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Here are five principles that characterize today’s most innovative nonprofits and thoughts on how you can apply them to your organization.

In a nutshell, your mantra should be, ‘Community first, monetize later.’

Attention! 
Social Media Does Not Equal 
Fundraising! In a nutshell, your mantra should be, ‘Community first, monetize later.’

TORONTO, ONTARIO (April 23, 2012) — As part of its ongoing commitment to support Baycrest innovations, the Baycrest Foundation announced today the launch of a new app in support of its highly popular Scotiabank Pro-Am for Alzheimer's hockey tournaments. The app, available on both Android and iPhone, allows players registered in the tournament to fundraise for the Scotiabank Pro-Am on the go from the touch of their smartphone screen and is available as a free download on iTunes and Google Play.

I get a lot of direct-mail and e-mail fundraising at my house. That's by design. I donate, and I actually get excited when one of the organizations I support rents my name to others. I totally agree with Axel Andersson, a German direct-marketing entrepreneur, who said, "Creating direct mail without studying other people's successful direct mail is like trying to do brain surgery without studying brains."

Business leaders and Sen. Dianne Feinstein launched a $1 billion, 10-year fundraising goal on Thursday that is aimed at preventing some of Silicon Valley's leading technology companies from going underwater - literally.

The Wikimedia Foundation and the German chapter of Wikimedia have announced grants totaling approximately $1.7 million from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Google to create Wikidata, a collaboratively edited database of the world's knowledge.

The first new Wikimedia project since 2006, Wikidata will support more than 280 language editions of Wikipedia with one common source of structured data that can be used in all articles that are part of the Wikipedia site.

Blackbaud, with the Nonprofit Technology Network and Common Knowledge, released the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report at the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

The report provides a look at how nonprofits are using social media, highlights key trends and provides insights for the year ahead. It shows that nonprofit investment in social networks and membership continues to grow.

As I've looked at this whole area of proposal writing for major donors I find that a great deal of emphasis, by many authors, is placed on the actual writing of the case, proposal or whatever you want to call it. Most of the material starts with "create a need statement" or "create a theme," or with some instruction on how to begin to draft some element of the actual proposal. This is all good, but it starts in the wrong place. Why? Because it doesn't start with the most important part of the whole equation — the donor.

Recent tweets from folks you should be following.