Looking for free online tools to help you collaborate with teams and communicate with stakeholders?  Wish you could access those tools across different devices (home computer, smartphone, and work computer)?  

Check out this free webinar from Microsoft Community Affairs:  Free Online Tools for Nonprofits on March 16

This free webinar will highlight free online tools from Microsoft that help nonprofits communicate and collaborate with ease.  Attendees will learn to:

-          Set up an online site for your group with a shared calendar, file- & photo-sharing (25 GB free!), and online discussions

-          Create online workspaces to manage projects and facilitate Board or committee work

-          Easily create blog content and publish it toWordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live and many more

-          Create movies and slide shows from your photos and videos and share them with your supporters on YouTube or DVD

We’ll look at free tools available to any organization.  While we won’t have time to go into detail on each tool, you’ll get a good overview of what’s out there and how to get started. 

WHEN: March 16^th, 10am - 11:30am PST

Attendance is free, but space is limited, so register today!

NOTE: Webinar is open to nonprofit staff and volunteers.  It is NOT technical in nature and there are no pre-requisites to attend.  Nonprofit organizations need not be eligible for Microsoft software donations to use the tools featured in this webinar - they are freely available online.

Thank you Microsoft, host of this webinar and Presenting Sponsor of NPower Seattle’s Powerful Connections event 

Our friends at NTEN are offering a series of trainings designed to help organizations who participate in the Google Grants program to use thier grant and AdWords more effectively.

The cost for the series is $100 for NTEN Members / $200 for Non-members

Sessions Include:

• Setting Goals and Setting Yourself Up for Success (02/25/2010)
• Evaluating Performance and Monitoring Your Google Grants Account (03/04/2010)
• Optimizing Your Google Grants Ads and Keywords (03/11/2010)
• Optimizing your Google Grants Campaign and Maximizing Your Online Initiatives with Google Nonprofit Offerings (03/18/2010)

> Register Now for Google Grants Advanced Series!

Not quite ready for the advanced series? NTEN also offers the Google Grants Beginner Series: Learning to Use and Maximize Your Google Grant.

Sharing this note from our Greater DC Region affiliate. We at NPower Seattle agree - Idealware is a great resource.

We are big fans of Idealware, a nonprofit website, which provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. We find their product comparisons very useful and recommend them to you when you are selecting software solutions for your nonprofit. Topics covered include constituent databases, websites, email and advocacy, and a broad range of office productivity tools. They also have frequent webinars—cost is $40 for a live seminar and $20 for a recorded session. You might find some of the upcoming sessions of interest. Check out the Idealware site for more information —www.idealware.org.

Comparing Open Source CMSs: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plone
Thursday January 28th, 10:00 - 11:30 PST

Getting Started with Online Conferencing
Thursday February 4th, 10:00 - 11:30 PST

Screen cast snapshot

Our Web and Database teams recently completed a system for publishing and updating online store products from Salesforce to Plone for one of our customers (Faith Trust Institute). We included a short (3 ½ minute) video demonstrating the high points to help train staff on how to use the new system. See the video to generate ideas on how you might use such a publishing system, and contact us to brainstorm possibilities for your site.

Interested in hearing about new trainings, recent nonprofit Web site launches, opportunities to work or volunteer at NPower and the latest on our 5th Annual Nonprofit Technology event? We’d love to share the news and hear from you on Facebook.

Become a fan on our Facebook page!

In case it missed your attention, today (the last Friday of July) is System Administrator Appreciation Day.  While this has not been elevated to Hallmark status (yet), please take a moment to show your appreciation for the system administrator, accidental techie, or resident geek who makes all things computer possible in your office.

So a while back I posted a short survey asking 2 simple questions around your nonprofits technology needs/challenges in the future. Thanks again to all of you who took the time to fill it out.

Many of you indicated that a big challenge for you next year will be around communications. Websites, enewsletters, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM), etc. This is great information for us here at NPower and it lets us know that we’re on the right path. We’re doing our best to help our fellow nonprofits with these issues. Creating functional website using Plone, an open source Content Management System (CMS). Implementing Salesforce, a CRM product with amazing functionality.

While we already provide training around enewsletters, websites, and other communication tools; watch for additional courses on communication in the coming year. We’ve heard a lot lately on the impact & use of Social Media by nonprofits. This is a topic that NPower is keeping our eye on.

If you didn’t fill out the survey, it’s not too late! While we drew for our 2nd ipod winner and closed out the drawing, we can still us your input. You can find the survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22992K7SGQS

Brett over at NTEN included a really cool application in his post of Things We Like (May 2009). It’s called UMapper and is a way for you to add interactivity on top of a map. I checked it out and see lots of potential for nonprofits. You can see for yourself how it works at http://www.umapper.com/.

My grandfather was a teamster–a team of horses teamster– in the teens and twenties in South Boston. When businesses adopted gas-powered delivery trucks, he stuck with his horses. As the adoption of automobiles became more widespread, Pop didn’t budge. He waited too long to make the transition to the new technology. When there was no call call for his skills, he spent the end of his working life in the stock room of the local grocery, no doubt pondering how a man in his 50’s ended up in a job populated by teenagers in search of walking around money.

Throughout 2008, I’ve been acting a lot like my grandfather when it comes to the rise of Social Media. As more and more nonprofits started asking us about Twitter and Facebook and Ning and such, we counseled them to wait and see what happens. We’d wave our hands and say “Focus on getting yourself to a stable and secure IT infrastructure, an easy-to-manage Web site, a CRM system, and a great email marketing service.”

That’s all still true. If you have inefficient, always-breaking-down systems, all the Twittering or Tweeting  in the world is not going to make your organization better. But, in the past four months or so, I think we’ve hit a critical mass. Your donors, volunteers, and–increasingly–some of the people you serve are using the Social Web. Right now, ignoring the Social Web is missing a big opportunity for extending your reach and depth of engagement. Soon, ignoring it will be like my gradfather’s horsebound intransigence.

So, I’ve been thinking about tomorrow’s Innovation Awards Luncheon as sort of like NPower Seattle’s Social Web coming out party. We’ve invited two of the leading thinkers about harnessing the power of the new social technologies–Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li–to speak to us all about this phenomenon. There are still seats available –join us for a couple of hours that will change the way you think about the Web.

As an aisde, I should mention that one of the Innovation Awards finalists, our friends over at the Washington Health Foundation, have been gearing up their use of “Web 2.0″ tools in the past few months.–with great results. A few members of the WHF team were planning on being in DC for the Inauguration last month, so they brought along some relatively inexpensive flip cameras. The results were quick and easy to produce, and pretty darn cool. Check it out at their Healthiest State blog.

There is a lot of conversation lately about the tough economy, and how it is impacting nonprofits. One way that nonprofits can continue to further their mission is to ensure that their technology helps, rather than hinder. But with tight (and tightening) budgets, what should nonprofits do?

Many people are familiar with the Iron Triangle - that tangle of price, feature set and timeline. With an unlimited budget - you can control the other two (features and timeline). Or - if timeline is the most important thing - you might be able to control when you launch - but might launch with fewer features, or at a price which you find unattractive.

In our sector though - we know that almost all of our work is budget driven to a large degree. In some instances (such as hardware) - getting 75% of what you need my be crippling - you get a workstation without a monitor!

However - since both of the tools that we use here for websites and databases are feature rich out of the box - a budget driven approach can sometimes work to get you started. Here’s a quick description of different ways you can approach a technology project:

1. Budget driven. In this case – budget drives everything –so you have little control over desired features/design. This can work in environments where you are getting a package–because you have some assurance about what you’ll get. But it doesn’t help for customizations and so on – when those are unknown and your budget is the driver – you may not be able to afford those items.

Both Plone and Salesforce are feature rich, out of the box. If you can approach your project in phases, are willing to start with high priority features, and are confident that you can grow your technology budget - this can be an effective approach.

2. Needs driven. In this case, you invest in planning, because you want all of your needs met. Then you estimate the costs for all of those needs, and then you prioritize and find funding. This is nice because you let your actual needs dictate what you are going to get – but requires a bigger investment in planning up front. And you may or may not be successful finding donors to help support those needs!

Both Plone and Salesforce are highly customizable, but start with great out of the box features. If you prefer to start with knowing what is possible and then proceed with creating a plan to accommodate all of your needs, this is an excellent approach.

3. A blended model. That’s where you do a bit of both. This is attractive because your budget constraints are clear up front –but you also do enough planning that you avoid painting yourself into a corner. You still might not get all of your features, and you still might not know total costs – but you ought to finish with a working tool that sets you up for phase two when ready.

This balances the strengths and weaknesses of the first two models. It can provide some budgetary assurances, but also requires that both you and your vendor work diligently to share risk. The risk for you is that you run out of time/money/features, and the risk for your vendor is that they don’t feel successful implementing your project - because they have run out of time and money, too!