discounted copy. If you don’t qualify, Adobe still has nonprofit pricing; it’s just not as good of a deal as it is through TechSoup. And you can always take a class on using it here at NPower.