If the more you communicate, the more impact you can have, the more you potentially can create more support for your cause, get donors, etc, should funders look at nonprofits who are communicating more in a more favorable light?

And should every facebook event post, every myspace friend, be counted towards that communication quota?

Or are nonprofits in new media investing program money in something that has yet to show a serious $$ per person return? 

Are funders even looking at communication as something worth supporting?

What is your experience?

On Monday, I posted the question, How Can Nonprofits Use Pandora?  I wanted to share with you the response from Pandora's Community Manager.  They're doing some pretty great stuff!

I do know that teachers use Pandora stations and our musicology podcasts to educate students. And indie musicans are making better livings via their exposure on Pandora, which is a great source of pride for us.

Just wanted to let you know of a few of the philanthropic works Pandora is involved in as well...

- We have donated over 6,000 CDs to the Oakland Public Library.

- We raise money for music education through GlobalGiving. 

- Pandora staff volunteer monthly at a local Oakland school that doesn't have music education. We teach music theory and by the end of the year, even have them hooked up in a mini recording studio, burning them CDs of the songs they created. (Flickr photos of Pandora volunteering).

I finally set myself up on the personalized Internet radio station, Pandora, and I LOVE it.

I'm wondering, is there a way that something this awesome could be used to help nonprofits, especially ones that support the arts?

The thought must be in the air because recently Lucy Bernholz of Philanthropy 2173 wrote a post, Pandora, Pop Culture and Philanthropy.  In it she says,

There are already numerous nonprofits that are using YouTube to raise money -- yours could be next. One way is through membership in the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Nonprofits who apply and are accepted have the opportunity to embed a Google Checkout button on their YouTube channel and viewing pages to drive fundraising.

Thank you kbaird for the photo!

Earlier this month, NetSquared was generous enough to fund my attendance at the Lullabot Drupal Intensive workshop in Providence, Rhode Island. Drupal is a free, open-source content management system that allows non-technical users to update your site and is capable of powering blogs, community sites, action-oriented campaigns and social networks along the lines of MySpace and Facebook. Lullabot, a Drupal development firm that involved in much of the Drupal development, has a keen interest in Drupal for nonprofits.

In return for NetSquared's generosity, I wanted to post some tips for nonprofits thinking about using Drupal for their sites. I'm convinced that, under most circumstances, Drupal can be a powerful resource for online advocacy and social change.

Frozen Pea Friday is a demonstration of how Twitter can be used by nonprofits. People on Twitter change their avatar each Friday to be something about peas ("peavatars") to draw attention to the Frozen Pea Fund, a fundraiser for breast cancer research inspired by the cancer experience of Susan Reynolds. The Frozen Pea Fund clicks through to the American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer donation site.

For more about how this came about check:

Frozen Pea Fiday, Twitter, and the American Cancer Society

and

It started as a brief conversation at an awards luncheon in our town. The top regional officer of a nonprofit service organization was concerned about its website. He couldn't edit the content and the volunteer webmaster was in full control. The email newsletter had formatting problems and the last issue was pretty well . . . a mess. Getting content from the local clubs was challenging and then it had to be reformatted for publication. I offered to facilitate the decision process for choosing new technology and roles. The first meeting was Monday night.

This is the first part of a rant I have been mulling over for about 3 years now. I want to get it up before the end of the event, so I will save my proposal for a second post.

Advanced nonprofit technology practitioners need a place to connect and learn from each other. Who will fill this gap?

For years this was the collective whine from the hundreds of NTAPs who attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference to help other colleagues in the sector. When NetSquared was announced in 2005, I was excited to hear they would be bringing together the best minds from the nonprofit world with the leading technologists. Would this be the long-awaited venue for advanced "NPTECH" conversation?

We loved meeting everyone during the NetSquared frenzy- it was so great to learn about your projects.

So we definitely wanted to make this one of the first places we went to when we started signing up causes. Right now, we're building a base of nonprofits before we launch.

But I won't talk your ear off here- check out our tour and, most importantly, give us a shout out to tell us what you think (or go ahead and sign up).

http://www.cauzoo.com/cauzoo-nonprofit-info1.php .

The join page is at the end.

Good luck to the conference goers and everyone else!

~Phil, Cauzoo