One important part of effective digital measurement is being able to benchmark your performance relative to your organization's past performance or compared to peer organizations. One excellent resource to use for benchmarking nonprofit digital results (in the US) is the annual M&R Benchmarks study of nonprofit digital advocacy. For the past 11 years, this study has gathered comparative metrics from nonprofits on email, social media, social advertising, fundraising, and web … [Read more...] about Annual M&R Benchmarks Study Released
Archives for April 2017
How To Facilitate Leadership Development In Your Nonprofit As Part of Doing the Work
One of the biggest challenges that many nonprofits face is the finding time and resources for professional development activities. People are so busy doing the work that they don't have time to go off-site to take a class or sign up for an online course. And, when nonprofits budgets are tight, professional development often gets slashed. When there is time for an investment in professional development for younger leaders, there is the added challenge of reaching "distracted learners." While … [Read more...] about How To Facilitate Leadership Development In Your Nonprofit As Part of Doing the Work
How To Avoid Becoming Addicted To Your Mobile Phone
I have been reading Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter, a professor of marketing at NYU. The book is about our behavioral addictions to our smartphones, video games, social media, and email and how to break them. He describes the “Ludic Loop,” a cycle of repeating the same activity because every so often you get a reward. The term was coined by Natasha Schull, also on the faculty at NYU and an expert in addiction. Slot machines … [Read more...] about How To Avoid Becoming Addicted To Your Mobile Phone
Trainer’s Notebook: Online Interaction Tools To Engage Your Audience in the Room and Beyond
This past month I’ve done several workshops where I experimented with different audience online interaction tools to engage people in the room as well as a remote audience tuning in through a live video stream. These were workshops at Cause Camp, Global Giving, and the Hartford Foundation. My instructional needs were simple: Question/Answer back channel where participants in the room or faraway could post questions Flash polls Online versions of assessments for participants that would … [Read more...] about Trainer’s Notebook: Online Interaction Tools To Engage Your Audience in the Room and Beyond
How To Focus When You Work in An Open Office Space
In the Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, my co-author Aliza Sherman and I share a framework to think more broadly about creating a culture of wellbeing in the workplace. It includes our relationship with our physical environment and in the workplace that refers to the nonprofit's physical office space. When nonprofits invest in creating physical spaces that inspire employees to show up for work, staff is more engaged, productive, happy, and healthy. There are … [Read more...] about How To Focus When You Work in An Open Office Space
