Yesterday, we gave a talk at the NetSquared Mashup Challenge Conference, highlighting how non-profits could use online tools to create and engage their community. We outlined how to create the community, and how to get that community to 'work' for the organization's cause.

Part of talk highlighted how non-profits should share their data whenever possible. Everything from using services like slideshare.net and docstoc.com, to posting stats and knowledge on their blog. Of course we drink our own medicine, so here is a copy of our slides:

http://www.slideshare.net/vlauria/howto-use-your-community

In the second half, we list different tools and services that many startups use to engage their community, it's worth checking out and bookmarking some of the sites.

Another interesting service for sharing data is freebase.com - it's like wikipedia for data. It accepts data in an open format, so that anybody can chop it up, modify it, work with it, etc.

We also started a blog around this topic, we're will be talking about how to grow and use the community for different companies and organizations (including non-profits): http://useruser.wordpress.com