admin's blog

Your nonprofit’s email newsletter is one of the most important and direct methods of communication you have with your supporters. But how much time do you spend thinking about how to create a really great newsletter experience for your readers?

A trauma hospital in war-torn Syria seems an unlikely spot to be posting about your day on Facebook. Yet that’s exactly what Canadian doctor Anne Marie Pegg did for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on International Women’s Day with the help of staff in its Canadian office. 

When I was just about to start my PhD program in Management at the University of Guelph, I had heard horror stories from friends and colleagues about the number of academic articles that I would need to print, read and annotate. I though that maybe I could do my entire PhD without printing out a single academic article, maybe I could do it all electronically without negatively impacting my productivity.

Over the last year, I have been exploring a wide range of technological means by which arts associations can hold business meetings and deliver professional development at a good cost-to-benefits ratio. Beyond conducting some research and experimenting with online collaboration and communication technologies, I devoted significant time to sharing what I had learnt with others. This sums up my learning.

We’ve updated the look and feel of our site as well as some key features in order to make the donations process as simple as possible. If you’re new to TechSoup Canada and would like to request a donation, visit our info page which outlines our 3-step process to help you get you started.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could test the subject line of your email campaigns for effectiveness before sending them out to your donors? Would you like to know if there is demand for a potential program prior to investing your organization’s time and money? If you have a Google Grant, this post will show you how you can move beyond basic advertising and use your AdWords account to test and analyze online content and demand for your organizations’ services.

  If you’re counting on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest to grow your nonprofit’s membership, you’re not alone. In a 2011 survey of top 200 charities, as identified by Forbes, 97% report having a Facebook presence, 96% a Twitter account and 92% are using YouTube. But are Facebook and Twitter the answer for growing your cause?

I don’t think so.

At TechSoup Canada, we believe that nonprofit organizations in Canada (registered charities or not) are changing the world every day. Making access to donated software available to the nonprofit sector as a whole has been a goal of ours since our launch in 2009.

Now, let's look at some technologically oriented non-profits and charities that are using open source software as a major part or for all of their daily operations. Admittedly these cases are not typical in the non-profit world, but they do show off what can be done with open source software.