March Resource Review: Technology Tools for Good

In January Faith in Women was one of thirty-six organizations invited to participate in the first-ever U.S. Tech2Empower gathering hosted by Wake International.

 This week-long training brought advocates from fifteen states together in San Francisco to learn from technology experts based at Slack, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Symantec, Mozilla, and Youtube about how we can use technology to strengthen our movements for long-term, sustainable social change.

We so grateful for the knowledge sharing communities that Wake International is creating in the U.S. and around the world, and in that spirit, we want to share some of the top tools, practices, and resources that we learned during our time at Tech2Empower.

“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can!”

–Beth Kanter, Master Trainer, Speaker, Author and Nonprofit Thought Leader

There are so many wonderful digital tools that we may be tempted to sign up for accounts on all of them. This can lead to overwhelm, not to mention low rates of online engagement. Beth Kanter recommends that we honestly assess our communications capacity in this current moment, not what we would like it to be in an ideal world. Start by creating a digital strategy that clearly identifies the target audience and objectives of your online presence.  

Design a template for your organization’s communications in Google Docs.

If you are creating similar documents over and over again, one easy way to maintain the same look and feel across your organization is to create and use templates. You can even customize them with your organization’s signature color scheme. These are easy to make, edit, and share with colleagues in Google Docs. For a tutorial, take a look at this easy-to-follow guide.

Create a free company page on LinkedIn to engage supporters and advertise job openings.

More than 5 million nonprofit organizations have a presence on LinkedIn. It’s a great and free tool for boosting your nonprofit’s content and sharing your updates with supporters and colleagues. To find out what LinkedIn can offer your organization, visit their Nonprofit Resource homepage.

If reply-all emails and group text messages are getting to be too much, try out Slack.

Slack is a group messaging app that keeps you organized. You can invite members to your team, create channels for different topics, and share documents, calendar invitations, and more through the interface. Faith in Women staff use this tool and love it! And, Slack has special discount pricing for nonprofits. Check it out.

How Faith in Women Can Help

If you want to learn more about our experience attending Tech2Empower or want to learn more about our favorite technology practices, please send us an email. We’d be happy to talk with you.