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It’s March of 2009 — certainly you haven’t forgotten about your New Year’s resolution already, right?

Whether it’s exercising, spending more time volunteering or some other personal goal, the first 100 days are critical to your success. You must engage and take action if you desire any level of accomplishment.

The same applies to your organization and the online resolutions you might have set entering the year. If you haven’t taken action to put your ideas and new online concepts into motion just yet, now would be a good time to revisit your organization’s resolutions for 2009.

The X PRIZE Foundation, an educational nonprofit prize institute dedicated to fostering radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, today announced the appointment of Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., as Chairman of its Life Sciences Prize Group Steering Committee (GSC). Under Dr. Soon-Shiong's direction, the GSC will steer the direction of future Life Science related X PRIZEs to ensure that they address the audacious grand challenges where market failures currently exist. The Life Sciences GSC will address such subjects as healthcare, genomics, proteonomics, bionics/human augmentation, rapid disease detection, disease prevention, human longevity and artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis.

Larry Brilliant, the executive director of Google.org, said late Monday that he would step down from managing Google’s philanthropic unit and signaled that Google.org might curtail its financing of nonprofit groups unless they are closely aligned with Google projects.

Convio, Inc. – the leading provider of on-demand constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations – today announced record annual revenue of $57.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2008, representing a 32 percent increase over 2007. Generating $2.9 million in operating cash flow for the year, and $1.2 million for the fourth quarter, Convio has now produced positive cash flow from operations in five of the last six quarters. In addition, Convio achieved profitability on a non-GAAP basis for both the fourth quarter and for fiscal year 2008.

When it comes to return on investment for a nonprofit's online fundraising and donations program there is no hard and fast digital metric that serves as the gold standard … yet. 

While some fundraisers have struck gold — generating 10 times their online investment in as little as three months, others just break even after three years of hard work. It's important that nonprofits and their teams have some shared perspective and collective agreement. 

At the end of this month, we will witness one of the biggest transformations in our country’s history when Barack Obama steps in as the first black president of the United States. Obama’s election represents a sea change for our country in race relations. It also represents a sea change in marketing, communications and fundraising for success.

If 2008 has been an exceptionally challenging year, 2009 promises even greater opportunities to do more with less. These difficult times demand that nonprofit organizations become as efficient and organized as possible and that they employ technology more effectively than ever before to reduce overhead costs while speeding project implementation.

Organizations can take a number of steps right now to keep their technology up-to-date, secure the safety and availability of crucial data, and help ensure that their operations remain healthy in the months ahead. Consider this start-of-the-year checklist to put technology to work for your group in a way that will help you meet the difficult tasks ahead.

For most businesses and organizations, a Web site started out as an online billboard or brochure. As technology has changed — and it has done so at breakneck speed the last several years — Web sites have become online locations where audiences expect to get real services and take actions important to them. “Modernizing” your Web presence — particularly if it involves multiple sites, complex e-commerce applications or extensive libraries of content — can be a long, costly (and sometimes painful) experience. Our questionnaire can help you make an informed decision. The key is to keep sight of your organization’s goals and your audience’s

New Miracle Diet Targets Belly Fat! Bye Bye Belly Fat! No Exercise Required! These are the kinds of e-mails that have been showing up quite frequently in my inbox since I signed up recently for a nutrition-related newsletter. I’ve been dieting, reading about dieting and writing about dieting for 25 years. I’ve done everything from the ice-cream diet to Weight Watchers. Tried Dexatrim, which made me eat faster, and Slim-Fast, which made a great shake with lunch (though didn’t work so well in place of it). I took fen-phen even after it was banned, and once, I massaged a baked potato because I

1. Reserve a YouTube.com URL to match your Web site. It’s important that your organization’s YouTube URL match your Web site’s URL in case you ever promote your YouTube channel in print materials or in your e-mail signatures. For example, Big Cat Rescue: www.bigcatrescue.org www.youtube.com/bigcatrescue Even if you don’t plan on using YouTube immediately, sign up and grab that URL before someone else does! PLEASE NOTE: When signing up for your YouTube account, your “username” becomes your YouTube URL! So, in this example, Big Cat Rescue has the username “bigcatrescue.” 2. Use your organization’s logo as your channel’s profile picture. Odds are that