NCTech4Good

where tech meets social change

where tech meets social change

No Cost Online Non-Profit Research: Sometimes Free Really IS Free

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Discover online resources previously only available to large businesses and now available to you for free. Create demographic and census data maps for presentations using SimplyMap, conduct research on 24 million U.S. businesses and non-profits and 235 million U.S. residents using Reference USA, view 248,660 online videos from producers like PBS, BBC, NOVA, and Frontline, and research almost any topic from reliable content providers. All these resources and more are available for free through NCLive.Org and your public library. You will wonder how you ever did without them.

Speakers: Betty Garrison & Sara Thynne

Organization: Elon Univ

Speaker Bios: Betty Garrison is the Business Research Librarian at Elon University in Elon, NC. She is the liaison to the Love School of Business and works with students and faculty to research topics in business, economics, accounting, management, marketing, entrepreneurship and sales.

Sara Thynne is the Reference & Instruction Librarian at Alamance Community College in Graham, NC.

Session Tags: non-profit research; beginner;

15 Ways to Make Your Website Better, Smarter, and More Beautiful

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You hate your current website. Or maybe it just doesn’t work as well as it should. Or maybe nobody ever goes to it. There are a lot of ways your sites can fall short: scattered design, muddled messaging, bad or nonexistent mobile design, weak SEO, among other problems. It’s hard to do it all right. This session will take a look at the most common website problems and help you with practical solutions to make your sites smarter, more usable, and more effective.

Speaker: Matt Pusateri

Organization: Flying Dog Creative

Speaker Bio: Matt Pusateri is the founder and creative director of Flying Dog Creative. A designer and web strategist with more than two decades of professional experience, he specializes in building clean, modern, and effective web sites that look good on any device or screen. Matt has also done work with a variety of nonprofit and private-sector organizations, including the Center for American Progress, The Communications Network, Local Government Federal Credit Union, Hunt Alternatives Fund, Core Legal Concepts, People for the American Way, and Holland & Knight LLP. He also has years of experience with marketing, branding, email campaigns, online activism, graphic design, animation, and visual storytelling.

Session Tags: Web Design, Websites, Branding, Web Strategy, Content Strategy

Top 5 PivotTable Tips to Make You a Star!

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Bring your laptop to this Excel PivotTables class. PivotTables allow you to quickly summarize and analyze large amounts of data in lists and tables by dragging and dropping columns to different rows, columns, or summary positions. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn the top 5 PivotTable tips and tricks that will make you a star! To ensure a high transfer of learning, attendees are welcome to Q&A with the facilitator after the class at firstclass.djltraining.com.
Note: Excel 2007/2010/2013 must be pre-installed on your Windows laptop. (No Macs, please.)
Speaker: DeLisa Lee

Organization: DJL Training, Inc.

Speaker Bio: DeLisa Lee is the owner and Program Director of DJL Training, Inc. providing customized computer training to government agencies, corporate entities, small-med businesses and community based organizations. DJL Training has classes for everyone from novices to power users, young adults to seniors. DeLisa is passionate about helping people work smarter, not harder, at their computers. Her favorite things to teach include Microsoft Access and Excel, Google Apps For Work, and Customer Relationship Management systems. She also has an extensive knowledge of desktop and web-based productivity applications and specializes in the effective use of mobile apps and devices. DeLisa lives in Durham, NC with her family and plays keyboards in a local jazz band.

Session Tags: excel, PivotTables, spreadsheets, computer

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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.