Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

I chose a broad and much discussed topic for my hosting of this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Creating and developing online communities through Web 2.0.

We kick-off with a very useful thought piece, originally guest posted by Beth Kanter on techsoup.org, entitled Determining Your Social Network Needs.

Then it’s over to Katya Andresen and Stacie Mann from Network for Good who offer a handy 11 Steps to success with Social Networking.

Staying with Social Networking, Josh Catone at Read Write Web marks Facebook’s fourth birthday earlier this month with a post considering whether Facebook might become a catalyst for wider social change.

On to a Social Network with a difference, NetSquared generated a load of discussion in response to its recent Think Tank question How Can Nonprofits use Twitter? - including the story of how the American Cancer Society is using twitter to promote its breast cancer research ‘Frozen Pea Fund’!

Joanne Fritz is struck by the potential to use Web 2.0 to engage with large numbers of donors giving small value gifts in her post The Long Tail of Fundraising: how small donations can make a difference.

Then we have a whole host of Web 2.0 Tech Tips from Social Signal - covering everything from blogging, del.icio.us, and RSS to advice on community content.

And finally a post from DonorPowerBlog by my old Seattle-based friend and colleague Jeff Brooks, with some suggestions on how to have Kiva’s problem - namely raising too much money!

That’s it for this week. But you can keep track of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants as it wends its weekly way across the blogosphere by subscribing to the carnival feed.

Flipping the funnel - the future of fundraising?

Recently I’ve been using an analogy originally promoted by online marketing pioneer Seth Godin to help illustrate how individual donor fundraisers, steeped in traditional direct marketing, need to evolve their thinking to capitalise on the new opportunities being offered by Web 2.0.

In his free to download ebook ‘Flipping the Funnel’ (with a tailored version for nonprofits), he highlights how fundraisers should re-evaluate the traditional approach of funneling high volumes of prospects into a fundraising programme to convert low volumes of supporters.

In Godin’s analogy, when you ‘flip the funnel’ (with the help of Web 2.0 tools) what you end-up with is a megaphone, through which passionate supporters can shout-out to their network of personal contacts on your behalf - overcoming the decline in mass-market appeals and reaching people traditional fundraising communications can’t reach.

In his own words “A new set of online tools makes this approach not just a possibility, but also an imperative for any organization hoping to grow. Give your fan club a megaphone and get out of the way.” I couldn’t agree more!

Blog Carnival coming back to Giving in a Digital World next week

Next Monday, I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants here on the new look (and new URL) Giving in a digital world - helping draw together some of the best nonprofit news, advice and resources on offer across the blogosphere.

Each week a different host sets a topic for this international blog carnival and other bloggers submit posts on that theme - with the best seven being highlighted on the host blog.

If you’ve read much of this blog, or seen any of my presentations, then you’ll know that I’m a passionate believer in the potential for nonprofits to use Web 2.0 tools to engage with communities of supporters in new and highly effective ways.

With this in mind, the theme I’ve set for next week is ‘Creating and developing online supporter communities through Web 2.0′ - and I’d love to hear from anyone with a view on what’s working; what’s not working; and what we should watch-out for in the future.

So, if you’ve got something to say about how nonprofits are using any aspect of Web 2.0 to engage with their supporters then please do submit a post here before next Sunday (17th Feb).

Kiva goes from $1m to $16m in one year!

As a Kiva supporter (or ‘lender’ as they’re called) I always look forward to emails from them updating me on how the projects I’m helping fund are progressing. However their Holiday Newsletter made for an especially great read as it also provided details on what has been a truly incredible year for this wonderfully innovative charity, using the power of online social networking to enable everyday donors to directly support micro enterprise projects around the world.

Apparently they now have over 170,000 individual lenders from over 71 countries, supporting 25,000 small business entrepreneurs across 37 countries - with the loans total now over $16million.

Those are some amazing numbers for an organisation which this time last year had only just passed the $1million mark!

And a fantastic example of how really big amounts can be raised online through a truly innovative ‘Community Fundraising 2.0′ approach.

Welcome to the new Giving in a Digital World site

Admittedly a little late (due to some minor technical difficulties and my being on vacation for quite a bit of January) but Giving in a Digital World has now moved from its original place within fundraising.co.uk to this new WordPress location.

You’ll still be able to read updates on the latests posts on fundraising.co.uk, but from now-on the main blog will be at this new URL - purely because it makes things a bit easier for me when I’m posting, now that Fundraising UK has shifted to a Drupal platform.

Other than the new URL and presentation format it’s business as usual: news of digital fundraising campaigns from around the world; consumer insights to help support your digital planning; and thoughts on new ways to engage with supporters through digital communications.

As always, if you read anything here that strikes a chord (or a dischord) or if you’ve heard of something that you think should get a mention - then please do make use of the comment functionality to get involved.