Past Events

Join us for a collaborative training designed to help nonprofits coordinate their online communications and make sense of using different online tools like Facebook, Twitter, and emails.

The training will be conversational and feature opportunities to get your questions answered about online communications. It is ideal for anyone trying to juggle all the different online tools for their organization and those interested in new tools.

The agenda will be driven by the participants but will likely include sessions on "Intro to Twitter and Facebook for Organizing" and "Building a Publishing Matrix to Coordinate Your Online Channels."

Come with your stories, doubts, and questions! The training is small and suitable for all skill levels so reserve your spot today because space is limited.

When?
Thursday, June 30, 2011
12:30 - 4:30 pm

Where?
Nonprofit Innovation Center
1331 Garden Highway
Sacramento, CA 95833
(Click for Map)

The Central Valley eAdvocacy Program is generously funded by the California Consumer Protection Foundation. Big thanks to CMC in Sacramento for their great support and the Nonprofit Innovation Center for providing the event space.

Thanks to everyone who attended the May 17 Modesto training, Starting Your Nonprofit on Social Media, as part of the Central Valley eAdvocacy Program.

We hope you found the training useful and now have a better understanding of using different online tools for your organization.

The following are the materials used during the training.

These materials are distributed under a Creative Commons license, and we encourage re-use, modification, and re-distribution in any situation where they may be useful.

• Training Introduction
• Spectrums of Engagement
• Build A Publishing Matrix
• Publishing Matrix Template
• Introduction to Facebook
• Introduction to Twitter

We will continue to create discussions and feature opportunities to get your questions answered about online communications. Any feedback is much appreciated!

The Central Valley eAdvocacy Program is generously funded by the California Consumer Protection Foundation. Big thanks to Congregations Building Community for their great support and El Concilio for providing the event space.

Learn about Free and Open Source for nonprofits!

Penguin Day returned to Washington DC right after the 2011 NTC. We got to collaborate with lots of friends, old and new alike at the Josephine Butler Parks Center.

Penguin Days are designed to let nonprofits and social justice activists learn about free and open source software that can support their work and potentially save them money, including tools for web publishing, fundraising, blogging, and campaigning.

Sessions included...

• Introduction to Free and Open Source Software
• Making sense of Free and Open Source Content Management Systems
• Participating in Free and Open Source Communities
• Introduction to Blogging with Wordpress
• Introduction to Free and Open Source Desktop Applications
• Free Culture, Creative Commons And Open Content
• Managing Constituents with CiviCRM
• Mozilla Drumbeat and the Open Web

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p>Penguin Day DC 2011 was organized by Aspiration and PICnet.

It was a great day and we hope to see lots of you at the next one!

We're excited to be partnering with Department of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco for SF-IM Summit 2011, aka “New Tools for the Public Good” On Saturday, March 5, 2011, from 9:00 AM – 3:30 PM.

The Aspiration team will facilitate sessions that include “Facebook and Twitter 101”, "Intro to blogging", "Beginning and Intermediate WordPress”, “Listening Online with a Social Media Dashboard”, “Managing Online Channels with a Publishing Matrix”, and “How to Build a Good Nonprofit Web Site for Almost Nothing.”

The theme of SF-IM is using social media and other emerging technologies for the public good. Sessions will feature opportunities for discussion and hands-on learning. Importantly, the focus of SF-IM is on peer-to-peer learning and conversation, not tech-talk and PowerPoints. SF-IM’s programming is ideal for anyone interested the public possibilities of the emerging media technologies, and is suitable for a wide range of abilities, from beginner to advanced.

Big thanks and love bombs to TechSoup Global for inviting us to design and run their 2011 Contributors' Summit earlier this month. The event brought together an amazing bunch of folks from over 40 countries, for collaborative discussions on topics ranging from disaster response and accessibility to cloud computing and the future of philanthropy.

Check out the Day 1 and Day 2 blog posts from the amazing Beth Kanter.

February 2nd, 2011 2pm-4pm

Many nonprofits have no idea how their online messages are propagating and what is being said about them online. This hands-on, learner-driven event allowed participants to set up their own "listening dashboard" where they can track the impact of their online communication efforts (websites, blogs, Twitter, and more), while also tracking issues pertinent to their organization, all from a single free online space. Participants used the free Netvibes tool to create their dashboards.

The following are the materials used during the training.

These materials are distributed under a Creative Commons license, and we encourage re-use, modification, and re-distribution in any situation where they may be useful.

• Training Slides
• Listening Matrix

January 14th, 2011 2pm-4pm

As options for online engagement proliferate, many nonprofits find it confusing to manage and effectively coordinate organizational messages and campaigns. This training gave nonprofits who are starting out in social media and online communications a framework in which to look at different communications channels as effective for organizational goals. In this hands-on workshop, participants put together actual tools that they can use as an organization to inform and structure processes surrounding how, when and why to use the mind-numbing plethora of social media outlets, blogs and communications channels.

This training also gave participants a structure in which to think of these channels so that it is no longer a huge array of strangely-named tools to learn. Rather, a selection of tools for an organization to choose from to achieve broader organizational goals.

The following are the materials used during the training.

These materials are distributed under a Creative Commons license, and we encourage re-use, modification, and re-distribution in any situation where they may be useful

• Training Overview
• Spectrums of Engagement
• Publishing Matrix Walkthrough

The 2010 Nonprofit Software Development Summit in Oakland, California was a smashing, sold-out success!

Check out:

• Full Event Agenda and Schedule
• The latest Session Slate by Thematic Area.
• We heartily thank all our Agenda Partners!

A big love bomb of thanks to all who joined us for this high-spirited, fully-interactive festival of folks who are passionate about developing software tools to support the work of social change organizations and community activists.

You can also check out the proceedings from the 2009, 2008, and 2007 Nonprofit Software Development Summits.

Fresh off the fun of the Peer 2 Peer University Open Assessment Workshop, we were delighted to partner with P2PU again to design and run their annual global community workshop.

Taking place before the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival and Open Ed 2010 conference, the workshop provided a venue for the P2PU community leadership to take stock of growth and successes of the past year, while also addressing issues of governance, community, sustainability and of course learning.

The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU provides the social environment necessary for meaningful learning and mechanisms for validation of achieved learning. P2PU is teaching and learning by peers for peers and it is run and governed by volunteers. We are grateful to work with them as they rethink education in the online context.

In the latest chapter of our ongoing collaboration with the United States Institute of Peace, we traveled to DC to run the first-ever Open Simulation Platform Conference.

The Open Simulation Platform is a new and state-of-the-art open source learning platform for teaching conflict resolution. Based on an interactive role-playing paradigm, the platform lets instructors author multi-user role-playing simulations and then run them in synchronous or asynchronous learning environments. This disruptive technology will provide an open alternative to expensive and proprietary simulation tools which have historically been the norm in the field.

The event was structured as a simulation authoring sprint, with a dozen sims created over the course of 3 fun and collaborative days of work.

We had a blast collaborating with USIP, Partners for Democratic Change and Positive Relating to pull the event together. And we look forward to OSPCon II in 2011!