17 Jun 2008 1 Comment

Firstgiving at ePhilanthropy.org's Nonprofit Social Networking Symposium

Last Saturday, Firstgiving CEO Mark Sutton was a presenter at ePhilanthropy.org’s Nonprofit Social Networking Symposium in New York City.  It was good to get out of the office and into a room full of leading thinkers about ephilanthropy and NPO fundraisers, officers, volunteers and techies, all trying to figure out how to use this web 2.0 thing to build communities and feed their missions.

The day opened with a general session by Mark Rovner of Sea Change Strategies called “What you need to know before you turn the computer on.”  After that, we split into two tracks, so I can only tell you about one of them.

First up, Jay Frost of Fundraisinginfo.com with “Same game, new rules: everything you need to know for online success.”  This slide means, “put your money where your mouth is” in IM-speak.

Sympfrost

After lunch, Nicci Noble from the Salvation Army took the stage with “Peer-to-peer fundraising and community building,” which included some impressive information about how the Salvation Army marshalled their forces to bring in needed donations when natural disasters struck withot cutting into their traditional year-end appeal.

Sympnoble

Firstgiving’s own Mark Sutton was up third with “How individual supporters are using social media to raise funds.”  We’re working on getting the slides online somewhere, but you can always write to us at sales(at)firstgiving.com and we’ll hook you up.

Mark’s preso kicked off with some introductory material about what Web 2.0 means for all internet users and then to what it means for fundraisers and NPOs.  After that, he presented several different cases of how ordinary people are using social media to raise money online for the causes they care about.  A lively Q&A finished off the session.

Sympsutton1

Mark Rovner returned to the stage to wrap up with “Humanizing ePhilanthropy.”  You’ll have to contact ePhilanthropy.org or the other presenters for their presentations, but watch this space for the Firstgiving slides.  We hope to see you at future conferences on the present and future of the intersection of fundraising and technology.

by admin in FirstGiving news Tags: , , , ,