10 Questions Every Blogger Should Ask Themselves Before Posting

To help you in these crucial editing stages, we thought we would lay down some important questions bloggers can ask themselves so they can make an honest, constructive and critical appraisal of their work before posting it up for the world to see. Asking these simple questions could mean the difference between a hastily written blog article that remains obscure and a well-written, influential and accessible blog that courts a loyal audience with ease.

1. How quickly can my readers understand what my post is about?
2. Does my blog offer something novel or unexpected?
3. How helpful is my content?
4. Why should my readers trust me?
5. Does my content speak ...
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   Tags: educate, innovate, web 2.0

10 Steps to Being Found on Search Engines

by Laura Quinn, Director, Idealware

Does your organization show up on the first page of results in search engines like Google or Yahoo? The content and structure of your website can have a dramatic effect on how easily potential constituents can find you via search engines. This article explains how.

Let's do an experiment. Go to Google and type in the most commonly used version of your organization's name. Do you show up first in the resulting list of sites? What if you type in a short phrase describing the type of work you'd like ...

From the recent NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference we would like to share Mark Rovner and Katya Andresen's overview of donors' seven needs to feel fulfilled. With all the shiny technology tools out there, it's easy for us to be blinded to the fact technology is about bonds, not wires. It's human connections that matter. In other words, some very human principles make or break the success of absolutely everything we do online. From the discussion of "The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach," here are the seven things everyone wants:

• Need 1: To be SEEN and HEARD
• Need 2: To be CONNECTED to someone or something
• Need 3: To be part of ...
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  Tags: educate, web 2.0

The U.S. election season has put the issues of diversity and gender on the national radar. Now, a new book looks at gender equity through the lens of North America’s Jewish organizations, where 70 percent of professionals are women, yet few hold top positions. In Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, three experts in organizational change provide strategies and tools for those who want to champion gender equity in the workplace. This new “how-to” book draws upon best practices in leadership theory and human dynamics to tackle gender inequity, a deep-rooted problem that has been discussed for years by Jewish leaders with little being achieved. In the book, the three authors paint a compelling picture of gender ...

The AFP 45th International Conference on Fundraising is underway in sunny San Diego, California. And, for the first time ever (or certainly in recent memory) we have both a presentation and an affinity session devoted to Jewish Philanthropy! eJewish Philanthropy is appreciative to Dr. David A. Mersky and Dr. Amy L. Sales of the Fisher-Bernstein Institute for Jewish Philanthropy and Leadership for the opportunity to post the power point of their presentation this morning. The Abstract: The success of Jewish fundraising has an almost mythic quality yet, for better or worse, Jewish nonprofits have struggled to adjust to significant changes in Jewish philanthropy. The successful ones have grasped the Jewish philosophy that underlies charitable giving and ...

The NonProfit Times announced the launch of an online portal that gives free access to corporate donation data for fundraising research to nonprofit grant writers and others researchers. The address is www.nptgrantsearch.com.

The research portal was launched with more than 4,300 searchable records of corporate donations valued at $1 million or more to U.S. charities.

 

The only free service of its kind, users can search, view and save information about the corporate donor, ...

This is a busy ten days: from Oxford University to Tel Aviv; from San Diego to Jerusalem we've got you covered. Over this week, eJewish Philanthropy will bring you a combination of on the spot coverage, conversations, complete presentations and links. Check back often as we highlight goings on in the world of philanthropy. For those of you with an interest in Social Entrepreneurship or Social Philanthropy, the gathering these past few days of the 5th Annual Skoll World Forum at Oxford University will be of interest. Some background: The Skoll Foundation, was established in 1999 by eBay founder Jeff Skoll in order to promote social entrepreneurship. In 2003, the Foundation established Skoll The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship ...

From Ghana to Venezuela to Israel, 10 Brandeis University undergraduates have been selected to participate in social justice internships around the world this summer. Through The Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, established by the generosity of an anonymous donor on the occasion of Justice Brandeis's 150th birthday, the students are provided a $3,500 stipend to alleviate costs associated with an unpaid internship in a social-service agency that addresses issues of social justice.

"There is in most...some spark of idealism, which can be fanned into a flame. It takes sometimes a divining rod to find what it is; but when found, and that means often, when disclosed to the owners, the results are ...

"Are some charities more worthy than others? This seems to be the implication of a bill before the state Legislature that would require philanthropic foundations to document the so-called diversity of the charities they support. The inference is that the more diverse a charity's board of directors and staff, the more worthy it is of philanthropic funding. As a private foundation, Koret seeks to maximize our impact in achieving the philanthropic goals developed by our board of directors. We look for nonprofit partners who will produce the most positive impact in carrying out our initiatives, whether in the area of K-12 education reform, arts and culture, or strengthening organizations that serve the Jewish and general communities." ...

Last week was the Inaugural Conference hosted by The Center for the Study of Philanthropy in Israel at Hebrew University. Dr. Leslie Lenkowsky, Director of Graduate Programs at The Center on Philanthropy (Indiana University) spoke eloquently to the (mostly) academic attendees, focusing largely on who gives, why they give and how they give. You can read about it here and here. In today's Jerusalem Post is a follow-up interview, "The Gain of Give and Take", between Professor Lenkowsky and Ruthie Blum. In response to her question, what constitutes good fundraising, Professor Lenkowsky replies: "A good fundraiser understands that his or her job is not only raising money for his own organization, but enhancing the culture of philanthropy in a community ...