Christopher Davenport is the founder of 501 Videos, a company that makes videos exclusively for nonprofit clients. His experience includes years in Hollywood working on commercial films and, later, making documentaries. His website is home to Movie Mondays, a weekly series of short films featuring fundraising professionals in action. The interview was conducted by Don […]
#MOVIE: Gray Memories Remixed (1989)
About Gray Memories Gray Memories follows “The Man” (Ken Vorspan) on his existential journey through the backstreets of Cambridge, Massachusetts in search of the mysterious “Leon”. Will his quest be realized or is Leon just another figment of The Man’s imagination? Production Information for Gray Memories Gray Memories was produced and directed by Marco Kathuria from […]
#FUNDRAISING: Trickle-Down Lives On at Nonprofits
If you haven’t yet seen Dan Pallotta’s 18-minute TED talk, the viral video of the month (April 2013) with more than 1.2 million views, here’s your chance. Pallotta, who founded AIDS Ride and raised $581 million for AIDS and breast cancer research over nine years, argues that philanthropy is being undermined by our beliefs about […]
#HOWTO: Establish A Tumblr Account & Why You Should Do So (VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PUXnDZUcQY[/embed]
A while back we talked about the blogging platform Tumblr, and the series got a great deal of response from you our audience, and we really appreciate your interest and feedback! We want to step up that earlier discussion with a series of video how-tos that will show you a Tumblr account, what can be […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Let Flickr Tell Your Nonprofit’s Story As It Happens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R_MWGFvDEE[/youtube]
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. And with digital social media, images are becoming both more common and more powerful as platforms such as Facebook and Google+ emphasize the photo and graphic qualities of their social-media networks. A kind of ‘visual economy’ is developing, within which social networks are competing and users […]
#VIDEO: Rob Wu of Causevox Tells Us About Developments In Online Fundraising (Part II)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cliy6mWf-30[/youtube]
Last month we posted our first interview with Rob Wu, co-founder of the online fundraising and social-media platform Causevox. We wanted to talk with him because Causevox rolled out the latest version of its platform late last year. Our conversation proved so interesting that we couldn’t contain it in one post, so today we bring […]
#VIDEO: Compass Academy Promo Videos
The Challenge: Compass Academy is a community of students, educators, and families dedicated to serving children of average to above average cognitive ability with a wide range of learning challenges including autism spectrum, ADHD, speech, language, and/or motor delays. A lack of funds to plough into marketing the school meant that outreach and engagement has […]
#FILMFESTIVAL: Green Guerillas Film Festival (2013)
The Challenge: Green Guerillas asked us to act as creative and marketing consultants and be co-producers of an environmental film festival in New York City at the Museum of the Moving Image, We had limited time and resources in which to both market the event and to produce it. Our Solution: MKCREATIVE co-developed a strategic […]
#ADVOCACY: Google Does Harm To Privacy & Suffers An Hour’s Income For Infractions
What you think about Google’s (and Facebook’s. And Twitter’s…) efforts to collect personal information of its users probably says quite a bit about what you think about human nature: If you don’t mind a database of your online activities being used by social networks and search engines, then you are likely comfortable with the fact […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: NTEN 2012 Report Shows Real ROI Growth Over Past Year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYcoJWfsQ30[/youtube]
Okay, so you have been developing your nonprofit’s presence on the staples of social media new for a couple of years. Facebook page? Check. Twitter account? Sure. But how much time do you want to put into keeping up with those outlets? Has your organization seen any growth in volunteers or donors thanks to the […]
#TECH: How and Why To Develop A Google+ Page For Your Nonprofit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hQN6LoHtiU[/youtube]
Yesterday we looked at how to pin something of interest to Pinterest, and why such activity can draw many many eyeballs to that interest and then to your organization. One of the striking demographic facts of Pinterest is that the audience is strikingly female. Toward the other side of the spectrum is Google+, which is […]
#TECH: Scott Lenger Encourages Mobile Planning For Nonprofits At NTEN 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq80nafCJqQ[/youtube]
Last week Don Akchin posted an insightful interview with John Kenyon of NTEN about some of the trends he sees in social outreach and technology for nonprofits. On Don’s final question about upcoming developments, John stressed the fact that mobile communications are the next wave nonprofits have to be preparing for: One thing I keep […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: StumbleUpon An Early & Still Independent Social Network Web Searcher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8DtI9e4xZ8[/youtube]
In 2001, long before ‘social network’ was a concept bandied about by anyone trying to explain what brings together more than a half-dozen people, four young Canadians wanted to start a company and then build a product from it. They chose their embryonic search-engine project called “StumbleUpon.” Within a year the search engine had over […]
#GRANTS: HP Gives Well Above Its Peers Of Similar Revenue
Let’s face it: HP has had some hard times in the printing and computing world. It has gone some time without a CEO over the last few years, and the board has bought some assets that don’t seem much like assets (Anyone seen a Palm Pilot lately?). And in the upcoming year, some 30,000 jobs […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: LinkedIn’s Value As Networking Platform Far Bigger Than Mere Numbers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzT3JVUGUzM[/youtube]
Whether they put skin in the game or not, everyone has been watching the Facebook IPO for the last week or so. The stock has only fallen from its $38-a-share launch, and though its price seems to have stabilized around $32 in the last day or so, the company is being sued over ‘selective disclosure’ […]
#GRANTS: Dell Computers & Dell Foundation Offer Resources For Youth & Environment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnJom7my0J4[/youtube]
Dell Computers was founded in 1984 in Austin Texas and it became a worldwide leader in online sales of MSDOS/Windows/x86 computers within a decade. Michael and Susan Dell established their foundation in 1999 in an effort to present their booming company as a corporate citizen. The efforts of the foundation are to multiply the work […]
#TECH: We Catch Up With Dropbox Collaboration Tool (With Nonprofit Pricing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyIsKAcfB7k[/youtube]
We’ve covered collaboration tools in the past, and Dropbox is a favorite for its ease of use and inexpensive offerings (including a personal favorite price: free for 2GB of storage space). We wanted to return to the program this Tech Friday because Dropbox continues to develop and people are finding new ways to use it. […]
#HOWTO: Get Guidance From Google On Simple SEO Success
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmRg3p79pM[/youtube]
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a social media buzzword: gotta have it, gotta work at it, gotta pack it in to your website or blog! And it is true that SEO needs to be a part of your nonprofit’s online and outreach strategies. Why develop a new site or even update your outdated one if […]
#SOCIALMEDIA: Rise Of Micro-Networks Might Reconfigure Social Outreach
http://vimeo.com/32856179
Online social networking is all about the sharing, even sharing stuff you wished the rest of the world didn’t see. The opportunities for outreach are expanded exponentially through a social network like Twitter or a blogging site like Tumblr. For businesses, to garner thousands of ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ can be testament to your product’s popularity […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Kony 2012 Covered The Night. Did It Jump The Shark?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEKr1mjII-c[/youtube]
The sensation that is/was ‘Kony 2012’ has been a part of the nonprofit social-media landscape for six-plus weeks now. The hundreds of millions who made the original video a viral sensation in March were not all supporters of the message, though, and challenges to the drive launched by the San Diego nonprofit ‘Invisible Children’ continue […]
#TECH: Clothes Make The (Wo)Man, But Technology Makes The Clothes Cool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goPMhvgcUq4[/youtube]
Technology comes in all shapes and sizes (a chipped rock tied to a stick was once ‘cutting-edge’ technology, literally). We usually envision technology as growing ever smaller and ever more useful for our entertainment. But in today’s post we poked around for some innovations that might someday hang in our closets rather than link us […]
#TECH: Google+ Gets Redesign To Emphasize Visuals & Customizations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Atj57r15U[/youtube]
This morning Google announced a striking rise in income that beat stock analysts’ predictions for this first quarter of 2012: $10.65 billion for this past quarter. The number represents a 24% increase from last year’s Q1. Just before the search giant released these huge numbers, it announced a redesign of its social network, Google Plus. […]
#ADVOCACY: Kony 2012 Sequel Not Going Viral, Nor Ending Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Ue6REkeTA[/youtube]
Last Thursday, Invisible Children released their tepidly anticipated sequel to the stunningly viral video Kony 2012 (over 100 million views). The sequel, “Kony Part II – Beyond Famous,” was almost destined not to make as big a splash in the nonprofit/video/social-media ocean because the impact of the message had already been made, and those millions […]
#SM4NP: How Is Facebook’s Timeline Doing In Drawing New Traffic?
Now that the Timeline feature has been up-and-out on Facebook’s individual and on organizational and business pages for a week or so, people are starting to dig into the metrics about how useful and/or successful Timeline has been. The proof of most things Facebook is in the metrics of those who visit and interact with […]
#TECH: Google Now Designing Glasses And Giving Us A New ‘Play’ Service
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4[/youtube]
The good people at Google have been busy releasing new aspects of their services that are meant to augment our muti-media experiences. As is often the case, one’s first blush of these technologies might appear a bit overwhelming or a bit far out on the bleeding edge for most of us. But one of our […]
#SM4NP: Kony 2012 Will Get A Sequel & More Context Today
As any Hollywood mogul will confirm, when your movie is watched by 100 million people, you need to make a sequel. That market is just too big to pass up. And the renown viral video Kony 2012 has been viewed well over 100 million times. Nevertheless, the reasons the San Diego based firm ‘Invisible Children’ will […]
#HOWTO: Facebook Timeline Goes Public Tomorrow! Ready?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AahCox2flA[/youtube]
Facebook has been rolling out its new ‘Timeline’ feature for a few months now, and we hope we have given you a helping hand with the changes. Timeline redesigns your social interaction into a chronological sweep that is also distinguished topically and physically (that is, by being placed in different sections of your FB home […]
#SM4NP: ‘Kony 2012’ Still Stirs Engagement, Controversy, And Embarrassment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc”
The controversy surrounding the viral video ‘Kony 2012’ continues even as its
#HOWTO: Tumblr & RSS Feeds – How Do They Work Together?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU[/youtube]
Last week we promised to discuss the connection that can be made between your nonprofit’s Tumblr site and RSS Readers around the world. Thus far in this series we have focused on the Tumblr side of things, but today it might be of greater value to focus on RSS, what it is and how it […]
#SM4NP: Kone 2012 Video Goes Viral, But Maybe For Wrong Reasons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc”
Today is yet another day in the Republican Primary Season. Today is another day many thousands of Republicans will not want Barack Obama re-elected, but nor will they rally around a viable contender. Yet today also is the day possibly the 75 millionth person watches the viral video phenomenon ‘Kony 2012’. The video tells the […]
#COMMUNICATIONS: Presentation Software Also Moving To The Cloud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ahoSOz3ZE[/youtube]
Slide presentations have been both the bread-and-butter and the champagne-and-caviar of the business pitch. Slides offer an outline and a set of visual cues that help engage audiences and move donors to action. Moreover, the best-known desktop applications to create presentations, Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote, offer various ways to save your slideshow and share […]
#TECH: Latest iPad Shifts Mobile Toward Creative Productivity
Apple unveiled the latest iPad this past Wednesday, and though the third generation, Apple will not call it the ‘iPad 3’. Indeed, one of the interesting sideshows of the product’s history has been the sturm und drang over its name. But for its form factor, the changes are both incremental and market-shifting – typical Apple, really. […]