Weekend Link Roundup (August 13 - 14, 2011)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen says that "to get people to read the first lines of [a] report or appeal -- and keep going," your communications must engender curiosity in your readers, for the simple reason that "humans, when...presented with a gap in [their] knowledge...crave to fill it."

Guest blogging on Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention blog, Kimberlee Roth shares three questions designed to help marketing professionals overcome writer's block.

Disaster Relief

In a follow-up to an earlier post in which his colleage Josh Rosenberg shared some thoughts on donating to famine relief efforts in Somalia, GiveWell's Elie Hassenfeld says that at this time the organization "maintains [its] provisional recommendation for [donors to support] Doctors Without Borders."

Philanthropy

GuideStar president and CEO Bob Ottenhoff recaps a recent summer symposium at the Giving Institute in which panelists Matthew Bishop of the Economist and Patrick Rooney of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University discussed "the impact of the mega-rich on philanthropy."

Two months after the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy launched its Philanthropy's Promise campaign, an effort to get as many large foundations as possible to allocate at least 50 percent of their grant dollars to the needs of marginalized groups and at least 25 percent to high-impact strategies such as advocacy, community organizing, and civic engagement, NCRP field associate Christine Reeves explains what the organization means by "marginalized" communities and "high-impact" strategies.

Social Media

On his Future Fundraising Now blog, Jeff Brooks says that "If you're going to interact with donors [on social media], you need to figure out what they care about. Social media aren't a giant free classroom; they're more like a party. If you go in the way my bank does, trying to educate and inform, you're an irrelevant and annoying party-pooper."

When considering how best to manage one's time using social media, Beth Kanter advises nonprofits to "wait or rather don't jump in deeply with a heavy time investment" into new platforms like Google+. Instead, writes Kanter, it's best to take "an ROI approach to the amount of time that is being spent, especially if you haven't really built up, engaged, and developed relationships with people via your social networks in other places."

Technology 

On his Buzz Machine blog, Jeff Jarvis shares a video about his forthcoming book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.

Transparency

And on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Jenn Whinnem explains how social media has helped the Connecticut Health Foundation advance its mission while furthering its commitment to transparency.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone