Corey Pudhorodsky

• A Career Center : Arguably one of the largest and best know career resources for people interested in starting or enriching their career in the nonprofit sector.
• The Public Service and Graduate Education Resource Center (PSGERC): Articles and help for those considering returning to school for a graduate degree in public service.
• Mentoring and Teaching tools : Inspiration for up-and-coming leaders and tools to help teachers introduce youth to public service are just a couple of the items that you'll find to help the next generation of do-gooders get fueled.
• Nonprofit Organization libraries : The Nonprofit FAQ answers common questions that organizations run into and there are resources for all kinds of staff from webmasters to volunteer managers. 

Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget.

Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month.

For a couple of years my wife and I have had a wacky idea: chickens in the backyard.  I joke with people that I’ve always wanted a pet bird and she loves fresh eggs so it made sense.  We loved what we read about how chickens could compliment backyard gardens by consuming kitchen scraps and producing rich compost. The idea of knowing where our food came from also appeals to us. Most people agree that backyard gardens allow people to shrink their carbon footprint with a more local and sustainable food source too.

It was an Austin Meetup.com online community and monthly meetings that allowed us to stop dreaming about chickens and actually jump into building a coop and adopting seven pullets (young hens).  In learning about different breeds, feed, chick coop styles, predator control, and general care for chickens I also learned some valuable lessons in social networking and online organization:

1. There truly is a community for everything.  I’ve sometimes wondered how so many micro-communities have sprung up on Ning.com and Meetup.org. Who’s interested in those things, I thought? Then I found a reason to be especially interested in backyard chickens in Austin, TX and I joined one of these small communities. I post pictures of our personally designed and built coop, my wife shares questions and answers to community questions, and we mark our calendars for the monthly in-person meetups at feed stores, backyards, and garden shops.
2. Community involvement is cyclical. Owning chickens for less than 6 months, we are still fresh and excited with the things we have learned and questions we still have. Community organizers are wise to welcome people like us into the community immediately and leverage our passion.  We will become less involved over time but I’m sure we’ll play a part in welcoming other chicken noobies into the group.
3. All information is not online. Being a web-geek, I was determined to learn everything we needed to know about chickens online. When faced with a question on chicken care, I flipped open the netbook and my wife referenced 2 books she purchased.  More often than not she found the answer more accurately and quickly. There’s huge value in person-to-person networking too. Chicken breeders and feed shop owners are a far more valuable resource for us than Google for this hobby.

Along with chickens, we have also hoped to own a home where we could install solar panels to reduce our reliance on energy off the grid.  Turns out local resources were also helpful for us on this front too.  After visiting a friend’s house who recently installed panels on his garage, we learned that Austin Energy and a federal refund program made solar panels a much more affordable endeavor than we expected.  We received free quotes from several local companies and now have 24 panels on the back roof of our house which should cover between 60-80% of our energy consumption throughout the year. 

There are some great resources online for those interested in learning more about solar energy and if it would be a viable solution for your home.  Check out Mother Earth magazine’s Renewable Energy page.  The National Renewable Energy Lab publishes a lot of information about current research and methods of converting the sunlight into electricity.  As for the companies implementing systems, I worked with a company in Austin called Green City Solar and found them to be very helpful and they took the time to educate us about the system.

Finally I believe that Yelp.com is helping me fight global climate change also.  Yelp, you ask?  The restaurant, bar, and services review site? Yep, Yelp.  Here’s why:

Yelp has fundamentally changed how I search and discover the restaurants and bars where I socialize and get together with others.  With Yelp I’m able to find local establishments within walking or bike-riding range no matter where I am.  I can be very targeted with my visits and planned activities for an evening.  I no longer need to cruise across town to find a restaurant that is strongly recommended by others, Yelp helps me find the ones that are right in my neighborhood.  If I’m meeting someone in another part of town or another city, Yelp helps us find the best place that serves food we can be sure we’ll both be interested in.  No more hopping around between establishments until we find one that looks good.  If you have an iPhone, discovering local venues is even easier with the augmented reality “monocle” view which overlays names and ratings over the camera view of the iPhone as you hold it up.  It’s amazing, I encourage you to give it a try and find a local restaurant or pub to support. 

There you have it, this Blog Action Day, I declare I am fighting global climate change with chickens, solar, and Yelp. Grow and raise food in your backyard, consume less, adopt sustainable energy solutions, and get on your bike and peddle to support local establishments. Maybe a stretch by some standards, but I’m also taking a lot of the more conventional approaches, and every little bit helps. Happy Blog Action Day and please do your part to raise awareness of global climate change. 

When most people hear the word Mozilla, they think of the popular open source browser, Firefox and the plug-ins that help many of us to do our daily work on the web.  The Mozilla community includes a diverse international crowd of developers and supporters working to make the web better.   This September 14-21, 2009, tech lovers and specialists are coming together to improve local communities all over the world in support of Mozilla Service Week.   At Convio, we think that’s a pretty cool thing which is why we are encouraging our employees, partners, and clients to participate in Mozilla Service week also!

For Organizations and Causes:
If you work for a cause or organization, the first thing you should do is think about needs and talents that would help your efforts.  Get creative and find projects that have been on the back burner because of lack of resources or knowledge.  Need some help thinking of ideas?  Check out some of the projects that people have shared already on the Service Week Stories and Inspiration page or by browsing the Idealist.org opportunities database.  Registering and adding opportunities is absolutely free and available to all organizations with technology needs.

For Individuals:
There are a several things that individuals can do to support this effort:

1. Register and Pledge the hours that you’ll volunteer September 14-21.
   There are already more than 2,500 hours pledged on the Service Week home page. Adding your hours early will increase the community’s excitement for the event and give everyone a better idea of how successful the effort is going to be.
   
2. Share your stories about what you are planning to work on or the causes you are volunteering for.
   After registering on the site, you can share a short description of your project or link to online media with more information.  These stories will help people image how they can work for change in their own communities.
   
3. Spread word about the event to other organizations and co-workers.
   You can download site badges, banners, and buttons; print flyers and posters to post at your office, local shops and tech gatherings, or even install a personalized persona Firefox skin for Mozilla Service Week.  The success of this event will be largely dependent on two things: getting the needs posted in the database and making sure the right techies are aware of the needs for volunteers.   

   Those of us who work with web technologies everyday often forget about the barriers that people in our local communities face using and accessing the Internet.  Mozilla Service Week is a great opportunity for us to work together and make a huge impact in short amount of time.  Please consider helping out and supporting this effort one of the ways that I’ve suggested above. 

Before I continue, let me admit that I am still a loyal Twitter user, advocate, and believer in its ability to help people and organizations share and connect.  My first tweet was October 14, 2006, so I also have some stake in saying that I am not a fickle Twit who just gave Twitter a try and am now moving on or giving up.  That said, I’ve taken pause in my unfettered enthusiasm because of several personal experiences and reflections that I’d like to share.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may already know that I was forced to take a Tweetcation because my account was suspended due to alleged suspicious activity.  Daily requests to Twitter Support and appeals from my friends to the Twitter rep handling my case didn’t seem to help.  Five days later when the issue was resolved, I was told that it appeared at some point my account sent out a link to a .cn domain that was part of a spam cloud that was hitting Twitter at the time.
Networked communication is a valuable tool, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Share via multiple channels and technologies.  You’ll connect with a more diverse crowd of supporters and be able to adapt to rapid changes in the social media world.

In just one day of posts in my feed reader of blogs and news outlets, I counted over 20 items about Twitter or apps that use their API (I realize the irony here).  Some creative and useful tools are coming out of the Twitosphere, but frankly I’m concerned that innovation may be delayed by our obsession with a single technology.  Twitter’s API is simple by design and the data communicated in each packet of information is limited. Hash tags waste valuable characters and linked urls are now often suspected of spam or worm attacks.
If Twitter fatigue can happen to me, it will likely happen to many more. Be prepared for when the next new shiny thing is discovered.  Remember that many of the accounts that make up Twitter’s explosive growth may actually already be inactive.

Several people smarter than me have shared some reflections on the state of social media and social web that have also gotten me thinking.  Michelle Murrain defriended more that 60% of her nptech friends on Facebook and she feels like it was a good move.  Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post on the elusive promised of Web 3.0 is a must read.  Both of their reflections have made me more mindful of the posts, connections, and streams that I introduce into my life.   The best social media is about listening and relevantly responding to the feedback we are getting.  As a whole, is this how we in the nonprofit and nptech Community are using Twitter?

So while I’m confident that the greatest philanthropic successes using Twitter have yet to come, don’t disrespect all of the other wonders that grow around us in the social media landscape.
 

As I wrote this post on the flight back from my third NTEN Conference I know I felt similar to many of the other 1,600 “NPTechies” (Nonprofit Techies) who are leaving San Francisco. Our brains our packed with ideas and inspiration for how to do our jobs better, our social networks are a little richer because of the new relationships we have forged, and our hearts are full with the comradeship of being with so many people that share our passion and perspective for the role of technology in work promoting the social good. I know work in the nonprofit sector is serious and sometimes tough business.  Good feelings and Facebook friends will not solely allow an organization to fulfill its goals or balance a budget, but in a time when technology staffs are particularly stressed, the NTEN Conference allows many of us an invaluable opportunity to recharge our spirits. So, allow me this chance to glow in the softer side of nonprofit technology and share some of my favorite moments of the 2009 NTEN Conference.

This was the first year I was able to participate in the Day of Service, a pre-conference volunteer event allowing technologist from all over the country to contribute to the city that is hosting the conference by sharing their expertise with local nonprofit organizations.  Some people work one-on-one with organizations consulting on anything from technology budgeting to online social media strategy. I joined a group project installing a mesh wireless network on Treasure Island, a community in San Francisco which is home to many low income families many of who were previously homeless. Cisco sponsored the project and provided the hardware for the network. The city coordinator summed it up best at the end of the project, “Because of the work we have done, kids in this community will no longer have an excuse for not being able to do their homework online.”

When the conference formally kicked off on Monday morning, attendees were treated to a fantastic pre-recorded dance performance of Beyonce’s “Put a Ring on It” by NTEN’s Executive Director, Holly Ross. This treat was our reward for meeting the fundraising goal for the NTEN Conference sponsorship which allowed dozens of people to attend who would otherwise not been able to attend. I was additionally proud of Convio’s matching gift involvement in this effort. Holly’s commitment to NTEN was fully expressed in her dancing, matched perhaps only by her passionate and emotional thank you to the community during her closing remarks on the last day of the conference. We are all lucky to have her at the helm of NTEN.     

Another personal favorite moment of mine was co-presenting in the “Nonprofit Radio: How to use Podcasting to Engage Your Constituents and Build Your Brand” session with Chad Norman of the Baudcast. Presenting to an engaged, overflowing into the hallway crowd, Chad and I shared our experience and examples of how nonprofits can use and produce podcasts. As competitive as Convio and Blackbaud are in the marketplace, this session was just another example of the atmosphere of individual collaborative that permeates the NTEN Conference.  If you’re curious to learn more about what we covered in this session, check out the amazing notes that Amy Sample Ward covered live and posted on her blog.

I call NTEN a summer camp for Nonprofit Techies because of how it uniquely calls people in our profession together. The only complaints I ever hear from attendees are that it ends too soon and there are just too many quality people and sessions to catch while it is occurring. We will continue our conversations online with @ Twitter replies and Facebook wall posts, in blogs, podcasts, and webinars.  We will continue to innovate in our communities and organizations and we will all look forward to gathering around the campfire again next year in Atlanta, GA for NTC 2010!

Photo Credits: SteveLavo (Flickr)