Flickr Photo: Duane StoreyJames Carville helped keep the Clinton campaign on message in 1992 by hanging a sign on Bill Clinton's door that read, in part, "The economy, stupid." That now-famous catchphrase is widely credited with giving the Clinton campaign its win. Although we don't know if it was ever taped up on any doors, I think the winning strategy for the Obama campaign was "Transparency, stupid!"

In this election, Obama rode a tidal wave of youth vote to the presidency, with 66% of voters under 30 casting their ballot for the Democrat. What the campaign realized, early and often, is that the under-thirty crowd communicates differently from the rest of us. As Allison Fine writes in Momentum, this group is "... likely to engage in two-way conversation with staff, volunteers, and clients, rather than in one-way broadcasts, the style of communication most often used by organizations now."

This meant two things for the campaign.

Believe it or not, we're less than 24 hours away from finding out who the next administration will be. Finally.

While the campaigns are busy getting their last arguments in, on the ground, we're preparing for an anticipated record turnout. Record turnout sounds like a good thing for democracy, but it could come with record problems.

Justice Brandeis said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Now, you can shine your rays on the voting process, highlighting any issues you encounter at the polls: Allison Fine and Nancy Scola have developed TwitterVoteReport, a site that collects "tweets" from Twitter users with news from their polling places.

nonprofit voterWe don't have to tell you how important it is to vote this Fall, but we keep hearing about great resources for nonprofits working to get out the vote in their communities. We want to make sure you have them at your fingertips.

Flickr Photo by r0b0r0bThe last presidential election saw the highest percentage of voter turnout since 1968. We at NTEN like to think that with the increasing use of social and mobile media to support campaigns and causes, this year will see even more civic participation. Find out what nonprofit organizations can, can't -- and maybe should -- do during the election season at our upcoming webinar, "Nonprofits and the Elections: What Can We Do, How Should We Do It?"

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Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention has a nice bit up on her site about the effectiveness of Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's web strategy. (Say that ten times fast!)

You can read her assessment for yourself, but I think it's important to note that every affirmation has to do with putting the supporter in the driver's seat. I could go on and on about why this matters, but instead I'll paraphrase a women I met at a great social media event I attended on Friday:

Our younger donors have both time and money on their hands because they are waiting to succeed in their careers before starting a family. So they aren't just approaching giving as check-writing. It's about investing time too. And that means that they want to be engaged in seeing their cause succeed.

Your new donor doesn't want to fund change, she wants to create change. Give her the tools to do that.