NCTech4Good

where tech meets social change

where tech meets social change

A New Rosetta Language: Hi-Tech Teens and Computer Science

posted on

Come see how inspiring our youth helps to create a better future for technology! Our session will be divided into three portions. First, we want to give a presentation outlining the motives behind our efforts. Some of the questions we will address include: why high school students? Why is diversity in technology important? What are some of the factors that prevent girls from participating in computer science, and how did we address these in our program? The second portion of the session will be presentations from the Hi-Tech Teens students themselves. They will showcase the result of 6 weeks of work, with program demonstrations. The final portion of the session will be a short Q&A session with the students, to give them a chance to reflect on the program and share their experiences with the audience.

Speaker: Betsey McFarland

Organization: Wade Edwards Learning Lab/WiCS@NCSU

Speaker Bio: The Wade Edwards Foundation & Learning Lab (WELL) and NC State University Women in Computer Science (WiCS) organization have partnered together to create a program to introduce young people to the exciting world of programming. Holding mentorship sessions once a week with two sections (one exclusively reserved for females, the other co-ed), the program hopes to inspire its participants to overcome social and experience-based barriers to succeed in one of the most in-demand fields of the modern age. Representatives from both organizations as well as student participants will present an overview of the program, lessons learned, challenges faced, future goals and most importantly – the experience of the young people involved in the program.

Session Tags: Mentorship, Student Presentations, Women in Computer Science, Diversity, Programming, Technology Skills, Positive Youth Development

Opening This Email Could Change Your Life

posted on

How many email do you receive a day? 100? 200? 1,000? As a nonprofit communicator, do can you reach your audiences when you have to compete with this sheer volume of noise? In this session, we’re going to evaluate some of the best practices in email marketing communications. We’ll review how to ensure your emails are opened to then creating engaging content that drives people to fulfill the call to action. We’re talking subject lines, theory of change, and cat photos.

Speaker: Katie Todd

Organization: NC League of Conservation Voters

Speaker Bio: Katie serves as the Online Engagement Coordinator with the NC League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of protecting North Carolina’s natural resources. In this role, she oversees membership engagement, email marketing, fundraising, advocacy, and social media. Katie earned her BA in English and Political Science from the University of Arizona and a Master of Public Administration with the Nonprofit Leadership Certificate from UNC – Chapel Hill. Currently, she serves as the chair for YNPN Triangle NC. Outside of the nonprofit sector, Katie enjoys going on adventures with her husband Aaron, reading, running, cooking, watching sports, and indulging in the North Carolina craft beer scene.

Session Tags: email marketing, fundraising, subject lines, advocacy

Putting Your Data to Good Use: Data Viz for the Rest of Us

posted on

This session will focus on the best practices for communicating with your data, whether you are using basic Excel charts or the latest and greatest technology.

In particular, we’ll discuss:
-How to find what your data is saying
-The best ways for your data to clearly tell a story
-Tips for selecting the best format for data visualization from dashboards to infographics
-Free and cheap tools for creating great looking graphics

Participants will leave this session with a better understanding of how to use their data to communicate with peers, Board members, donors, and the public.

Speaker: Heather Yandow

Organization: Third Space Studio

Speaker Bio: Heather Yandow brings more than a decade of experience as an outreach coordinator, coalition leader, project manager, and fundraiser to Third Space Studio and our clients.

Her most recent nonprofit position was as the Director of Development and Communications with the NC Conservation Network, a statewide network of over 100 environmental, community and environmental justice organizations focused on protecting North Carolina’s environment and public health. Heather’s nonprofit experience also includes being a volunteer and Board member. Heather co-founded the beehive collective, a giving circle in Raleigh. She has also served on the Board of Directors Democracy NC and ncyt: NC’s Network of Young Nonprofit Professionals. As a student at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, Heather volunteered with several student activist groups including co-chairing the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Heather also holds a certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University.

Heather earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics from the UNC in May 2001. In her free time, Heather enjoys riding bikes, hanging out with her dog, and enjoying the great music and food in the Triangle.

Session Tags: data, visualization, beginner, dashboard, infographic

Communication Planning & Implementation for Small Non-Profits

posted on

Are you the only person running your non-profit? Do you have a small staff? Do you have lots of volunteers and need to get information out quickly? Do you find it really hard to find time to communicate with all of your stakeholders regularly?

If you answered “Yes!” to any of these questions, then this session is for you!

This session will overview various technologies that you can use to maximize communication with your constituents, convert social media likes to supporters or donors, strengthen your board, and raise monies. These web-based tools can be easily used, set up, shared, integrated, and maintained. It will also focus on the need for a social media plan which can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet.

This session will focus on the real-life implementation of various online tools to support non-profits and will include a portion for sharing ideas with the other participants.
Some of the tools which may be discussed will be: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, E-Newsletters, YouTube, PayPal, Square, Crowdrise, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Volunteer Sign-Up Programs, Surveys, and more. We will also talk about mobile devices and how to maximize their usage!

Speaker: Kathy McCullough-Testa

Organization: Beach Food Pantry & KMT Consultants

Speaker Bio: Kathy McCullough-Testa is the President & CEO of KMT Consultants, Inc., and serves as part-time Executive Director of the Beach Food Pantry in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Kathy helps her clients “Transform Visionary Ideas Into Reality” on a daily basis.

She is a motivated, personable business professional with experience in multiple industries including health care, government, financial, real estate, non-profit, retail, and education.

Kathy is the first executive director of the Beach Food Pantry. In her nearly two-year tenure, she has helped increase fundraising goals by 50%, increased volunteer participation, and strengthened and expanded community support through outreach events, fundraisers, and social media.

Session Tags: social media, communication, beginner, intermediate, blogs, marketing

Surround Sound Approach – Content Marketing for Nonprofits

posted on

“Content Marketing” is hot in for-profit marketing and advertising, but how can you adapt those best practices to your nonprofit?

Learn how to create a comprehensive boom of sound to reach your target audiences. At it’s core, this is all about increasing online engagement. The “Surround Sound Approach” is a multimedia approach to communications that reaches your audience on multiple marketing channels with a unified message. This coordinated approach is not only effective but efficient as you can use one tactic over multiple platforms.

In this session, you’ll see success stories and get the tools to use this approach for your nonprofit. We’ll break it down so you can get the most use out of the content you are already creating!

Speaker: Dawn Crawford

Organization: BC/DC Ideas

Speaker Bio: The engine behind BC/DC Ideas, Dawn has dedicated her career to good. Before launching BC/DC Ideas in 2010, she earned her chops in 10+ years of communications leadership roles for public health, healthcare and youth-focused nonprofits. Working for nonprofits is Dawn’s dream job, and she loves that her 40+ hours a week make the world a better place.

These days Dawn brings her considerable experience and expertise to helping elevate the nonprofit sector. Our team’s lead strategist, Dawn is often seen leading our IdeaStorms, penning communications plans, or checking in with clients.

Things that make her happy: Chai tea in the morning or a glass of champagne at quittin’ time, Basecamp, living in the South, her daughter’s giggle and a well-formatted spreadsheet.

Session Tags: communications, content marketing, increasing online engagement

What is a TwitterChat and how to make the most of it?

posted on

Twitter Chats are the best occasion to catch up with your peers on Twitter, make new connections and get the newest nonprofit or technology buzz fast. Twitter Chats are events scheduled and conducted mostly for one hour on Twitter, using a specific #hashtag and a topic.

In this session you will learn how you can successfully participate in a Twitter chat and also how to prepare yourself to be a Twitterchat facilitator.
We will review various examples of active, regularly scheduled Twitter chats in the nonprofit field, for instance #fundchat #storymaker2014 and #npmc
We also discuss 3rd Party Tools that help you keep pace with the conversation and to curate the best-of-chat tweets and resources.

Speaker: Birgit Pauli-Haack

Organization: Netsquared

Speaker Bio: Birgit Pauli-Haack, co-founder of Relevanza, Inc., brings over 18 years of web development and web community expertise to the company. With her other company, Pauli Systems, LC, also headquartered in Naples, Florida she has been providing interactive, user-friendly, web-based business applications and server administration services to an array of corporate, nonprofit and private clients, both international and domestic since 2002. In addition to leading her companies, Birgit is an active member of the web community and provides pro bono technology products and services to local non-profit organizations. She has been technology leader with the Naples Free-Net since 1998 and is the immediate Past President. She organized in 2010 its NFN4Good nonprofits support and education program, teaching WordPress, CiviCRM and other open-source software. Birgit is also coordinator of WordPress Meetup SWFL and the nonprofit NFN4Good TechClub, supported by NTEN Community as well as TechSoup Global’s Netsquared. Birgit is a Netsquared Regional Ambassador 2015.

Session Tags: twitterchats, twitter, communitybuilding

Make your Organization Wikipedia Official: Insider Tips, Tricks and Strategies

posted on

So your team has done it all – you’re on Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, and Instagram? Now, it’s time to turbo charge your organization and take it to the next level with a Wikipedia page!
Join us to learn how to build legitimacy and reputation as well as premium placement within the first five Google search results for your organization, by getting your organization onto Wikipedia.

Kasey Baker and Frank Jones, Wikipedia’s former Regional Ambassadors and Coordinators for their Education Program, will give you an advanced crash course in how to start, actually write, or even improve an existing Wikipedia page for your organization. You will learn:

1. Why is it so important to have a Wikipedia page?
2. Why it is so hard to get into Wikipedia?
3. What you need to do to become a “Notable Organization.”
4. Tricks for writing your first article.
5. Tips for handling conflicts with “Wikipedians.”
6. And an open Q&A session.

Do not waste months just to have your article rejected, learn how to do it right and even if a Wikipedia page is best for you. Established organizations with active social media and existing community presence will gain the most from this presentation.

Speakers: Kasey Baker & Frank Jones

Organization: The Wiki Wizards – www.TheWikiWizards.com

Speaker Bio: Kasey Baker was the former Regional Coordinator for Wikipedia in the Southeast and Midwest regions of the United States from 2011-2014. During this time he also acted as the in-house Wikipedia Ambassador at Western Carolina University where he regularly guest lectured graduate level policy courses and ran training workshops for Wikipedia for new professors. He has helped hundreds of students, professors, librarians, non-profits and many others both write articles for Wikipedia and add content to existing articles. Baker also has been an active Wikipedian editing hundreds of articles and responsible for creating policy articles that received recognition by Wikipedia as an explanatory article,

Frank Jones acted for eighteen months as a Regional Ambassador for the Education Outreach Program at Wikipedia in the South East region, Jones has worked with professors and classes throughout the United States. While he spends most of his time working with his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jones has also supported classes at the University of North Georgia, Davidson College, and Appalachian State University. Jones is also an active Wikipedia and contributes inn his free time to articles on exotic locals he visits during his travels across the world.

Session Tags: Wikipedia, intermediate, search engine optimization, SEO, social media, organizational building, Google Search results

WordPress SEO

posted on

Nonprofit organizations need to get the most out of every dollar spent and hour volunteered. WordPress is the platform of choice for organizations that need a professional looking website, but don’t have tens of thousands to spend on development. With a few simple plugins and best practices, you can generate search engine optimized content that drives traffic to your website. Best of all, these tools and tactics are so easy to learn that you don’t need to spend hours training volunteers and staff members.

Speaker: Frank Jones

Organization: FrankCJones.com

Speaker Bio: Frank Jones is the organizer for the Raleigh SEO Meetup and a co-organizer for the Triangle WordPress Meetup. Since 2009, Frank has helped clients develop content that is loved by search engines and human audiences alike. Additionally, he assists small to medium-size organizations by managing their WordPress installations. Thanks to the location independent nature of his work, you may find Frank in Raleigh – but you shouldn’t be suprised to find he’s telecommuting from Spain or Turkey. You can learn more about Frank and the projects he has under way at FrankCJones.com.

Session Tags: WordPress, SEO, beginner, intermediate

It’s a SNAP – Social Networking Accelerated Process

posted on

When I first started my own business, the consistent and frequent message that I received from mentors was that my social media efforts needed to be consistent and frequent.

But I also had a coaching business to run. I didn’t want to spend the majority of my time on facebook, LinkedIn, Google, twitter, yahoo, etc.

At the same time, I realized that social media (if used correctly) is an effective, inexpensive marketing tool. And without marketing there is no sales. And Sales Does Drive the Business Bus.

Since then, I created a systematic approach to get a consistent message out on social media, frequently, efficiently and in line with my marketing brand.– with just 10 minutes every other month.

I call it SNAP – Social Networking Accelerated Process. And I have done several speaking and training engagements on “It’s a SNAP” to several nonprofit organizations as well as other coaches and entrepreneurs.

Speaker: Laura Rose

Speaker Bio: Laura Rose, speaker author of the business and time management book: TimePeace: Making Peace with Time, the Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations and Business Marketing for Entrepreneurs is a certified business and efficiency coach.

Laura Lee Rose has been in the software and testing industry for over 20 years. She’s worked with such companies as IBM, Ericsson, Staples, Fidelity Investments and Sogeti in various client advocacy and project management roles. The techniques she used in her business coaching and client advocacy work saved these companies both time and money, which resulted in on-time, quality product delivery with higher client satisfaction.

Even though Laura excelled in the corporate environment, she felt a calling toward something more. Laura now uses her time management, work life balance and personal development skills as a efficiency coach and Corporate Exit Strategist. Laura Lee Rose helps people blend their goals and dreams into their everyday lives. Laura uses creative transition strategies to help her clients realize what really matters to them. Combining inspired action with practical, tangible techniques easily lead you toward more autonomy, freedom and balance.

If you are ready for your next chapter, learn more about Laura and her products at www.LauraLeeRose.com

Organization: Rose Coaching

Session Tags: beginners, social media marketing, productivity, business strategies, marketing strategies

Don’t Guess! What We Know About Website Users

posted on

Making a website easy for your visitors to use is essential for a terrific website experience. Great content is often crippled by poor usability. Understanding usability principles can inform your design and content decisions to make websites more user friendly and successful. No more guessing how people use websites! Based on publicly available usability research, we’ll discuss what we know about users in terms of both big-picture concepts and nitty-gritty details. For example, how do users engage with photography on websites? We’ll also discuss items to keep in mind for visitors on mobile devices.

We will look at website examples to see common problems that non-profits make that cause their websites to be user-UNfriendly. We’ll also talk about potential solutions. You’ll walk out with practical tips that you can immediately use to better your website. Resources will be suggested for further learning.

Speaker: Melissa Eggleston

Organization: http://melissaegg.com

Speaker Bio: As a content strategist with a UX focus, Melissa Eggleston aims to help organizations create memorable website experiences so they can connect to their “tribe.” In 1996, she wrote her first online stories about soccer and violated all the rules we now know about writing for the web. Now as a freelancer, she consults and creates content for all types of organizations – from dentists in California to an e-commerce design firm in New York to a religious non-profit in Kentucky. Previously she worked for Duke University and Bloomberg News. Melissa gained her multimedia skills and love of usability at UNC-Chapel Hill where she got her Master’s degree. When not working, you’ll likely find Melissa on her yoga mat or trying to convince her 3-year-old daughter that their cat Luna really doesn’t want another hug.

Session Tags: usability, user experience, content strategy, intermediate, beginner, website design

Can we top the 2014 NCT4G Conference in 2015?

posted on

Beth Kanter’s pre-conference workshop June 5 in Chapel Hill was outstanding, with 100% of survey participants responding that the workshop was worth their time and also that it was a good value! The hands-on format allowed participants to map their networks and plan ways to use social media more effectively. The conference planning team is currently working with Laura Quinn, Executive Director, Idealware on ideas for another interactive workshop which we think will be extremely valuable. Mark your calendars now so you don’t miss out on the 2015 NCTech4Good Conference, June 4-5 at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. We’ll open registration and request session proposals in January.

During the summer, we’ve assembled materials and posts from the 2014 conference. The website’s “wiki,” at http://nctech4good.org/2014wiki, contains a collection of materials added and edited by the conference website’s users, including session descriptions and materials, a summary of evaluations, links to Beth Kanter’s resources and Beth Kanter’s Storify, and the Ryan Boyles Storify summary of his presentation at the July NCTech4Good meeting on “Using Storify to Share Your Work” where he Storified the conference.

Check out the wiki and be sure not to miss the 2015 conference. Watch the website for updates.

Becoming A Networked Nonprofit: Digital Strategies for Community-Based Nonprofits

posted on

Speaker: Beth Kanter
Thank you so much for the invitation to come to North Carolina – I really enjoyed it and the participants were fantastic! Here’s the resource page I created for the workshop and the keynote — all the links, slides, storify, and photos –
http://bethkanter.wikispaces.com/nc
Thank you again ..
Beth

Video Create Strategy Poster 1 of 2 0:37
Video Create Strategy Poster 2 of 2 0:56
Video Share Strategy Poster 0:49
Video Brainstorming 1 of 2 6:03
Video Brainstorming 2 of 2 7:27












NCTech4Good, an affiliate of NTEN and TechSoup’s NetSquared, is the local resource for nonprofit technology information. Join the sharing and networking at monthly meetings on the third Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:30 p.m. usually at UNC-TV, and our annual conference, https://www.nct4g.org/. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @nctech4good, and with the hashtag #nct4g.