A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.

1. Clay Shirky thinks the Iranian election protests are "the big one" for social media.
2. Notice how we used quotation marks to, you know, quote somebody? That's what they're for. Everything else ends up on the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
3. Someday soon, you'll be able to type ON your hand, not just with it. And figure out if a brand of toilet paper matches your green ideals -- by pointing at it. The folks at MIT are up to some crazy stuff.
4. What the heck is this thing? It looks like a giant face with feet. Sure is cute, though.
5. Ever wonder what the Cloud everybody keeps talking about actually looks like? Turns out it's really heavy -- and consumes more electricity than Sweden.
6. Michelle Murrain's up to something interesting: she defriended all of her nptech acquaintences on Facebook. She doesn't mention whether she installed Whopper Sacrifice first.
7. The underground comedy movement on Amazon.com. Check this out. No, not the shirt (though it is quite splendid): the reviews of the shirt. They're hilarious. Then, go to the "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" section to follow the writers to other products. One guy wrote a complete parody of Poe's "The Raven" to review a gallon of milk!
8. Speaking of putting your excess free time to "good" use [Ed. note: Don't provoke me...], here's the Google Analytics interface laid out in wireframe on a single page, with links to descriptions of each report.
9. Network for Good just came out with a new guide, "7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising and Communications". And Wired has the "Top 10 Ways to Provoke a Geek Argument". Bonus points to the first person to combine those memes. (Bonus points may be redeemed for one of our free webinars.)
10. Two animal-themed links in one month? You lucky readers! There was just no way we could not link to video of apes laughing. If you don't feel good after watching that, you may be a curmudgeon.

Marc Ruben, M+R Strategic Services

In a packed room at the 2009 NTC in San Francisco, LeVar Burton loomed large. Well, not LeVar in the flesh, but rather his metaphorical presence, in the form of the famous adage from his "Reading Rainbow" TV series: "Don't take my word for it."

All those tried-and-true strategies you read about in case studies, blogs, and, yes, this venerable online publication? They may not work for your organization.

You've gotta test things for yourself.

Susan Gordon, Causes

Facebook provides an unprecedented opportunity for nonprofits: 200 million monthly active users, about half of whom are signing in and communicating with their friends on a daily basis, is an organizer's dream.

But can nonprofits fundraise effectively using Causes?

Our top fundraising cause is the Nature Conservancy who has raised $262,984 to date, and we've seen another 15 nonprofits raise over $50,000 so far. Across the platform, users have donated over $9 million in 24 months and our daily donation total is up 10x over the past 12 months.

We're not promising a magic bullet for fundraising. But we have developed some excellent tools that, when combined with your knowledge of fundraising and messaging, can bring in donations from new donors who you have never before reached.

John Kenyon, Jennie Anderson, AIDS.gov, and William Neuheisel, DC Central Kitchen

Imagine producing online communications you're proud to share with the world and that garner praise from funders, donors, and other stakeholders.

Well, I am here to tell you that in general they are actually, um... pitiful. Dreadful. While there are exceptions, most have a lot of room for improvement.

And while social media and Web 2.0 are great, but if you don't have an effective website and email communications, you are largely wasting your effort trying to engage new audiences online.

Rem Hoffmann, Exponent Partners, and Rob Jordan, Idealist Consulting

Everyone has come across the term "cloud computing", but what exactly does it mean? What relevance does it have to a nonprofit organization like yours?

The short answer: Cloud computing levels the technology playing field for nonprofits. It no longer matters whether you have a sizeable budget or a shoestring budget: With cloud computing, sophisticated technology solutions are more accessible because all you need is access to the Internet.

Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog

ROI -- or Return on Investment -- is a pre- and/or post-evaluation process and analysis of three factors: benefits, costs, and value of a specific technology purchase over time. ROI can help your organization avoid a technology purchase that is a huge mistake -- or avoid not investing in a technology that could return many dividends.

But if you approach ROI as a just a financial analysis, you're missing the point.

Peter Campbell, Earthjustice and Matthew Eshleman, Community IT Innovators

This year's Nonprofit Technology Conference offered a good chance to discuss one the most important -- but geeky -- developments in the world of computers and networks: server virtualization.

In a nutshell, virtualization technology allows many computers to run concurrently on one server, each believing it's the sole occupant. This allows for energy and cost savings, greater efficiency, and some astounding improvements in the manageability of your networks and backups.

Most of the discussion related to virtualization has been centered on large data centers and enterprise implementations, but a small network can also take advantage of the benefits that virtualization has to offer.

Holly Ross, NTEN

That's right, I said it.

What I really mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. Over the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" -- a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire.

But, have you ever implemented an open source solution? We have here at NTEN. We use all kinds of open source tools, including our content management system, Drupal. Sure, it's highly customizable -- by a highly trained staffer, or a highly paid consultant. The code was free, but we paid consultants tens of thousands of dollars to get our implementation up and running.

To me, open source code isn't necessarily any better than proprietary code. The costs, in time and money, are just placed elsewhere. The old arguments for open source software adoption are dead to me.

But please: promise to read the rest of this before you start sending me hate mail.

Michelle Murrain, NOSI

For years and years -- basically, as long as software has been purchased by nonprofit organizations -- the basic model has been: a nonprofit organization pays a fee (sometimes rather large) to a software maker for a copy of software to install on your desktop or server to do a particular task, whether it be tracking donations and constituents, tracking clients, running campaigns, or the like.

What this meant was that each individual organization spent thousands -- or tens, or hundreds of thousands -- of dollars a year to implement software for their organization. The economics of that form of IT investment are hard to manage in a climate where the survival of nonprofits is increasingly endangered, and many are closing or merging.

But other models exist -- namely implementing, investing, and collaborating in open source software.

Eric Leland, Five Paths, Laura Quinn, Idealware, Chris Bernard, italics media

Donors are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. You need them to survive. But how do you manage all the information about their giving along with all the personal details that are key to maintaining successful relationships, all for a price that won’t break your bank?

A donor management system is sometimes called a fundraising system or a donor database. At its most basic level, it’s a system that manages information about donors and gifts so you can understand how much you’ve raised, keep track of all the useful information you know about your donors, manage mailings, emails and campaigns, and print reports on all this information.

There are a huge number of systems available, ranging from the basic to those that offer all sorts of additional features and functionality. Costs vary as well -- and there are even some Free and Open Source options. In our free report, "A Consumers Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems", we take a look specifically at 33 lower cost systems, but here, let's take a quick look at four of the FOSS options.