Baby Boomers Give More than Older Americans

Found in this week's Chronicle of Philanthropy -- a survey of giving habits of the baby boomer generation.

The executive summary is located here. The "summary" is quite comprehensive. It is made available as a .pdf file, and requires you to register with a name and eMail address.

How citizens' groups destroy themselves

How citizens' groups destroy themselves

One largely overlooked cause of low levels of citizen involvement is the internal dynamics of all-volunteer groups. Lack of attention to what can go wrong inside a group means countless grassroots initiatives wither and die without achieving anything. The problem is quite simply that many citizens groups drive away their most able members. In a typical arc, a new member will step forth to work with others on some public issue, last for a relatively short time, then disappear back into private life, never to be heard from again. A glimmer of green then nothing. What causes grassroots rot?

Found in the NonProfit OneLine News

Tuesday Tech Notes

Random notes. I'm trying to lower the stacks on my desk.

Working with our distributed videoconferencing exercise program this morning, our instructor and camera crew are at the video studio...I'm in my home office logged into the studio multi-point control unit to monitor all the connections with our patients in their homes, (we've got 7 connected today), and our chief engineer is logged in from the Bahahmas. All staff, CE, studio and myself are logged into an instant messenger. The CE is supposed to be on vacation, but always takes pride in demonstrating "conspicuous connectivity." Last time I was in the studio, he showed me his car, located in the parking lot a quarter mile away, on a GPS screen on his computer.

Occasionally, I have to just step back in amazement that all this stuff works.

From Kim Kommando's newspaper column: There is a free add-on to eliminate spam for OutLook Express located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/spambayes. Once I found this, I downloaded it from a mirror server in St. Petersburg.

A commercial spam eliminating progam is available from Symantec.
Cost is about $40.00 retail (you can pay, download, and install it in about a half hour.) Tried this to mitigate a bad case of inbound spam that didn't seem to respond to tweaking at the server end. Further recommendations for anti-spam programs are in the current issue of Consumer Reports and on their web site.

The July issue of VON (Voice over the Network Magazine) has an interview with Henning Schulzrinne of Columbia University. Schulzrinne and his colaborators are authors of major papers for and the inventor of SIP, the Session Initiation Protocol. . SIP is a major building block for making telephone connections over the internet.

Ten things that you need to know about non-profit technology

Looks reasonable.

RAND

That bastion of defense policy wonks, RAND, also publishes research papers and literature searches in areas of social service, government policy, and science and technology.

Guidestar for NPO Information

The Guidestar database provides Adobe Acrobat (pdf) versions of the mandetory IRS Form 990 that all charitable organizations with revenue over $25,000 must file each year. Although the site is clearly geared toward "upselling" you to a very confusing array of paid products and subscriptions, the free service allows you to view the 990's as they have been submitted. Fascinating stuff.

Book Excerpt: Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits

author Ilona Bray J.D.

Client fees have been studied and agonized over in all sorts of contexts, but one conclusion comes through loud and clear: Except when you are dealing with the truly indigent, it's better to charge fees for services than to give them away. For one thing, clients tend to think more highly of services they've piad for. Things gotten for free are seen as throwaways--as evidenced by the phrase I and others heard while prividing immigration law advice at a free clinic, "Thanks but do you think I need a real lawyer now?" Later, I learned another valuable lesson: Clients who have paid even a modest fee are more likely to keep their appointments and actively participate in problem solving.

This is another great book from Nolo Press.

New Improved Microsoft Update Service

Microsoft has improved the update service to allow centralization of computer updates. The biggest difference is that it now includes the Microsoft Office applications, like Word and Excel as well as Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

Haven't implemented this myself yet as we're looking at replacing our aging server, but once we've done that, then this will go on the server, along with the Symantec Anti-Virus version 10.

TFNP - Monthly Introduction August 2005

Welcome to Tech for Non Profits. As the banner says, non-profit organizations (NGOs) need technology as much as for-profit businesses. As consultants to non-profit clients, we are interested in finding hardware and software for office networks that provides outstanding value both for the money invested but also for the time required to get them working.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated. And drop by the Microdesign Consulting web site.