I often get asked to present on social media trends at nonprofit conferences - particularly in the river conservation community. These days, "tweating" is a household word, and many NPO technology decision-makers reach out to me to ask about the importance of integrating social media tools into the development of their websites.
To be honest, I usually sidestep the question. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for integrating social media tools like Twitter and Facebook into NPO websites. (We wouldn't have included social media in ThinkShout's tagline if we didn't think it important...) But I think that it's easy for NPO decision-makers to to rush into the discussion of features and "mash-ups" and all the other fun whistles and bells of building an interactive and engaging website - without thinking a lot about their vendor selection process and their request for proposal (RFP) process.
Vendor selection, RFPs and the concept of "Total Cost of Ownership" are really important to us at ThinkShout. Having worked on the other side of the fence as leaders in nonprofit organizations, we have seen a lot of organizations with great intentions and vision get in over their heads because of avoidable mistakes in selecting vendors, managing project estimates, and budgeting for the long-term health of their websites.
With that in mind, we're going to make our best effort to write at least one blog post per month on these concepts. Stay tuned to learn more!