Ami Dar’s Online Tools for Effectiveness


At the CT Association of Nonprofits 6th Annual Conference, Ami Dar, the founder of Idealist, spoke about using online tools to communicate more effectively within an organization. His 70-person company uses Google Docs to share documents and Skype to hold video calls with each other around the world, using the internet and avoiding phone bills.

He urges nonprofits to embrace these tools, which bypass traditional hierarchies, and create a more streamlined organization. His organization’s adoption of these methods was driven by the younger generation – provided the tools, but without a mandate to use them, they naturally tended to them – a fine formula for nonprofits.

WAKE UP CALL: Will you allow the younger generation to drive change in your organization? What steps will you take to lead the change? The next time you email a document to a colleague, try posting it on Google Docs instead.

RELATED POST: How Lunatic is Your Fringe?

Social Media Strategies

Darren Ernest, President of 74 Marketing, shows how different forms of social media (such as blogs, video, social bookmarking, document sharing) all drive traffic to your website. His tips for using social media:

  1. Have a strategy.
  2. Have a measurement plan – know what do you want to accomplish
  3. Integration – blog is the hub, drive SEO, create relationships
  4. Implementation – who will be doing this and what resources are we allocating to it.
  5. Monitoring and adjustment.

RESOURCE: www.74marketing.com

WAKE UP CALL: What’s preventing your nonprofit from taking advantage of social media?