These services provide organizations a great way to connect with supporters and provide new channels for fund raising, but how can you best integrate these tools into your Web site for the maximum impact?  What are the best practices in tying your social networking strategy with your Web site communications strategy?

We’ll answer these question and more at the next Soapbox Salon!

PICnet’s Soapbox Salon
Social Networking 101: Successful Strategies Connecting Soapbox with Twitter and Facebook

When: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm ET
Where: PICnet’s DC Office – 1605 Connecticut Ave. 3rd Floor, Washington, DC (across the street from the Dupont Circle Metro station’s north exit)
What:  You bring your questions, ideas, and lunch, and we’ll bring answers and refreshments.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, March 17 by clicking the link below and registering for the event.

Questions?  Contact Julie Dennis at julie@picnet.net or by calling (202) 585-0273.

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Registration — http://bit.ly/acgTlR
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Many nonprofits and libraries are using Facebook to interact with their constituencies and reach out to new audiences – but what’s the best way to get your organization started on this hugely popular social networking site?

In this webinar, Kami Griffiths will interview social media consultant John Haydon, who will walk through the essential steps to establishing and managing a successful Facebook presence for a nonprofit or library.

We will also hear from Gabe O’Neill of Kids Are Heroes, who will share lessons learned from developing their own Facebook page.  Get practical how-to information, learn best practices, ask questions, and leave with action items that will help you create an engaging Facebook presence for your organization.

This webinar is for people who are beginning to explore Facebook and have questions on how to get started.

Sign up now.

Emily Shaftel was my point-of-contact at CSPC and she was an amazing coordinator for their side.  I always received a quick turnaround, clear and detailed questions and she was very technically savvy with an eye for pushing the website to its limits.  She actually departed CSPC on the day of the launch to go and volunteer for a year in Thailand! Emily definitely made an impact before her departure.

An important feature to CSPC’s website is their blog. Originally the contract didn’t have enough design time to template the Wordpress Blog with the new design by, however, when I impressed up on the importance of maintaining the history of the blog, CSPC decided it was worth a contract addendum. Otherwise, the client would have had to manually transfer all of the content on the blog to Joomla!  I think this was an excellent decision on their part.

CSPC is also one of the first clients to employ our new Soapbox Slide Show (rotating feature on homepage) — Emily set this up herself!

About CSPC
The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress is a unique nonpartisan, nonprofit policy and education organization that applies strategic thinking and the leadership lessons of history to critical national challenges and opportunities.

Founded in 1965, the Center is the only organization that systematically examines past successes and failures of the Presidency and relates its findings to present challenges and opportunities. Today, both the Executive and Legislative Branches are highly compartmentalized, which is the enemy of strategic thinking, action, and the best use of resources. In addition, the nation is polarized, even though public opinion polls show a desire to break down barriers and face our nation’s real public policy issues. Lessons learned from past American experiences offer insights on how to deal with these challenges.

Along with full-time staff and interns, the Center utilizes an esteemed Board of Trustees, a National Council of Advisors drawn from a wide variety of professions and political ideologies, and a range of other Advisors and Fellows to contribute to the Center’s many programs and initiatives. In addition to these contributors, the Center functions as a highly successful convener of the best minds in government, trade, and academia to serve on its policy working groups and education programs.

This project reinforced some valuable lessons for me:

1) Sometimes it’s the little things
One little thing we did on this site that made a big difference was using custom action buttons throughout for Buy Now, Donate Now and Join Now. What an easy small thing it is to replace the standard PayPal buttons to make a more compelling and custom-looking shop.

2) “By your powers combined” (thanks to Captain Planet for this valuable wisdom)
The TSA’s site combines the super-powers of some pretty cool third party tools that complement and extend Soapbox. These include PayPal for donations and the shop, Wufoo for membership applications and tracking, Constant Contact for e-newsletters, Embedr for the video gallery, and social media/sharing tools.

3) The power is yours! (thanks again Captain Planet!)
As a previous non-profit staffer who fell into the accidental techie role, I get really excited when I see clients exploring all Soapbox can do. TSA’s accidental techie discovered how to make rollover effects for images easily with the Image Manager. She smartly used this to show the front and back of T-shirts in their shop (hover over the image here to see). And just a couple days after launch, our client showed us this great new menu item that she setup on her own.

4) It’s all about results
Shortly after the launch, our client reported an increase in membership and product sales. That is the best news of all!

We wish the TSA all the best in their work. To learn more about them, check out their new site at http://www.turtlesurvival.org.

Port Jobs chose us after a competitive bid process in which they considered several firms.  Our functionality and a previous relationship with the business favored us in the selection process. But the database revamping is only Phase I – we will now be working on redeveloping Port Jobs in Soapbox, under the same template.

Although this is a rare example, the project was fairly smooth in part because I already understood how their old database was set up – because I had created it when I was an employee with Port Jobs. This made it a lot easier to understand the goal of the database integration, and the limitations and opportunities moving from the current ASP driven site to Soapbox.  In the end, this prior knowledge proved fruitful in a great solution for the client.

As we look toward Phase II, it’s important to note that a new design isn’t always necessary, or desired. We occasionally have situations where a new client wishes to reuse their existing design, but within the Soapbox platform.  A vendor should work with their client’s needs and goals, and sometimes maintaining a current design can be a cost-effective way for a client to gain the power and ease of use of Soapbox without the extra steps of a redesign.

About Port Jobs: Port Jobs is not-for-profit action tank that develops practical programs and supports public policies that increase access to living wage jobs, fostering a more vibrant and equitable economy for residents of and businesses in Seattle and King County. They make good jobs easier to get and good employees easier to find, primarily in the port-related economy.

About Airport Jobs: Airport Jobs is a program of Port Jobs and the primary recruiting tool for many airport and airport-related employers as well as the principal resource for people seeking employment there.

Winners will be recognized at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC 2011) in Atlanta in April, and on YouTube, and each winning organization will receive a $2,500 grant from the Case Foundation and a custom Flip camera. To enter, organizations must be a member of YouTube Nonprofit Program.

The deadline is March 19. We know some of you out there have a video that should be submitted. Apply today!

What do those numbers and dots mean to you? Two things: powerful page titles and slick slideshows. Both available now.  And both part of the Soapbox service you’re already paying for.

Let’s dive into the details, shall we? Read the juicy details at our Help Desk. If you have any questions related to your version of Soapbox or on these particular features, give us a shout!

If you’re from a school, church, or synagogue in the greater DC area, post any help you need this weekend for snow clean up, and we’ll crowdsource the community to help you in your efforts!

All you need to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Go to www.snowmageddoncleanup.com/reports/submit
2. Post your request for help using a title in this format:  “School:  Washington Elementary School” or “Church:  Episcopal Church of Washington”
3. Make sure to specify clearly what your needs are in the body of your report (example: “We’ve got snow covering all our walkways, we need snowblowers and shovels”) and include your location in your report and using the map function.  Also, clearly state when you need people to arrive for help this weekend (example: “we’re looking for 10 people from the neighborhood to come help at 10am on Saturday”).
4. After your report is approved by our team, you can use the link to your report to spread the word.  We’ll do the same on Twitter (using the #72scu hashtag) and on our Facebook Fan page.
5. Keep checking the comments in your report, and encourage others to post their attendance in the comments of your report.

We’ll take these reports and highlight them on Twitter, Facebook, and the Web site!  Let’s clean up our schools, churches, and synagogues one snow shovel at a time!

Here’s a few of our favorite hits thus far.

• Washington Post partners with us on their special Snowmageddon Cleanup Web site.
• NPR affiliate (WAMU 88.5 FM) in Washington DC, Kojo Nnamdi Show: I was pleased to have House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as my lead into Kojo’s interview with me (skip to 10:40).
• Wired Magazine:  Snowmageddon Site Crowdsources Blizzard Cleanup
• NOS Journaal op 3, the Dutch national television news broadcaster: Video interview at about 7:00 in this clip.
• FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate on Twitter

Check out our site embedded on the Washington Post!

Wow.  Thursday was a whirlwind.  We worked closely with the Washington Post’s digital media team to make editorial and graphical changes to the site in order to prep for the wave of traffic from their online circulation.  Additionally, the great logo that Christopher Doorley made for the site needed to have a little update: announcing the partnership between the Washington Post and PICnet.  Thanks to Ross Nover for his stellar design skills to help update the site’s header and additional illustrations.

It’s been wonderful working alongside the Washington Post team to help spread the word far and wide.  We’re excited to see the continued efforts of the Greater DC community to help each other out of this snow mess.