An important fact that the TV news report omitted was that... Beth Kanter, a thought leader in the world of nonprofit blogging, recently shared some useful criteria to help nonprofits decide whether to blog or not. While I agree with most of them, I think that two (yes, if you want to enable many voices; no, if things must be vetted by a central authority) could, if interpreted narrowly, inhibit some nonprofits from blogging.

However, in terms of using the report to drive decisions about business or nonprofit blogging, keep the second half of the study's title in mind: the ideas in this paper are based on the "self-reports" and opinions of bloggers who responded to an open call in May 2006 to participate. Now that readers can elect to automatically receive new blog posts via email and RSS (news feeds), the promise of a new post daily is not necessary to lure readers, and the volume of daily posts can overwhelm readers and bloggers both. -- "Participation is essential in the blogosphere.

Any nonprofit interested in effective online communication should check out the executive summary of a fascinating study -- by the highly regarded Nielsen Norman group -- on e-mail newsletters , how to make them user friendly, and their value compared to web sites and RSS (also known as web feeds or news feeds). A couple of excerpts: On e-newsletters vs.

Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective." As nonprofits adopt more web-based tools and software for building relationships with their stakeholders, many are understandably perplexed by which brands to choose. Raiser's Edge or salesforce.com for a constituent database?

If it's too long a name, use "Great News" or "Hope Times." (Play around with the text -- long titles get cut off. I discovered fodey.com's newspaper snippet generator via popular blogger Steve Rubel , who always has interesting and instructive posts on marketing and PR. As As the image below shows,

Thanks to Michael Gilbert's Nonprofit Online News , I learned about the latest publication of prolific marketing writer Seth Godin : his nonprofit edition of Flipping the Funnel (free PDF download) shows how nonprofits can gain new supporters by asking current supporters to use free Web tools such as blogs , Flickr , del.icio.us , and his own Squidoo . (As As Seth says, "A Squidoo page contains links—links to products for sale, to reviews, to pictures, to videos, to RSS feeds, and to blogs. A

GuideStar - News - Articles - What Major Donors Expect in a Fundraiser An article worth reading for a self-check on motivation, passion, and suc

I intend to use this space for fundraising tips, grant writing information, and general nonprofit resources news and links. This is the debut posting of my new "Nonprofit Consultant Blog." I welcome you to the blog, and to my web site. Until there are more resources posted here, I invite you to click around my web site (goldsteinconulsting.com) and learn about my consulting and grant writing

In today's fragmented media marketplace (you cannot count on everybody reading the same newspaper or watching the same three TV network news broadcasts) I think it is important to investigate every opportunity you have to get your message out there. By now I'm sure you've all heard of MySpace.com, even if you haven't taken the time to see what it is all about. What you might know is that it is very popular with high school and college kids who use it to meet friends, find out about new bands, build community, and socialize online.

For example, it's entirely feasible for a news website to automatically match stories (IE: flood in India) to donation opportunities (IE: International Red Cross). I received an email from a college student asking if he could interview me about ePhilanthropy and the future of online fundraising. The questions gave me an opportunity to think creatively about the application of some web 2.0