A slightly different post and video this time, reporting back on a fascinating meeting last week to brainstorm some ideas improve SYFAB's funding service using web based tools. It is amazing what you can come up with in a couple of hours when you get a few heads together. In William Hoyle from Charity Technology Trust, John Mell of Web 2.0 consultancy Trovus, and Simon Berry from Ruralnet there was plenty of experience of nonprofits working with the Internet.

You may have heard of the Digital Makeover from Simon Fairway already. It focuses on the South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau and hopes to examine and improve the use of technology and online collaboration/web 2.0 tools by the organization in a public way so we can all learn together.

As mentioned in an earlier post, one of the early initiatives that SYFAB adopted as part of the Digital Makeover project was to set up their website with the Google Analytics.

In the most recent video, Danny Anthrobus describes the process of setting up Analytics on their website, and picks out some of the insights that SYFAB have gained as a result. Some key findings that SYFAB have discovered are:

Whilst SYFAB's digital makeover is moving forward, I thought I would take the opportunity to have a look at some of the ways other nonprofit organisations have found clever ways to use new technology to refine the way that they are working.

Whilst South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau continue with their Digital Makeover, I though I would draw your attention to some research from nfpSynergy about charities use of the Internet. In their annual "Virtual Promise" research for 2007, I was interested to see that:

I am happy to say that things are really starting to progress with the project. The last entry took a look at how South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau (SYFAB) provide funding information to their service users and how this could be improved by taking some of this information online. SYFAB are also keen to look at how they can encourage service users to provide some of their own insights to create a more "rounded" information service.

Those of you that have seen my first post for the Digital Makeover project will now be familiar with South Yorkshire Funding and Advice Bureau (SYFAB). This latest post and video (at the bottom of the post) take a closer look at how SYFAB provide funding information to the voluntary and community groups that they serve. Information comes from a variety of different sources, and the system has evolved over the last few years as information requirements and the funding landscape have changed. SYFAB are keen to streamline their system and incorporate valuable feedback from their service-users into their service. Is there a web-based solution here?

After a few months of silence, I am back to launch an exciting new project that I hope will be of great interest to all of those nonprofits out there that are grappling the possibilities of new technologies, and perhaps struggling to seperate the digital wheat from the digital chaff. The 'Digital Makeover' project also aims to rope in social web experts, who are up for putting their considerable enthusiasm and know-how to good use in a practical context.