Let's Link Up!

Social networking is all the rage online these days. Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and MySpace are some of the more popular among the literally hundreds of sites designed for this purpose. A Google search for "social networking nonprofits" returns over 22 million hits.

There are links to articles and blogs that will help you understand how social networking can benefit your organization. There are links to newspaper articles talking about how nonprofits are using social networks to raise money. Heck, you can even find people writing or blogging about how the death knell has already sounded for nonprofits and social networks.

I started small and am working my way up a bit. About a year ago, I created an account on LinkedIn, which was recommended to me. Over the course of a few months, I built up a profile and added a great deal of work experience and some personal information. Eventually I got into the habit of actively looking for clients to connect to, and reviewing my contacts' contacts to see if there are other people I should be connecting to. I now belong to a number of LinkedIn groups, all related to nonprofits. I receive regular emails listing discussion points and questions that group members have posted, and when I feel I have something to contribute, I post responses.

When people come to me to talk about changing jobs, I encourage them to use LinkedIn or something like it to begin building a network that can help lead them to jobs that might be a good fit for them. LinkedIn has its own job source and also connects its members to another, larger job source for additional opportunities.

When I joined LinkedIn I thought I had done what I needed to do in the social networking arena. But then I started getting requests to join people's networks on Plaxo, which sends me reminders when my contacts are having a birthday, leaving me no excuse to forget to call or send a card. A young woman that I used to babysit for now has a baby of her own and the only way to see his picture is to view her Facebook page, so I have just spent the last hour setting up my Facebook page. I'm completely sick of me, having just typed up all my interests, activities, favorite things, etc. But eight people have already added me as a friend, so I felt somewhat validated until I noticed that my friend David has 571 friends. He must have a huge postage bill when it comes time to send holiday cards.

I get the sense that it could easily become a full-time job to maintain a presence on a variety of networks. I'm also considering creating a webinar about social networks to help those unfamiliar with them get started. I'd like your help.

Please click on the word Comments below this post and let me know which online networks you belong to or are considering. If you have thoughts about the viability of a social networking webinar, I would welcome your thoughts about that as well.

In the meantime, if you're on LinkedIn or Facebook or Plaxo -- let's link up!

Drop.io

Not long ago, I asked a friend and colleague to help me convert some data from one format to another. It was a weekend, I was up against a deadline and it really wasn't possible for me to bring her the data and then go pick it up when she was done with it.

Because I don't often have the need for this type of assistance, I don't have FTP capabilities set up on our web site. The files were too large to send via email, even when they were compressed. I was settling in to an impressive feeling of despair when my friend suggested that I upload the files to drop.io.

Drop.io is a website that allows visitors to privately and securely share files by web, email, and other methods. Information "dropped" at the site is protected from search engines, and you can password protect your "drops", so the information is secure and accessible to those who need it and are given access to get it.

Within 5 minutes, I had created a space for my incoming and outgoing drops and within 20 minutes my friend had my data files on her computer. She returned the converted data files to the same secure private location, where I was able to quickly download them back to my own computer.

Best of all, the service is free!

I was thrilled to find drop.io and I plan on making it available to clients when we need to transfer data back and forth.

There are many services like this on the web, including archive.org, which I wrote about in my last post. If you know of web sites that can be helpful to your colleagues in the nonprofit community, please let us know. Click on the word "comments" below this post and tell us about the site(s) you've found to be of value.