Last week NTEN and the NPTech community lost a techie for good.

Glenn was the Information Systems Manager at Third Sector New England. Like many nonprofit technology professionals, he has been described by his friends and colleagues as someone who tapped into super powers to be in multiple places at once, tackling numerous responsibilities single-handedly, all while being committed to serving the community.

Glenn not only fought his own battle with multiple myeloma, he also fought to help others with the disease by raising money for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and participating in their annual Race for Research in Boston.

Our thoughts go out to his loved ones and the community he served.

November is Member Appreciation Month here at NTEN, and we'll be giving away nonprofit technology prizes every work day this month, including books, NTEN gear, webinars, complimentary 2008 NTEN membership, and even a free registration to the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

We're starting things off today by giving away a FREE NTEN Webinar to one of our NTEN members (drum roll please):

Earlier this year we asked YOU, the NTEN Community, who you are, what nptech resources you're interested in, and how we can best serve the nonprofit technology community’s needs. We heard back from 808 of you, and the resulting survey report presents the demographics of the NTEN Community, including budget sizes, staff sizes, and job roles.

Key findings this year are:

> Communications and Marketing represent both the fastest growing constituency in terms of job roles and a significant organizational challenge to this community.

> NTEN Members reflect the general nonprofit technology community, but not the general nonprofit sector.

You can download the entire report here.

Alan Rosenblatt, Internet Advocacy Center

True leadership can sometimes feel like a balancing act that requires the all the skill of a tightrope walker. One of the many lines to walk is weighing the need to act boldly and take advantage of new opportunities with the imperative to be a responsible steward of your organization’s resources. This can be especially hard when making decisions about resource-intensive technology projects.

Many nonprofit leaders are currently trying to find the right balance when it comes to social networking. If you jump into social networking without a clear sense of the benefits (and who has a clear sense at this point?) are you boldly leading your organization into the future? Or needlessly wasting staff time and money that could be put to better uses? If, after dipping a toe into online networking, you pull those resources back, are you wisely cutting your losses? Or throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

With the flare up over the Barack Obama MySpace community takeover by the campaign from a volunteer, many non-profits that are just getting or about to get their feet wet in the online social network pool might be having second thoughts.

In the This I Change series recorded at the NTC, we asked nonprofit techies to tell us what inspires them to do the work they do. Here’s a few of their responses:

Camille Hinojosa, America’s Second Harvest

“It is the faces of the hungry children and the elderly people that we feed on a daily basis that keeps me motivated and inspired.”

Dale McGrew, Golightly

“What inspires me about technology, is that you can really bring to bear energy from around the world. What inspires me is just seeing results.”

Danny Moldovan, Change.org

“Social technology is beginning to be able to harness people’s ideas, energy and passion. I get up in the morning to see if I can help make that happen.”

You can find out what inspires other nonprofit technies by watching video interviews and listening to podcasts in the This I Change series.

Your guide to resources that will help you put technology to work for your cause.

Engage Your Community

> Rob Cottingham at Social Signal tells you how to make friends and influence people online.

> Learn how to engage all those new friends with handy grid and summary of cheap (or free) web-based organizing and collaboration tools by Arthur Prokosch and Deborah Elizabeth Finn. Both can be found at Finn’s blog.

> Looking for fairly cheap and easy to-set-up tools to motivate your new friends to donate? Check out Paul Lamb’s Top 11 Online Ways to Raise Money.

Staff Your IT Department

> Find out what other organizations are paying their IT staff, when they are outsourcing IT functions, and how staff time is allocated to technology. NTEN’s report on Nonprofit IT Staffing:Spending, Salaries, and an Infrastructure for Success Results covers all this and more.

News and buzz from people and organizations in the nonprofit tech sector.

Getting the Lay of the Land – Research on Critical Matters

• What should you invest in online communications when you don’t really know what will work? Convio’s Online Marketing (eCRM) Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ Study gives you some clues.
• M+R Strategic Services offers some insight into what works in online fundraising campaigns and tactics.
• Nonprofit Innovation can use a shot in the arm. Check out PolicyLink’s report Bridging the Innovation Divide: An Agenda for Disseminating Technology Innovations within the Nonprofit Sector. You can also read our blog post about the report. They’ve identified a lack of funding and information sharing as the key culprits.

And speaking of funding…

Get Rewarded For Your Good Work

> The Florence and Frances Family Fund at Tides Foundation has announced the second Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest. If you have developed software that is available at no-cost to nonprofits and advocacy groups, has demonstrated its value to at least one nonprofit organization, and can serve multiple nonprofits apply here for the $10,000 prize. Applications are open until August 1st.

> Cisco’s 2007 Growing with Technology Award is open through June 22nd. The nonprofit category is for organizations that have fewer than 999 employees with a grand prize of $25,000. The first runner up gets $15,000. Cisco’s award “recognizes the creative ways that non-profit organizations are using the Internet and networking technologies to provide a broader geographical reach of services, expand or maintain services, or serve the organization’s employees or clients better.”

Tell us what you like, don't like, and more importantly, what you NEED - and get the chance to win a FREE registration to the 2008 NTC!

It's time for the annual NTEN Community Survey!

As you know, NTEN is the membership organization serving the needs of the nonprofit technology community; our goal is to help you harness the tools that will help you get your job done better and make a bigger impact on your mission. And that means we need YOU to tell us how we can better help this community of nonprofit and technology professionals Connect, Learn, and Advocate:

Your feedback is instrumental in our decisions about what programs and services to offer over the next year, and how to improve our current services.

Help shape the direction of NTEN and the nonprofit technology community by taking the survey today.

We've partnered with the 2007 Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference and now NTEN members can register for this great event at the member rate!   

So you can find answers to questions like:

• What are the most effective and innovative ways to get your message out there?
• How do you integrate web and mail to maximize your fundraising and marketng campagins?
• How do you develop innovative cause marketing campaings?

Here's how:

Nonprofits are using technology some truly inspiring ways, and we think that deserves some recognition. Below are brief descriptions of a few technology projects by NTEN members that are making a big difference. You can find out about other innovative technology projects and meet the people behind them in the Innovation Plaza at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Cutting through tax-code confusion

Tax season is here, and with it the annual confusion of deciphering perplexing rules about tax credits and deductions (and squinting at the tiny type of IRS forms). The Legal Aid Society of Orange County is helping its clients cut through the tax code confusion and ensure they get the refunds they are entitled to with its I-Can! E-file program.