There's lots of information out there about social media and developing a strategy for your nonprofit, charity or community organisation.

We have just signed up in support of the National Compact and will be watching with a keen eye the conversations and developments that progress.

Nancy Shwartz's website and blog Getting Attention about "Marketing for Nonprofits" is o

The Social Media for Nonprofit Organizations group on Linked In have been following a discussion by members about developing a social media strategy in the nonprofit context and ways to do it, pros

We just had our Monday morning staff meeting and discovered two team members - very active Facebookers, have decided to leave www.facebook.com .

You may or may not use YouTube for your nonprofit already. A number of organisations are embedding a YouTube channel in their home page to futher communicate a message or explain what they do. See some examples here :

What is Linked In? http://linkedin.com

Linked In is a social media site for professional networking.

Many social media users grapple with personal and professional identities and whether to seperate the two or how to manage combined usage on sites such as twitter and facebook. Linked In provides quite a clear boundary and purpose for professional profiling and liaison. Unlike facebook where many people accumulate as many "friends" as possible whether they are known or not, the emphasis in Linked In is to invite people you know or have done business with.

You can also add your twitter posts so that if you are broadcasting a new blog post or other news about your organisation, you only have to do it once.

If you're more of a listener, Linked In provides a good way to see who knows who and keep up to date with others' news.

There are also "Groups". You can create a group or join existing ones. There is a Directory to browse groups by topic. You can search by "Nonprofit" http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory?results=&sik=1274424184119  Remember this is international. You can select language too.

Some groups you might like to join:

Connecting Up Australia

Online Fundraising for Australian Non-profits

Social Media For Nonprofit Organizations

See you on Linked In!

Karen Gryst

What a great story - the incredible difference that technology can make to nonprofit organisations when time and money are so limited.

This story submitted to DonorTec below is a wonderful example of how the generosiy of companies donating the latest technology products and services can change the level of hope for workers striving for social justice to help people in great need. For more information on the technology available through DonorTec click here.

Our story - Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project, Melbourne

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"
Emma Goldman

First day, first impressions.

Four women and one man, all about 30, sitting close in the upstairs bedroom of a two bedroom flat in North Melbourne. Their clothes explore the whole range from charcoal to black.  The room is dim. The blind is down to stop the glare through the large northerly window.

I would later come to know them as an amazing team of caseworkers who had helped about three hundred asylum seekers to escape destitution and homelessness in the previous 12 months. Workers with incredible skills who had walked alongside vulnerable people while they waited for their case for protection to be assessed - children and adults, who had known flight, trauma, detention, isolation, illness, hunger and heartbreaking delays – this team had helped them to find a way through all the barriers raised against them - language, policies, laws, authorities, utilities, and all those call centres. In the end, some were given visas and could stay, while others were sent away from Australia. For those who were refused, the patient workers crowded in this room had helped them to gather as much readiness as could be managed before they set off again in search of safety and life. For all of them, as one man said, Hotham had been hope.

Tags and the use of tags is still emerging in Australia for the nonprofit sector. The greatest traction seems to be ( not surpirsing) from the tech nonprofit community and so #nptech is the most common. Is this too US centric? Well there is a large US contingent of bloggers and twitterers using it, but I like to think of it as international. So what about locally relevant content for Australia such as local competitions, funding opportunities etc?

We at Connecting Up Australia have tried to initiate some discussion around this with little response, however some of the "early adopters" and advocates in the social media community have picked it up and are using some Australianised tags such as nptechau and gov2au.

This generally means putting "au" on the end of a tag.

Two Nonprofit tags to start using :

• npau ( np= nonprofit, au = australian) - use to identify content / comments relevant for the australian nonprofit community.
• nptechau ( np= nonprofit, tech = technology related, au = australian) - use to identify content / comments relevant for the australian nonprofit community related to technology.

Tags need to be meaningful to the user group, so they do evolve.

Sometimes I tag a blog post or tweet with both "nptech" and "nptechau" if the content is relevant to the international community but I also wish to identify it as being created or sourced in Australia.

Lots of countries and user groups around the world are grappling with similar issues of initiating locally relevant tags to help identify local content from the large pool of US content or international content.

We have started a page at What the hash tag - to monitor use of tags : http://wthashtag.com/Nptechau 

Announcement from the Gov2.0 Taskforce on their blog - their report and 12 of the 13 recommendations have been accepted.

http://gov2.net.au/blog/2010/05/03/response-to-the-government-2-0-report/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Gov2Taskforce+%28Government+2.0+Taskforce%29

Now for the roll out.

The Queensland Government has already made some headway with the adoption of a new IP licensing protocol : GILF

The GILF is based on the international convention of "Creative Commons" - see the Australian organisation http://creativecommons.org.au . This is an alternative to Copyright and it is simple to use but allows holders / creators of intellectual property to share their materials for others to us - which furthers the creative sharing / building process.

Check it out for your organisation!

by Karen Gryst

In exciting news from both our organisations,  in 2011 CUA is joining forces with Our Community’s ‘Communities in Control’ conference to bring you a blockbuster nonprofit event week in Melbourne. Monday May 30 and Tuesday May 31, 2011, will bring you Communities in Control, to be immediately followed at the same venue by Connecting Up 2011 on June 1 and 2. More details will follow as arrangements firm up but please put these important 2011 dates in your diary now and we look forward to seeing you there.

“Connecting Up Australia, operators of the DonorTec program www.donortec.org, has been getting a lot of enquiries about dates for the next Connecting Up conference. For a number of reasons CUA has decided not to have a conference in 2010. In the meantime we encourage you to consider attending  Our Community’s ‘Communities in Control’ conference in Melbourne on May 30 and June 1 2010 http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/cictickets and Making Links in Perth from 15-17 November 2010 http://www.makinglinks.org.au/ . 
 

Regards
Doug Jacquier, CEO, Connecting Up Australia and Denis Moriarty, Managing Director, Our Community”

Communities in Control Conference 2010 - one of Australia's biggest and best nonprofit events. The theme this year POWER UP - Who has it? How to Get it and how communities can use it.

May 31-June 1 in Melbourne

REGISTER FOR COMMUNITIES IN CONTROL 2010
http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/cic2010 

The Gov2.0 Taskforce's Public Sector Information "Ideas" contest for nonprofit organisations received huge numbers of entries which is very exciting that there is so much traction around how we could innovate to use government information for collaboration and application in our contexts.

The winner is.............“Indicators of social inclusion in local geographic areas for planning an evaluating community services” from Helen McGuire, which proposed that data should be published on key social indicators based on local geographic areas so it can be made available to community organisations, policy makers, and government funding bodies.

There were numerous great ideas - find out more here.

And for more on what the Gov2.0 Taskforce are doing click here.

We're all going on a summer holiday.......la, la, doobie, doobie, do, do, do, do.

We would like to wish our Australian nonprofit sector a lovely summer and festive season.

Every year is busy but 2009 has been particularly challenging with the financial crisis.

We hope that everyone gets the rest they deserve to continue your great work in the community.

Connecting Up December newsletter - short and sweet - Connecting Up have a nonprofit specific Board position available - see more information in the newsletter.

So take it easy......sleep, walk, read, meditate......Ommmmmmmmmmmm!

And we'll see you with all those fantastic resolutions in the New Year...2010!

Purpose

Connecting Up Australia is conducting a national research into the capacity development priorities of
the nonprofit sector in Australia 2009-2010 to build an understanding of current and emerging
nonprofit priorities in Australia. Research findings will be published and shared with the
sector, Government and other stakeholders. Findings will also be used to inform Connecting
Up as an organisation to represent and support nonprofit capacity development needs
among nonprofits and also with business, government and academic sectors. This valuable
data will enable the development of new strategies, collaborations and services.

Who is Connecting Up Australia?