MCS hosts leadership groups for nonprofit leaders. The group asked me to develop a list of terms for an upcoming training so that we're all starting from the same page. I figured it would make for a good blog post. Here's the cheat sheet:
- Blog - (Short for Web log) An online diary in which individual shares personal or professional experiences. Nonprofits are using blogs to allow clients to speak for themselves, to allow their constituents to engage with the organization through their website, and as a communications strategy for nonprofit leadership to speak directly with their constituents.
- CMS - (Content Management System) - CMS systems are web-enabled database systems that allow manipulation of content dynamically. More nonprofits are moving to open source CMS's that can be downloaded for free. The most common examples are: Drupal, Joomla, Plone, Xoops.
- CRM - (Constituent Relationship Management) - CRM systems allow organizations to keep track of donors, activists and volunteers. These systems automate donor and membership development business processes and allow for the creation of sophisticated reporting and data analysis. Examples include: Convio, Kintera, Democracy in Action, CiviCRM, Salesforce.com.
- Podcast - Web-based audio broadcast that can be downloaded to a computer or personal media device such as an ipod (thus "podcast"). Nonprofit organizations are increasingly realizing that they must engage constituents with more sophisticated multi-media methods. Podcasting can also be powerful for organizations seeking to broaden their communications strategies including podcasting events, trainings and conferences.
- RSS - RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication among other things. It essentially changes your web viewing from pull (going to each site to view content) to push (content automatically gets uploaded to a blog reader or web browser). Nonprofits are using RSS as a means to get their site content out into their constituents' hands. Click here for more information on RSS.
- RSS Aggregator - An aggregator pulls RSS feeds from multiple sites into one single stream.
- Social News - Social news websites allow users to post news items or their own content. Users vote for content. Articles are then ranked based on user votes. Nonprofits are posting items from their sites and asking their user community to vote for their content. Example: Digg, StumbledUpon
- Social Media - Social media includes podcasting, but also includes the use of video. As the production costs have declined, audio/video production costs have plummeted. This low cost and video distribution sites have democratized media production and afforded greater abilities for nonprofits to tell their story in innovative ways.
- Social Networking Sites - Social networking web sites facilitate interaction amongst their members for social or professional purposes. These sites allow for individuals and organizations to create identities. Examples include:Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Razoo.
- Tagging - An open ended means to categorizing content. Tags can be aggregated to be viewed in tag cloud that renders more popular subjects as larger links. Organizations that use blogging and social applications often use tags to create new windows into the content on their site.
- Web 2.0 - Web 2.0 is a broad term that refers to all of the social networking technologies included in this list. Nonprofits have been slow to adopt 2.0 technologies, but are increasingly engaged in Web 2.0 to engage constituents, raise money, and create opportunities for volunteering.
- Wiki - A wiki is a collaborative web authoring tool. Essentially any user can edit the content on any page in which he or she has access. Wikis do a good job of track revisions as well. Organizations are using wikis for collaborative work such as documentation creation, project management and intranet management.
Please feel free to suggest other terms and questions you may have.
