Nonprofits should blog, says Michael Gilbert
Howard Lake | 27 October 2005 | News
US nonprofit information and technology expert and thinker Michael Gilbert’s latest feature article exhorts nonprofit organisations to embrace and exploit the opportunities of blogging. Whether it is staff, leaders or stakeholders blogging, he argues this approach can bring important benefits and changes to nonprofits.
Gilbert argues that adopting a blogging model will yield “authentic voices” for an organisation which could assist it in mobilising and engaging people, whether donors, volunteers or activities. Secondly, he believes it will being about in the longer term “a more network centric nonprofit sector, rather than the organization centric system we have now”.
Gilbert has a good track record in blogging and its significance. Indeed, he claims that, by publishing his Nonprofit Online News service, “I have been blogging longer than anyone else online” except for one other technology writer. Indeed, he was a blogger before the term was created from “web” and “log”, indicating a web-based diary.
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Following that April 1997 start-up, he started trying to encourage nonprofits to adopt a similar approach to their online publishing. In his 1998 training courses he urged nonprofits “to adopt a news page format, with reverse chronological entries linking to deeper content on site and elsewhere online”.
For many years, however, he has been frustrated at the sector’s lack of interest in this approach and tool. “It’s such a simple concept, but very few nonprofits adopted it” he says.
At the root of his belief in blogging are the themes of integration and connection. Blogging, argues Gilbert, can help nonprofits avoid working in silos and isolation.
Read his “Nonprofits and Weblogs” and see if your organisation should be using weblogs.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.