Here's my contribution to this month's Net2ThinkTank question posed by Amy Sample Ward,

"What are the key questions nonprofit orgs should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?"

1. What are the goals you are trying to achieve this year?

3. If you don't know the answer to #2, ask yourself, where can I get a general overview of social media tools, along with examples of how nonprofits are using them?

While doing some consulting for Social Actions as a "Community Interpreter," I recently tried out their Social Actions Alerts that notifies you of actions (ie. volunteer opportunities, events, petitions) that interest you via email and cell. I set up a search for actions related to Darfur and have been getting 1-3 notices/week.

I thought I'd share the opportunity I got today with y'all in case who can help.  An organization called the Book Wish Foundation is looking for someone to create a widget, like Sprout, to help get the word out about their project with Darfur refugees.

Here is the listing from Idealist.org:

Flash Widget: Reading Relief for Darfur
Organization: Book Wish Foundation 

Create a flash widget (e.g., Sprout) our supporters can spread around the web, highlighting our reading relief project for Darfur refugees in eastern Chad.

Last month's Net Tuesday San Francisco featured Nikki Serapio, the Director of Community Marketing for Involver, talking about how nonprofits can use Involver to create a video campaign for social networks.  Chirag Shah, Special Projects Manager for Kiva.org, also spoke about Kiva's experience using Involver.

Below is a video interview with Nikki Serapio by David Collin of FI Space.  Enjoy!

I'm thrilled to announce that Amy Sample Ward is the new NetSquared Community Builder! You can contact her at asampleward@techsoup.org.

Many of you are familiar with Amy's great work through her NetSquared Blog, her personal blog, Amy Sample Ward's Version of NPTech, and as the Organizer of the Portland, OR Net Tuesday. Amy recently moved to the UK, where she will be starting a Net Tuesday London.

Here's a little more about the fabulous Amy:

Amy Sample Ward is dedicated to supporting and educating nonprofits and the progressive social change sector about evolving technologies that cultivate and engage communities. Her passion is in connecting nonprofits with new media technologies, watching the field of nptech evolve, and having conversations about where we can go next while still getting everyone on board with what we have already.

We're happy to announce that the folks at Net Tuesday New Orleans are doing ok after Hurricane Gustav and are moving forward with their first Net Tuesday on September 16th! The topic of their meetup will be, "How to Win Friends & Influence People, Web 2.0 Style: Power of Social Web Tools."

Join one of 10 Net Tuesdays next week! Net Tuesdays are free monthly gatherings for social changemakers and web innovators to network, socialize and share ideas about how nonprofits and social benefit organizations can use the social web for social change. If you don't see a Net Tuesdya near you, start your own!

TechSoup recently received funding from ZeroDivide, whose CEO I just interviewed, to provide mentors for 4 of their grantee organizations:  Southern California Library, Craigslist Foundation, Women’s Audio Mission and the San Diego Futures Foundation. These organizations need advice on everything from e-commerce, to marketing and communications strategy, to intellectual property issues, to business plan development.

Please take a moment to scan through their projects and mentoring needs to see if you have time and skills to donate to their work. If you're interested in being a mentor, contact Sheetal Singh, NetSquared's Grants Manager, at sheetal@techsoup.org.

Southern California Library
Project: SCL proposes a community enterprise that will use web 2.0 technologies to provide greater access to the valuable historical documents, records, and materials; facilitate on and off-line creation and sharing of community members’ own stories, ideas, and insights; and generate revenue through the sale of Library products and services.

Need: They need advice on generating an e-commerce business plan; legal advice on copyright issues; and assistance identifying technology vendors/services.

1. The Community Technology Foundation changed its name to ZeroDivide in early 2008. What prompted the name change, and what else has changed about the organization along with its name?

We were founded in 1998 by a collaboration of 10 coalitions representing underserved communities to impact the “digital divide” by promoting community technology. “Zerodivide” was a concept we always used to describe the aspirational goal of bridging the digital divide while understanding its relationship to the socioeconomic and cultural divides existing in low-income, minority and undeserved communities. As we gained more practical knowledge about the common determinants for increasing technology access and addressing civic engagement, social services and economic self-sufficiency, the need to change our name to call out this interconnection became pretty self evident. The bigger changes however have been in our strategy.

This month's Net2ThinkTank question was, How Can Nonprofits Use Flickr? Below is a round up of your answers:

Joe Solomon recommends checking out Beth Kanter's Flickr and Nonprofits Primer, and the socialmedia4change wiki for examples.

Beth Kanter points to the TechSoup article, How Nonprofits Can Get The Most out of Flickr, and suggests asking Steve Bridger, the Flickr for Good Evangelist in the UK, for ideas.

Steve Bridger writes that one of the ways nonprofits can use Flickr is to capture evidence:

Joseph Kimojino is the head of tourism & anti-animal harassment for Mara Conservancy. He does a great job of using his Flickr account to capture photo evidence of poaching & then demonstrates the impact of supporter giving through his blog.

A BIG congratulations to CompuMentor/TechSoup  Co-CEO, Marnie Webb, for being named one of the 50 most powerful and influential people in the nonprofit sector on The Nonprofit Times' annual list.  Marnie is one of the driving forces behind TechSoup's NetSquared initiative.

Marnie is a frequent speaker and writer on nonprofits and technology, a founding member of the Nonprofit Emerging Technology Exchange, and an organizer of the NPTech tagging experiment.  You can read her NPTech musings on her blog, ext337.

Congratulations, Marnie!

Flickr photo credit: mwebb in someone else's shades by Susan Hellein