# Nonprofits should blog, says Michael Gilbert

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/10/27/nonprofits-should-blog-says-michael-gilbert/
- Published: 2005-10-27T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

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.

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”.

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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.

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