Misc

5 Must-Follow Non-Profits Making a Difference With Social Media [Mashable Awards] As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we're taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories.

This is "Must-Follow Non-Profit. " Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information. When it comes to social good, the name of the game is creating or inspiring change, and often with limited resources. Groups are using social media a variety of ways, from raising money to engaging with constituents on personal and meaningful levels. There are any number of worthy non-profit organizations utilizing social media in new and interesting ways; below are five that caught our eye this year as must-follow groups. 1. More than just a great art museum, the Brooklyn Museum is one of the most social media-savvy organizations on the planet. 2. Sesame Street Workshop is the non-profit organization behind the beloved children's classic television series Sesame Street, among others. 3.

Blackbaud’s Top Nonprofit Tech Trends. January 20, 2011; benzinga.com | Nonprofit organizations are turning to technology more and more to aid them in the “reinvention and evaluation” of fundraising programs, according to a report released yesterday by Blackbaud, a provider of software and services designed for nonprofits.

Nonprofits are hungry for direction as they deploy technology in new ways, whether in fundraising or mobilizing action but this Blackbaud paper, Top Technology Trends contains not much that is particularly new unless we missed something. As with most reports, or white papers as someone has unimaginatively deemed them, it’s important to always read with a critical eye and to consider the source. Blackbaud is a vendor in the area it studies. “We think it is very important to share fundraising technology trends with the nonprofit community, yet the fundamentals familiar to any fundraiser still apply,” said Kristen Fulks, Blackbaud principal consultant and co-author of the paper. E-Mediat: Social Media Capacity Building for NGOs in the Arab World.

Flickr Photo by SMEX Beirut That’s one of my favorite photos from Beirut, taken in March, 2011 during E-Mediat Train-the-Trainers intensive workshop that kicked off the 18-month capacity building project for NGOs in the Arab World about using social media to realize civil society goals.

I’m sitting next to my colleague, Lena, a master trainer from Yemen – engaging in a some shoulder to shoulder learning. I started work on the E-Mediat project over a year ago. It is sponsored by MEPI, US Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Initiative and as part of Civil Society 2.0. The project is being managed by IIE and builds on a highly successful program launched in the Middle East five years ago,Women in Technology. Over the past year, I’ve developed curriculum for 11 days of instruction in networked approaches, social media strategy, and practical skills delivered in five workshop modules. Putting Your Twitter Followers on the Map, Literally. TweepsMap is an interesting Twitter app that will put your followers on a map of the world, literally.

It analyzes the percentage of total followers from countries, states, and cities. (here’s more about how it works) While you can check out the profiles of your followers and find out where they’re from (if they filled out the location information), you can’t really get a snapshot. When I analyzed my followers, I discovered that 60% were from outside the US (compared to 70% on Facebook) So, I started to dig down and review the information country by country, continent by continent. I shared the screen captures on my Facebook page. I made a mistake, I didn’t give my data the sniff test before sharing it. So I asked on Twitter if there was anyone out there from Washington state – and a number of them responded back.