First NGO survey results

Ethos Advisors & NGO Post created a short survey to assess the needs of the NGO community and identify concrete solutions to improve motivated, high-impact NGOs across India.

Some of the key points from the summary of the surveys are:

• 63% of the NGOs surveyed work in the education sector and 47% work in the health and disabilities sector.
• 77% of the NGOs surveyed have less than 20 employees.
• 35% of the NGOs are registered as trusts, 48% as societies and 11% as Section 25 companies.
• 36% of the NGOs find volunteers by word of mouth and 48% of the NGOs are satisfied with the volunteer skills they receive.

The early bird prize winner of the survey was – Kilikili – an organisation devoted to making public spaces accessible to special children. One of the earliest organizations to fill the complete survey, they won a media package  – a promotional video film!

The winner for the Rs. 5000 Cash Prize is – Samaritan Help Mission. Visit their blog at

http://samaritanhelpmission.blogspot.com/

Also, see these stories about SHM on NGO Post -

http://ngopost.org/story.php?title=A_man_with_a_mission-1

http://ngopost.org/story.php?title=Need_help_developing_a_website_for_Samaritan_Help_Mission

There are more prizes to be won – so fill the survey if you haven’t already…

NGOs: Dig into your strengths and opportunities AND win great prizes!

In addition, there are three great reasons to complete the survey:

1. A free assessment tool for your NGO. The survey is based on questions that leading NGOs around the world have asked themselves and, by finding the answers, have found new ways to succeed and scale. Take a moment and complete this survey to better understand your strengths and opportunities.

2. Tell us and tell the world what are the new tools, websites and training that you need. This is your chance to help donors, service providers and CSR departments to design and customize new services for the NGO sector based on the information you share.

3. For a chance to Win Excellent Prizes!!! Including:

• A new fuly-customized website for your organization based on cutting-edge technology that is simple and easy-to-use.
• Custom media package offered by Grassroutes that tells your organization’s story and an independently managed marketing campaign for any purpose you choose
• Feature story in a leading newspaper

So please take a moment, 10 moments actually, and help us help you.

Here is the link to the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=KxFJvLldn9jXRI5jPDbBxA_3d_3d

NOTE: Complete survey results will be shared on NGO Post following the survey completion. Your private information however will not be shared with anyone.
Best Regards,
NGO Post & Ethos Advisors

New Video Channel on Youtube

NGO Post now has its youtube channel! Subscribe to favorites and playlists on real issues, amazing NGOs etc on www.youtube.com/ngopost

With youtube changing the way we interact and inform each other online, NGO Post decided to start its own channel on youtube. Now we can channelize the videos of common interest to many of our fans and us! All youtube videos linked in stories on NGO Post have been posted and linked on the NGO Post channel.This will get all these videos additional publicity and a wider audience to reach and spread the word. In the future, we hope to upload personalized accounts of social and NGO work and benefit works being done. Hope all of you enjoy the channel and keep posting great stories on NGO Post. If you would be interested in publicizing other NGO related videos also through this channel, please do mail submit@ngopost .org.

Featured Writers and Moderators

NGO Post is proud to announce its new team contributors in the form of a featured writer, Ashwin, and also moderators for three of the 15 categories of stories and posts on NGO Post. Moderator candidates are still solicited for the 12 other categories. Our featured writer, Ashwin, has been contributing great stories on NGO Post and in a combined enthusiasm from the NP (NGO Post) team and Ashwin, he has become our first featured writer who will contribute regular stories and links on NP! We look forward to more of our great users to become featured writers on NP, giving our audience a wholesome experience of dedicated stories for issues in focus. Here is a short bio of Ashwin:

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Ashwin Krishna is currently heading the India chapter of Juniper Networks Foundation Fund. He also has volunteered for Divya Deepa(http://divyadeepatrust.org), a grass roots Non Profit working for empowerment of Rural Children. He is currently working on an idea to build a platform where Funding Agencies, Non Profits, Social Entrepreneurs, Corporate and Government will work together for India’s Development. A budding social entrepreneur, he dreams to set up an university, with a focus on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation. He wishes to empower a million rural youth and their families.

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Our new feature of having moderators for each category of stories is planned so that each category on NGOPost has its own focused development and its moderators can follow the stories more closely to develop a close knit community around that category. This community can be intertwined with other communities on NGOPost and can lead to an organic growth and sharing of resources and knowledge on NGOPost, one of the primary goals of this platform. Our three new moderators for three categories on NGO Post are:

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• Adarsh will moderate the category Environtment and Ecology. A short bio pic of Adarsh:

Adarsh, is a native of Mysore, and has been involved with various nonprofits. She strongly believes that collaboration between nonprofits, individuals, and the government is essential to address complex issues that we face today. She likes to read, travel and listen to music. An avid tennis fan and follower of all things Federer! She has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s degree in Communication and currently works in a FDA – regulated industry. She believes that everyone can make a difference and hence her blog is aptly named “eksparsh” http://eksparsh.wordpress.com

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• Aish will moderate the category Governance and Infrastructure. A short bio pic of Aish:

Aishwarya Mishra works as a software quality analyst for Pramati Technologies. Prior to this, he worked for Satyam Computer Services, now Mahindra Satyam . He has graduated with a B. Tech (Computer Sc. & Engg) from Cochin University of Science and Technology. He developed interest in matters of social importance after his college. He is passionate about financial inclusion and education as two key areas of social development. He feels that there is so much work already done in the social sector that it has become imperative to harness the existing information to ensure that lots of well-meaning individuals do not end up reinventing the wheel. Aishwarya is a Rang De (rangde.org) think tank member. Rang De is a micro-lending organization and the think tank is a small group of well meaning individuals who help Rang De in its strategy and outreach activities. Aishwarya is an author @ http://thinkchangeindia.org and his personal blog is at http://wheredoiblog.blogspot.com

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Badhri will moderate the category Education and Training. A short bio pic of Badhri:

He works as an electronics engineer in Synopsys India. Pvt. Ltd. He is primarily interested in improving the quality of education, especially in delivery methods that can be used to improve basic reasoning among students. He is also an active blogger and writes regularly for ThinkChangeIndia, and of course, NGOpost. Some of his links online are:

Social:  targetingtheroots.blogspot.com || thinkchangeindia.org || ngopost.org ||
Personal: blacknike.blogspot.com || overtea.blogspot.com ||
Humour:  comedydaze.blogspot.com

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Flash, Tweet and Best of Stories

Once a famous Greek philosopher said “Panta Rei” or “Everything is changing always”. NGO Post has been changing and evolving since its inception. More stories, more features, more users, better designs. Once again, NGO Post has done it! It has had a change in its wardrobe. A new flash page adorns its frontpage for the first time visitors and users not logged in.

NGOPost Front Page

This page was designed to make the visitors to our website familiar with all the activity possible on the website and also the services provided. It lists the different sectors of our visitors such as social workers, support groups, conscious citizens and also describes how you and NGO Post can help each other achieve our goals!

NGO Post has also started updating feeds on twitter.com . You can now directly follow stories published on NGO Post at twitter from the url :

http://twitter.com/ngopost

Also, same updates are being made on NGO Post’s facebook profile updates. Do join the NGO Post community to get updates from NGO Post at your profile page.

We have a new best story winner this month too, just as all other months! Pulkit, a very enthusiatic user of NGO Post won this month’s best story award for his story Not just the Nano ….His inspiring interview can be read at:

http://ngopost.org/winners.php?p=7

Hope all of you are continuing to contribute to the society just as all of you wish to! To a bright and beautiful summer to all you…

NGO Post team.

RSS feeds on NGOpost

Hi All,

The NGOpost team deeply mourns the sad happenings in bombay over the last week and condolences to all the victims. We pay our tribute to the heroes who lost their lives fighting the terrorists and wish the best for all the injured victims for recovery.

The NGOpost blog has been in hibernation for sometime while our team has been working on better and more useful features for NGOpost. We have new developments on NGOpost since the last month. Firstly, we have a list of all available RSS feeds on NGOpost at a new page:

http://ngopost.org/feeds.php

We also have two focus of the month issues on NGOpost since September. The focus of the month for October was Education. The focus of the month for November was Food and Water. There are been many good stories and discussions in each of these categories with very good suggestions for NGOs to improve their skill sets and also reports of great NGO work in the corresponding areas.

There are going to be many more new features on NGOpost in the recent future to enable and facilitate more interaction amongst our enthusiastic users. As we await these new features eagerly, wish all our readers and users and everyone a safe and peaceful world.

Category Facilitators @ NGO Post

NGO Post is growing, and with this comes the extra responsibility of ensuring quality and regularity of stories and discussions. Instead of regulating it all ourselves, we are going to partner with our most enthusiastic and knowledgeable users who will act as Category Facilitators.

Each of the categories (areas of social work) covered at NGO Post will have a facilitator who will be responsible for the overall health of that category. The facilitator will be in-charge of the category and will be responsible for its success.

 

Responsibilities

• Visit the category regularly to ensure proper quality, formatting etc of stories in that category
• Encourage discussions on the stories in that category – this may include sending messages to users who are likely to be interested in those stories
• Post stories if there are not enough story submissions from other users to keep the category consistently active
• Generate awareness about your NGO Post category amongst external blogs, mailing lists and other social-network communities to bring in new users and content

 

Minimum qualifications

• Have a natural interest in the chosen category – prior experience in that field is helpful, although not necessary
• Be an active user at NGO Post – so that you can “teach by example”
• Should be able to visit the site regularly

 

Would you like to become one?

• Turn your interest in social work into a highly productive and useful endeavor
• Help NGO Post in becoming better – we also recognize your contributions by highlighting the facilitators on our team page.
• Get the experience of building and sustaining an online community for social work

 

If this matches your interest and you would like to considered for a Category Facilitator in any category, please send us an email (parul@ngopost.org).

 

Connect and share even better on NGOpost

Hi! Once again, NGOpost has beat itself in making the web interface more user friendly for users. Helping people connect with fellow changemakers was one of the key motivations behind NGO Post – so now it has its own brand-new suite of features to take interactions on NGOpost goes to the next level!

Some of our many new features are:

• User profiles -  Please update your profiles with bigger photos of yourselves and information about yourself like where are you located, areas of interest etc. This will help other users interested in specific issues and locality find you.

• Subscribe to discussions on any story – You will automatically get subscribed to email notifications for any story that you post or discuss. You can also subscribe to any other story, as well as unsubscribe from it (the link is below the story title – where tags/category are).
• Location for each story- You can now tag the stories you post with a particular location. If it is a local NGO working on a locally relevant issue or tag it as a national story where it is relevant to India or global, where it is relevant to everyone! This helps users choose their span
• Quick filter toolbar - Lets you easily view users and stories in any location and category
• Users can follow other users – You can follow the latest activities by your friends from your profile page. You can also see people who follow you.
• Activity updates – users profile shows their recent activity updates. Your profile shows updates of all people you are following.
• Message book – Want to contact a user? Leave them a message! Users get email notifications for messages addressed to them

Here is a sneak preview of the new user profile page:

God

Hope all of you will enjoy and utilize these new features to the fullest. Now that its easier to message each other on NGOpost and share our views, we hope the NGOpost community grows into a bigger and closer knit family than ever before!

Share the care

NGO post Best Story Award

NGOpost.org has instituted a Best Story award starting this fortnight. One story every fortnight will be selected by our panel of judges. The stories will be evaluated on various aspects such as Quality, Originality, Impact and Interaction. Details about the award, the judges and all the winners’ interviews can be found here.

The first Best NGO post award goes to: Vishal for his inspiring story:

http://ngopost.org/story.php?title=A_vision_to_create_a_better_tomorrow

Our team interviewed him to know more about what excites him to work and know about NGOs and then share this knowledge with the rest of us. We can read his wonderful and inspirational interview here :

http://ngopost.org/winners.php?p=1

Thank you, Vishal, for that wonderful post and thank you, judges, for the great work in choosing amongst so many wonder posts we have been getting lately. Hope all of you keep posting better and more useful articles in the coming days, so that the job of the judges becomes more and more difficult!

Good wishes,

From the NGOpost team

NGO Post Bookmarklet: shortcut to story submission

As NGOpost grows into its adulthood, it keeps growing these great applications that all of us will love to use! We have a new feature called the “bookmarklet” – making story submission faster!

This new feature on NGOpost is a link that you can bookmark on your favorite browser Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera.

Please get the bookmarklet from here.

Be a Writer@NGOPost

Are you tired with the current state of media reporting? Do you want to share stories about social change on a global platform?

As most of you know by now, NGOpost is a web based community for sharing news and ideas about various social welfare initiatives. In loose terms you can refer to it as “orkut” for people who are interested in making a difference.

NGOpost is actively seeking writers, who are keen on creating something which would have far reaching benefits.

Some simple questions answered.
Do I need to have writing experience?
Not necessary. As long as you know English and can form meaningful sentences it should fine. 

What do I have to write on?
Write about the social change you see happening around you. Or write about the change that is needed. It could be interviewing someone who is silently doing great work, and whose work would be an inspiration for others, or it could be an organization doing great job in its respective field. There could also be generic articles like Open education tools available for schools or benefits of organ donation. Otherwise we have list of unending topics which we want people to write on, you can choose from them.

What is the benefit for me in writing for NGOPost?

• NGOpost has readership in 150 countries around the world and it has been increasing. Your article will reach hundreds of people every day!
• Each month we send out our newsletter, which goes to about ~5k people. Your name will featured there along with the link to your profile. Personally if you are a blogger, that would give your blog a lot of visibility.
• More than all this it is the satisfaction of writing about something, which would be of use to hundreds of people. We keep getting feedback how reading some articles on NGOpost helped them solve their own problems and helped them connect with relevant people.
• Going ahead we are working on the partnership with print magazines/newspapers wherein selected articles from NGOpost will get published there. Hence there is a possibility that your article might go in print .

So Join the band wagon of people who are keen to make a positive difference. If you are interested or have further queries write to us at goli-at-ngopost-dot-org