Future:Media:Change

The ubiquitous calls to help Haiti by texting “Haiti” to 90999 last month, and the $41 million raised by the effort, may have opened your organization’s eyes to the possibilities of mobile messaging, but what are reasonable expectations for more run-of-the-mill mobile campaigns? To answer this question, M+R and MobileActive.org have released 2010 Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmarks. Here are the highlights of that report.

Twitter recently announced the introduction of Local Trends, giving people the ability to search by location-based trending topics. The race for location based information is on, but what does this mean for non profits? Can we capitalize on what may become the 2010 buzz topic?

As Haiti erupts in chaos, digital tools are vital for sharing information, guiding relief efforts, and offering avenues to help. I have been, and will continue to be in touch with relief workers and journalists on the ground and en route to Haiti. I’ll keep updates going here with a focus on digital media links that provide updates. A liveblog is included in the post. Please share any useful links in the comments.

“Are all nonprofits the same?” If nonprofits in general conduct similar work, why do some people feel more inclined to donate to one over another? It boils down to the experience that organizations can offer to their community, but what next?

If there is one thing I’m more geeky about than Google Wave, it’s Augmented Reality. With the first few applications being launched this year, Augmented Reality has picked up steam and will continue to become another outlet for both consumer and advertising applications. Is augmented reality something that non profits should get on board with? Is this our chance to finally jump ahead of the technology curve?

2008 was a big year for online communities. Obama’s online team showed everyone that amazing things can happen when you provide your community with the right tools and motivation. Epolitcs.com has outlined some of the best practices in epolitics, many of which have a direct correlation to the work of nonprofits working in the online sector.

Let’s say you agree with the conspiracy theorists and think that scientists have been making up environmental data for years to scare the public into action. We’re going to cast aside the fact that thousands of scientists agree that climate change is a man made issue and work on the premise that it could be a hoax. Even if on the small chance it’s fake, it is still more practical to do something about the environment today.

Let’s say you agree with the conspiracy theorists and think that scientists have been making up data for years just to scare the public. Even if on the small change you’re right, it’s still smarter to do something about climate change today.