best practices

Smashing Magazine posted a really great "best practices" piece about web design for non profits. They then provided 20 examples of great non profit websites, among them, two CivicActions clients, Amnesty International, of which they said:

The Amnesty International site makes great use of color, including a bright yellow header and accents mixed with shades of gray and black. A slideshow on the home page shows current news and research. Links to join, donate, or take other action are featured prominently in the sidebar and a link to media information is included in the header. The home page also includes plenty of current news and resources below the main content up top.

And Witness.org, for whom we built the Video Hub. We are very proud of our work for these two worldchanging clients, and happy that they are being recognized not only for their great work, but for their websites as exemplars for the non profit sector.

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I just received my first copy of the quarterly Stanford Social Innovation Review, flipped through it and read an amazing case study called "Taking Stock of Venture Philanthropy". It was such a great article that I instantly thought that I should get a subscription for all of our clients.

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When I get asked to comment on a campaign communication or web page, I typically go through the same mantra -- who's the audience, what's the intended outcome, what are the key messages, and how will we measure success?

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Aaron just emailed me a link to this blog post about how YouTube kept up with growth from 30 million to 100 million page views per day in 4 months - "sometimes the videos are cached way out on the “edge” of the network (their caches, and other people’s caches)". Kudos for Google for sharing some of their secrets.

I've just finished reading "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky. These tactics seem to be as applicable today as they were in 1971, when he published the work.

Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have

Never go outside the experience of your people

Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy

Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon

A good tactic is one that your people enjoy

A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag

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