Why You Should Be in the Google Nonprofit Program

This post first appeared at www.hoongyee.com

AnnMarie Hill

Team Google

When I grow up, I want to work for Google, wear those cool grey jackets and be a smart and sexy Googlette.

The good news is that even if this is something I may not be able to do, what I can do, and what you can do, is apply to their nonprofit program.

That’s right.  Everything you need to know to become a partner with the most powerful search machine in the world is right here.

Think about it

Once accepted into the program, you get $10,000 worth of marketing dollars a month on Google, or $329 per day. This is a huge opportunity to ride on the coattails of this search monster and to become hugely discoverable.

There are approximately 800 Google grantees which is not a large number considering how many nonprofits there are worldwide. AnnMarie Hill, the charismatic Google Goddess and her team pointed out that this program had not been heavily promoted in the past but now that it will be rolling out (launched just a few days before the conference in San Francisco), they expect a whole lot more people to apply.

Including everyone furiously tapping away on their iPads and laptops out there.

It turns out that Queens Council on the Arts was accepted as a grantee a few years ago.

What did we do?

Shrug our shoulders and say, “Now what?” and not do anything, I am embarrassed to say. Fortunately, one of the Googlettes assured me this happens a lot and not to worry about it. We can still move forward with our adword campaign. Whew!

AnnMarie spoke about how to run a great ad campaign shared some great common sense guidelines:

1. Think like a user
2. Use multiple word keywords
3. Add common misspellings and variations
4. Tailor your theme so it is specific not generic
5. Highlight your ad word theme in ad text, headlines and descriptions
6. Use call to actions in ad text

Sounds pretty intuitive and obvious, doesn’t it? Well, it helps me a lot to hear it and judging by the takeaways of many of the other sessions I attended, we all need to be reminded of this in communicating our story.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Here are some links to get you started:

Www.google.com/nonprofits

Www.google/support/grants

Www.adwords.google.com/support/aw

What I Learned from Thirteen Year Olds

Does this happen to you?

I had a terrible writing day yesterday.

Everything I could squeeze out of my head onto the page was awful. No matter how hard I tried, the sentences were stiff, not interesting and even I had to run out of the room screaming, “Boring!”

And the most upsetting thing of all was the fear. I am terrified that I will not have anything to post on Ghostmistress when Sunday rolls around. For those of you who are new to Ghostmistress, it is a writing blog I have created where thirteen year old readers and writers can find their inner ghost. If you sign up, you become part of the Boo Crew. You can follow my serial ghost story, you can also post original writing of your own for the Boo Crew to comment, critique and review each week.

So, here I am, without an original thought in my head, frantically trying to come up with next week’s story because I don’t want to disappoint my sixty plus Boo Crew members. I absolutely love reading their comments and I am amazed by the writing they are capable of.

This is what I am going to do

Nothing works like putting my butt in a chair and a pen in my hand. Add a little fear and guilt and voila!

I am also going to take a deep breath, calm down and go for a run on the beach. While I am out there, I am going to think about Dashiell Loong Rubinstein, the main character of my story, and talk to him. This is what I do whenever I want to get to know someone – I talk to them.

Remember what Agatha Christie said,

“Conversation reveals all.”

Then I am going to do the same thing with the rest of my characters so that I really know them, how they think, what they listen to, what they love and hate. I am actually getting excited thinking about it. Just as if I was going to hang out with a bunch of my friends!

This way, I can really understand their world and create a story that I am happy to share with the Boo Crew and with you.

Here’s what you should do

Are you interested in what thirteen year olds like to read? If you want to write young adult fiction, you should be.  I suggest the following:

Visit Ghostmistress.

Sign up and be a member of the Boo Crew.

Subscribe for Boo Blasts.

I would love to have you be one of us.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

What Matters Most: First Impressions Or Second Looks?

me and Sky

First Impressions or Second Looks?

What is more important?

The first thing people see, or the last thing they remember?

For my birthday, I received a present in a bag that shouted, “Expensive Present”.   Naturally, I was delighted and threw my arms around my darling, generous husband.  How could he miss once he got me into this frame of mind?

Luckily for him, I loved the present he got me.  And what I will remember about it is that bag.

Smart man.

my Vibram running shoes

You Don’t Want to See What My Feet Look Like in the Morning

They say these are becoming much more popular.  So far, the only ones I see wearing these odd looking shoes are me and Andrea.  At 5:30 am, on a dark beach, they don’t look so strange.  We are probably the only webfooted women out there and I suppose the first impression of us you might get is that we are slightly fanatic about running barefoot on the beach.

The shoes leave weird impressions in the sand.

I wear them first thing in the morning so I can really enjoy my run, get my mind and body going, and give people a reason to give me a second look.

my Chanel shoes

Could You Believe I Only Paid $100 for These?

Sigh!  As soon as I promised myself I would not buy another pair of shoes – ever, I saw this pair of vintage Chanel shoes in a boutique in Nolita and they were screaming at me, I swear, I had no choice, I had to go in and try them on.  Of course, they were my size.  Of course, I have nothing to wear with them so I will have to go out and get something fabulous.  And of course, I will have to find a stunning event to go to so I can wear my new outfit.  As my friend Donna said, when I confessed my entire escapade,

“You made the right choice.”

All this to say that these are shoes you wear for a second look.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Do You Want Instant Public Gratification?

photo by olivia thalatta

Less is less

Less physical stuff.  More outreach.

Let me explain.

Do you get dazzled by new shiny toys?  I am afraid I do.  I love looking at new tablets, phones, apps, accessories and anything that I can plug into my iPad and do even more things I have no time to do.

The real simple lesson here is that tools serve you, not the other way around.  I often find myself trying to figure out a way to use a new app or tool and realize I don’t really need what it does no matter how cool it is.

What intrigues me now

I am convinced that mobile is the new black.  We move, think and create at the speed of thought.  Why shouldn’t we be able to access this great wealth of information at the speed of I-want-it-now?

Enter mobile.

Treesaver is a new open source web platform for publishing that uses the new HTML5 standard to create narrative experiences—with text, pictures and video. Treesaver divides content into pages, automatically adjusting to the size of any screen. With Treesaver you can create content once and publish it everywhere.

It works on any device that has a web browser. The same design and the same code works on PCs, Macs and Linux desktop computers  or Apple, Android, and Blackberry smart phones and tablets like iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab. While many organizations are running to develop iPhone and Android apps, with a Treesaver dynamic publication, you skip the hassle and cost of making separate apps for every target device.

Treesaver is significant for nonprofits because it combines important trends – open source software, web standards and mobile applications.

This is what you should do

If you want to dig in deeper, read  A Better Way to Produce Reports Nonprofit Annual Reports by Michael Hoffman,  See3 Communications

My friend Beth Kanter facilitated a panel about Mobile Integrated Strategy at the Innogive Conference earlier this month.  You can read the notes  here.   Lots of advice to nonprofits about integrating mobile into the nonprofit toolbox.  She says,

“Nonprofits need to think differently about content.  There are  different media forms  that mandate different types of content  — and nonprofits must consider this as part of the online content strategy.   People who reading content on their smartphones or tablets will not be consuming text heavy information – it has to brief text and visual or videos.”

Treesaver offers nonprofits a way to publish content that is native to an iPhone or iPad without having to develop anything different. The content will look great on the computer or on any device. And because it’s open source, there are no license fees, just the work on design and content.

Think about it.

Whether you are a nonprofit or an individual with something to say to the world, don’t you want your message to be everywhere it needs to be?

And look great?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Book Review: Switch

Dan Heath

Captured this little sketch of Dan Heath, the co-author of  Switch at the Friday plenary session of the NTen Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, DC.

The book is about organizational change and told through headbangingly funny aha! stories that make you laugh as they drive home the point about the phenomenon of change.

Speaking of change, I am proud to say that I have made the switch from drawing on paper to drawing on my iPad with a stylus.  Not easy, or comfortable mind you, but I truly enjoy exploring the potential of this kind of artmaking as well as the tools at my fingertips.  I use the Sketchbook Pro app and it works quite well as long as I remember not to lean on the screen with my drawing hand.

Dan says change is sparked by feeling, not information.   Our first instinct is to give people information.   People will change if they feel something.  We think it happens like this:

Analyze, Think, Change

It rarely happens that way.  It is more likely to look like this:

See, Feel, Change

In my example, I saw an exciting tool – the iPad.  Creating sketches, emailing them, inserting them into my blogs made me feel like a visual diva.  That was it.  I wanted to change, and I did.

My friend Beth Kanter has a great post which she live blogged from the session.  Same sketch on her piece.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?