Resources for Associations and Nonprofits

Please also feel free to let me know when you find broken links on this page and to send me suggestions for new links to add. I will try to make these changes as time permits.

If you're an association executive looking for information, you may want to visit the website of the American Society of Association Executives. It offers a wealth of resources for associations.

In addition, I've listed below some of my favorite resources for webmasters and web marketers and for executives of nonprofits. I hope you find these helpful! There are also some targeted ads from Google to the left that I hope will direct you to additional online resources.

Thanks for your support,
Robin Mayhall

Resources

New Link: Communications Articles and Resources

• Katherine Murray's reVisions Plus website offers a series of articles on various communications topics in an easy-to-navigate blog-like format.

• The SPIN Project website contains loads of useful technical and practical information for nonprofits and community organizations, including a helpful tutorial on Internet PR.

• A fellow association executive has created a site with a lot of helpful information, including marketing and promotion and technical insights, at The Wired Association.

• Here are three more sites of interest to nonprofits. Take some time to explore them; each offers quite a few different benefits, but all should be helpful for a nonprofit organization, especially a charitable one. Lots of fundraising information at all three.
  • The Nonprofit Zone
  • The Internet Nonprofit Center
  • The Nonprofit Resource Center of Texas

• An interactive FAQ with information on how to announce a new website can be found at http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html.

• Another Austin entrepreneur has developed a site called Technology Tips for Not-for-Profit Organizations

• WebCards are inexpensive, full-color postcards with an image of your site and a promotional message imprinted thereon. Visit the WebCards site today to request a free sample.

• The Internet News Bureau is a press release distribution service that helps you get out the message about your website to the media.

• Use Submit It! to promote your Web site on the Internet. Submit It is not free, but it's very inexpensive and allows you to easily submit to the top search engines and directories. I've used it with good results.

• Check your position on the major search engines with RankThis!, a site that also includes some information on how to improve your positioning.

• Another way to improve your search engine positioning is to use a software program called WebPosition.

• Check out VirtualPromote, another site with a lot of information about online promotion and how to get the word out about your website.

• A fellow writer, who'd like to remain anonymous, put together an article called How to Write a Corporate Communications Plan that could prove useful to nonprofits as well as corporations. This site also provides several sample communications plans submitted by members of the Public Relations Society of America.

• An excellent resource for association publishers is the Authors and Experts website. Writers and editors may locate authors and experts to interview for their articles or features.

• The Nonprofit Nuts & Bolts Website is another useful site with helpful information and a newsletter for nonprofit managers.

• Free Web Page Assistance is available on the web from a consultant who has put up a page offering information on graphics, coding, free resources, etc.

• Microsoft has a Small Business Computing Issues site that may be of use to association staff, especially those at smaller organizations. Another area on Microsoft's site is called Industry Solutions and features resources for various specialized industries. Again, these may be helpful if your association is in a highly specialized industry such as healthcare or insurance.

• This website bills itself as an "independent" guide to selecting software for nonprofit organizations and trade associations. It contains several guides and has information on all of the major association management software programs I've ever heard of.

• The two companies that make the two most popular browsers offer a lot of information on how to optimize your pages for their products. Check out either Netscape's or Microsoft's websites for information, links, graphics, etc.

• Another good commercial site is the Adobe Systems, Inc. home page. Adobe makes PageMill and SiteMill, two popular website development products. Adobe is also one of the foremost vendors of graphics software (Photoshop, Illustrator) and of fonts and font design products in the industry. You can purchase a lot of this software directly from their site.

• A good general source for web resources for small firms is at the website for Home Office Computing and Small Business Computing magazines. The site features news that affects small organizations, tips, tricks, features, and a list of links to great online resources.

• Check out the website for the EventWeb Mailing List, which looks like a good resource for event managers.

• The Technology Section of the Public Relations Society of America has a lot of good general resources and links for budding and experienced webmasters. A lot of the links are specific to PR and marketing, but a lot are of general interest as well.

• If you are a member of the American Society of Association Executives, I strongly suggest you join the Technology Section for its listserv if for no other reason. This active listserv is a source of excellent advice and commentary from association peers. Members may subscribe by sending a message to "majordomo@lists.asaenet.org" with the message "subscribe technology" in the body of the message. If you're not a member of ASAE, or if you are but haven't joined the Technology Section, get more information at ASAE's website.

• Membership Management Software: RegOnline makes membership management easier for both you and your members. Manage signups, renewals, profile changes, and credit card charges online through RegOnline's membership management software.

• Bobby is a very neat little website that will test your website for compatibility with various browsers, such as America Online, Internet Explorer, etc. Bobby also tests your site for friendliness toward people with disabilities and returns a "warnings report" that notes possible problem areas for you to review.

• Another site that may help you make your page more compatible to a wide variety of users is the Web Page Backwards Compatibility Viewer. This page is, in my opinion, not quite as easy to use as Bobby, but if browser compatibility is very important to you, it may be worth the effort.

• AIR-Austin is a group that focuses on making the internet accessible for people with disabilities. They hold an annual contest for web developers to build accessible websites in a one-day marathon.

• The Thompson Conference Center at the University of Texas at Austin offers scores of classes for potential webmasters, including HTML Basics and HTML Beyond the Basics. If you're not located in Austin, check the website of your local university or community college for similar courses.

• Bray Communications offers a full range of communications services, from newsletters and magazines to web site content updates and article writing.

• CommerNet, Inc. provides e-commerce marketplace components for trade associations.

• SMART Marketing Technologies is a company that offers demographic information that might be useful to associations in your targeting efforts.

• is an interesting company that offers online training, both pre-set and customized. Their interface is very interesting, and their company philosophy makes them a likely candidate for trade associations.

• Victor Engel's No-Dither Netscape Color Palette has a good, scholarly explanation of how color works on the web and gives several tips on how to pick colors.

• This RGB Hex Triplet Color Chart is a downloadable graphic that you can save to your hard drive and use in picking and specifying colors that should work with most web browsers.

• Another neat website for color is this Clickable palette that allows you to click on the color you want and get both the hexidecimal or RGB values for it. This is useful because most web browsers recognize hexidecimal color codes, while Photoshop and other design programs don't.

• FindLaw has a Cyberspace Law Center with some good basic information on legal issues concerning cyberspace.

• Ivan Hoffman is an attorney whose website is devoted to issues that affect businesses on the net, including contracts, copyright, and other legal issues.

• Lawgirl.com
  This site features an interactive copyright basics page as well as copyright registration help (with links to downloadable forms and info) as well as a legal question and answer board and some other fun and interesting features. Very user-friendly!

• The Graphic Artists Guild
  The Graphic Artists Guild has good info and resource pointers on copyright and contracts for those interested. Requires membership. Or purchase the book separately. (See book links.)

• The International Computer Law Observer
  The International Computer Law Observer is a free e-mail service which provides monthly coverage of international law developments relating to computers, technology and the Internet.

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
  A bureau of the US Commerce Department charged with promoting the progress of science and the useful arts by securing, for limited times to inventors, the exclusive right to their respective discoveries.

• Web Contracts and Agreements
  A resource of contracts and agreements for web designers. Includes some useful advice regarding contracts and working with clients.

• Sample Contracts and Agreements
  A page of sample business contracts that web designers may find useful.

• World Intellectual Property Organization
  WIPO is responsible for promoting the protection of intellectual property throughout the world through cooperation among States, and for the administration of various multilateral treaties dealing with the legal and administrative aspects of intellectual property.

• Paralegal.net has a very useful "Copyright Crash Course" on its website. Just click the tab by that name.

• Another site with information on internet-related legal issues is located here.

• U.S. Copyright Office

• FAQ - Usenet Copyright Myths

• U.S. Copyright Act of 1976

• Copyright Website
  Comprehensive, practical and relevant copyright information for web developers and others.

• An article on how to correctly use your domain name as your trademark can be found here

• Here's another article on trademark issues.

• The do's and don't's of trademark use

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Questions or comments? Email Robin Mayhall