assistorg.org blogs

League of Technical Voters' Code-A-Thon

Jon Lebkowsky — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:08:49 -0500

AssistOrg's Silona Bonewald, founder of the League of Technical Voters (LOTV), organized a 48-hour Code-A-Thon over the weekend to create new functionality for the Drupal platform according to LOTV requirements. Kai Mantsch's video shows more about the event.

Blogging and community

Silona Bonewald — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 23:58:16 -0500

A good Article and Podcast by Nancy White about why NonProfits should to consider Blogs for creating Community

Codeathon Writeup!

Silona Bonewald — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:38:33 -0500

Lock, Code and Load

Thank you Dana Blankenhorn!

SXSW voting time

Silona Bonewald — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:38:43 -0500

Go vote for Geek Politics by Nancy Scola (cause I would be a panelist :-)

http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/panel_picker/

Also any of Jon Lebkowsky's panels too… though I don't remember the titles off the top of my head!

"Social Change and the Technology Struggle"

Jon Lebkowsky — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:16:58 -0500

I posted at WorldChanging about an important new report published by dotOrganize, an organization set up "to assist organizers in utilizing online tools as vehicles for their vision." This report is resonant with AssistOrg's vision and focus.

Proud Sponsor of 48hr Code-a-thon

Silona Bonewald — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:51:20 -0500

Assistorg.org is proud to be a sponsor in the 48hr Code-a-thon being thrown by the League of Technical Voters.

Assistorg's mission is to help NonProfits implement open source solutions. Several of our clients will be at the event helping the programmers design new tools that the entire community can use.

Please check out the wiki at http://lotv-lockin.pbwiki.com password is "transparency"

The League's site is http://www.leagueoftechvoters.org There goal is to get more techies involved in the political process and yea I am very involved in that organization as well.

The event is going to be awesome. We are going to have events every 4 hours to keep the programmers pumped. We have a videographer that is gonig to be doing live video blogging of the event. We have a martini rampage and fire spinners and hulahoop dancers and Djs' spinning for us. I have heard humors of zombies?

http://www.knowbility.org will be bringing accessiblity experts help us write compliant code.

Attention Contractors

Michelle — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 18:43:17 -0500

To keep AssistOrg in the good graces of the Uberpowerful IRS, I will need the following form from any contractor that receives $600 or more from AssistOrg for Contracting services.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf

Please fill this out ASAP, as any payment that would result in your receiving more than $600 in one year will be delayed until I receive this form. You will only need to fill out this form once, unless you move, or the answers in anything in Part II change.

If you cannot complete this form (say, for example you are Canadian), please contact me ASAP so I can get all of my IRS-paper work ducks in a row. The earlier you contact me, the faster you get paid for contracting services.

Contact me at chick at margaritachick d o t com

Michelle

Help With Taxes

Michelle — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 18:01:31 -0500

Made a quick-n-dirty worksheet to help estimate Self Employment and income taxes for contract pay. If you need help completing this or anytime it says to contact Michelle, I will be able to answer your questions as part of my work for AssistOrg.

When it states contact a tax professional, I will still be able to help, but it would be beyond the scope of my support functions for AssistOrg

Nonprofit 2.0 and the long tail

Jon Lebkowsky — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:32:37 -0500

Following the concept of "Web 2.0," we can talk about "Nonprofit 2.0," which was the title of a Sonny Cloward post in October 2005 (referring to a post by Marnie Webb of Compumentor about nonprofits and Web 2.0). Others have used the term, but I'm especially interested in a July 8 post at nonprofittechblog.org focusing on one aspect of Web 2.0, "the long tail,"

a statistical phenomenon that says that the niche players in any Internet-driven market, become, in aggregate, a larger market force than the “brand names” of that market. For us non-profit types, that means all those little mom-and-pop non-profits are actually a bigger force in toto than the Red Crosses, United Ways and Salvation Armies of this world. In a sense, your average donor is now going to be confronted with a Netflix-like selection of charities he or she can donate to. Sure, they might want to donate to the Red Cross but then there’s the indie non-profit just trying to help out literally in the neighborhood of that donor.

Observations on nonprofit software from One Northwest

Jon Lebkowsky — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:20:27 -0500

Steve Andersen at One Northwest has written "Some observations On Nonprofit Software":

Missions are serviced only by engaging constituents to action
Engagement activities aren’t unique to nonprofits, so the tools aren’t either
The best way to build software for nonprofits is to find tools that successfully addresses most of your needs and then add the nonprofit-specific functionality
Software targeted at a larger market than nonprofits will improve faster than software specifically for the nonprofit market
Software that has open Application Programming Interfaces makes the “build-on-top” model work
There is a market for nonprofit-specific software that serves a defined function and is accessible via robust APIs

Important diagram

Silona Bonewald — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 20:33:20 -0500

I think this illustration should go in every client bid we make as it properly illustrates the challenge of CSS and web design.

http://poisonedminds.com/comics/pm20060621.png

Cheers,

Silona

OS Accounting software

Michelle — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:21:30 -0500

Found TurboCash software. It appears to be sufficient. It was written in the UK so there are a few differences in what things are called, but the help files are full of all sorts of helpful information (FANCY!)

Boy it sure does help that the part of the CPA exam that I'm looking at covers accounting for non-profit organizations. Now I probably won't muck it up completely by accounting for it as I would a normal business.

Turns out a non-profit's equity is called "Net Assets." Makes sense, it's the assets less the liabilities.

Request for Comment: Develop Without Borders

bryce.maryott — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:27:25 -0500

http://www.developwithoutborders.com/