Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

The reason I post these is because 1) I think they might be helpful resources, and 2) you can get a feeling for what I’m working on, or thinking about (or wishing for.) For instance, the reason there are so many links about Amazon is that we are now beginning a project that uses amazon in earnest, with some others possibly on the way.

• PolicyTool for Social Media
• List of Nonprofit, NPO, NGO Websites Using Drupal » The ENGINE Blog » ENGINE Industries: Atlanta, Georgia Web Design
• AboutUseCaseMaps < UCM < Foswiki
• multi-mechanize – Project Hosting on Google
• Online Backup from Backblaze
• Data Robotics, Inc.
• EC2StartersGuide – Community Ubuntu Documentation
• Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Amazon EC2 API Tools
• Migration Tips | Acquia
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
• EC2 and Ubuntu – Alestic.com
• WordPress › SyntaxHighlighter Evolved « WordPress Plugins

Although it’s not often used in nonprofit settings, the Drupal module (or, more correctly, a large suite of modules) called “Ubercart” is a pretty amazing tool if you need to create a shopping cart system. We’ve implemented it for organizations that want to sell fees for events, sell items, and take donations. It doesn’t have many of the strengths of CiviCRM, but it has a lot of useful features if you want to sell things, or combine selling things with taking donations, memberships and selling event tickets.

A while back, I’d heard of the Ubercore initiative – a group of developers working to bring Ubercart to Drupal 7 (there was quite a delay between the release of Drupal 6 and the availability of Ubercart for Drupal 6.)  That initiative is now called “Drupal Commerce. (other site here.)” It is basically meant to be a rewrite of Ubercart for Drupal 7. It looks to be something to watch. Gregory Heller of CivicActions wrote an interesting conceptual piece on the integration of Drupal Commerce and CiviCRM that’s worth a read. (By the way, there is a module done by DharmaTech that integrates CiviCRM and the current Ubercart.)

• Yammer : Enterprise Microblogging
• Git – SVN Crash Course
• Pivotal Tracker – Free Lightweight Agile Project Management & Team Collaboration, from Pivotal Labs
• Force.com Web Services API Developer’s Guide
• SOQL SELECT Syntax
• AIM Implementation Guide
• gokubi.com » Blog Archive » Using Sites to easily publish data out of Salesforce
• DrupalMad developer :: Add-ons for Firefox
• Maintaining a Drupal module using Git | drupal.org
• Make Your Mark – On the Web. On the World. – Val Nelson

You don’t hear me talking much about social media. One of the reasons is that there are a number of really good bloggers out there who know the field far better than I’ll ever be able to. I would argue that Beth Kanter is the best social media blogger there is in the nonprofit space. Her careful writing about the strengths and weaknesses of social media, the in-depth knowledge of strategy and approach, her on-the-cutting-edge understanding of trends and issues and how they relate to the work that nonprofits are doing has been an incredibly important resource to the sector. If someone asks me about social media, I just say “ask Beth!”

And, it’s her birthday! A big bunch of us are blogging today to talk about what she’s contributed, and also to let people know about the charity she’s been working with for a while, now, the Sharing Foundation. She’d like folks to donate in honor of her birthday.

Beth, thanks for the expertise and intelligence you’ve lent to the nonprofit sector for quite some time now! And thanks in advance for all the great upcoming posts in 2010 and beyond that will help me sound intelligent when I talk about social media. :-)