This week we have two great webinars scheduled that will help you better utilize technology in your nonprofit. Do you write or send out your organization's e-newsletter? Are you involved in writing technology budgets or selecting software? Then you can't miss these webinars.

>> Choosing an e-Newsletter Tool
Wednesday, November 1, 11:00 am PST

This training will walk you through how to setup, send, and track e-newsletters. It will also discuss several reliable AND affordable tools that can help you better manage your mass emailing. Laura Quinn from Idealware will present the

David Lawson, Kintera

"Open APIs are a natural evolution in the nonprofit and software vendor communities. It is critical, however, that security standards be developed within the vendor community to accompany this evolution. Donors trust nonprofits with sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and income levels. Donors and supporters must be assured that sensitive information remains securely held by the nonprofit and that open APIs will not enable data to be available to external parties with less secure

We heard from software vendors in the Open API debate, but we also wanted to hear what you had to say. We asked people who listened in on the debate and who work at nonprofits to sound off on what our panelists said and what APIs mean for them.

Aaron Bauman, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center

"This debate boils down to one thing: whether a vendor is more interested in making money or serving its customers. As

The panelists in our Open API Debate (five for-profit vendors, one nonprofit vendor, one open source vendor, and one nonprofit) talked about everything from the current state of APIs to why nonprofits should care to what the future holds for APIs. You can listen to the entire debate in this podcast and read some of our favorite quotes below.

On the Current State of APIs

"The market is bringing [Open APIs] to the surface... At the same time, though, I think the elephant in the room is how impactful these APIs are to the business

I was just at Independent Sector, running a session on the "Trials and Triumphs of Nonprofit Technology." Without a doubt one of the biggest problems nonprofits face is costly and inefficient data silos. A recent dotOrganize survey found that on average respondents maintained more than four different databases or repositories of data. Too often these systems don't connect or talk to each other at all, resulting in nonprofit staff like you spending time re-entering data or not

Can I have all Nancy Pelosi's in mine?

http://fantasycongress.us

And congratulate NTEN community members CompuMentor/NetSquared and Beth Kanter! These two were just nominted for vloggies. So, now it's time for you to vote, NTEN community, and support the work of these great members!

For more information about vlogging, check out Beth Kanter's great list of links!

The Global Interdependence Initiative at the Aspen Institute has just released a new set of guides for the advocacy community. Called "Continuous Progress: Better Advocacy Through Evaluation," these online guides have been written for organizations and grantmakers. I like them because they focus on the basics - good goal setting, progress monitoring, and campaign wrap up. It includes some nifty worksheets and other tools. Best, some

We've heard from the vendors, now we want to hear from you! If you have strong opinions on open APIs or want to respond to something you heard in Friday's debate, write it up and send it to us. We're collecting rants on open APIs from people involved in nonprofits and technology. We'll post select rants in our upcoming newsletter and here on our blog.

Simply sum up your thoughts in 150 words to less and send it to us by 5 pm today - and don't forget to send a photograph of yourself that we can post with your rant. Or write about open APIs on your blog and send us the link, and we'll feature that.

If you

Last Friday we hosted a debate on Open APIs among some of the main vendors providing CRM services to nonprofits. Our participants included:

Mark Bolgiano from the Council on Foundations (moderator)

For profit vendors:

Tom Krackeler, GetActive;
Steve Wright, Salesforce;
David Lawson, Kintera;
Dave Crooke, Convio; and
Shaun Sullivan, Blackbaud

Nonprofit vendor - Nick Ballenger, Democracy in Action

Open