A selection of recent articles and postings around the nonprofit world you may find of interest.

from GuideStar:

Tips for Entering Your Nonprofit into the Social Media Environment

Do you Tweet? What’s your Facebook page got? Ever think of how to promote your nonprofit on YouTube? Follow any bloggers? What’s an “influencer,” and should you be, well, influenced? More important, are your target audiences socializing in cyberspace, not just for fun but for the purpose of deciding how and where to invest their time or financial resources?

Make no mistake, social media is changing the way we—from the individual to the corporation—are communicating. And the environment is rich with opportunities for nonprofit organizations to get noticed.

from OnPhilanthropy:

As The Economic Crisis Deepens, Socially Oriented Capital Emerges

Our nation is in uncharted waters as the economy proves resistant to a jump start, even after injections of hundreds of billions of dollars. Huge returns on investments that once seemed assured have, in fact, proved illusory. Whether through fraud, as in the case of the Madoff scandal, or through an unanticipated level of risk, the realities of the current bear market have led investors to plumb alternative vehicles for their increasingly scarce investment dollars.

One beneficiary of that search is a niche market: social investing (AKA “mission-driven” or “impact” investing). Social investing is defined in the January 2009 Monitor Institute report, Investing for Social and Environmental Impact as “actively placing capital in businesses and funds that generate social and/or environmental good and at least return nominal principal to the investor.” Impact investing has, unfortunately, long suffered from the assumption that doing good involves a huge sacrifice of return.

from The National Arts Marketing Project:

Online Surveys: Avoid the Non-Response Black Hole

Online surveying has made it possible for you to reach thousands of people with just one mouse click. But once your survey is out there in cyberspace, it can languish in a black hole, never to be viewed or responded to by anyone.

from The New York Times:

Brandeis Committee Will Weigh Future of Rose Art Museum

Brandeis University announced that it will form a committee to consider the future of its Rose Art Museum…

The Massachusetts state attorney general’s office has said it will scrutinize the university’s moves to ensure that the legal terms of any art donation to Brandeis are not being violated.