Tuesday, May 20th marked our Google Analytics Training at Google’s Chelsea Office. Elizabeth Raschke from the Analytics Department at Google, trained 57 nonprofit members on the best practices for tracking traffic to their website. Not only is she a Google Analytics expert, but she is also an avid New York Cares volunteer! She covered everything from the basics of setting up Google Analytics to your site to understanding certain terms like “bounce rate” and “organic traffic”. During the entire training, she was able to answer every question that came her way. A big thanks to Elizabeth for taking the time to train and help community partners in the city!
If you missed the training, you can view a recording here!
HandsOn Tech Showcase Event!
Our first HandsOn Tech Showcase event was a success! With over 50 attendees, we provided a night of networking, displayed our completed projects and recruited for new ones. Thank you to Alex Green from HandsOn Tech Seattle, who beamed in through Google Hangout to speak with us about the impact other teams are having across the nation. Check out his blog post if you missed it! Our community partners who attended had the chance to speak with interested volunteers about their organization and their upcoming projects.
For the HandsOn Tech team, it was great to meet new people and finally put faces to those we have had only the pleasure to be in contact with through phone and email, as well as chat with volunteers we have met before. We want to give another shout out again to all of our volunteers who are currently working on and have completed projects with us. Thank you!!
A special thanks to Google for hosting us and to Allison Wroble, our HandsOn Tech Google Mentor, for helping us coordinate this event.
Last Thursday, May 2nd, Beth Kanter offered a great webinar on measuring the return on your social media investment. The training was promoted by all 8 HandsOn Tech teams across the US! She covered some important topics from her book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” introduced some exemplary nonprofit social media campaigns, and explained how data analysis helped nonprofits create these campaigns. She urges nonprofits to not only organize and track their data but to set aside time to actually review that data so they can implement new strategies when necessary. Hello #metricsMonday! This way the nonprofit can apply changes to their social media plan while the data is still fresh, relevant and accurate. She provided some great resources for nonprofits and donated copies of her book to each HandsOn Tech city to raffle off to attendees! We want to send a big thanks again to Beth Kanter for training over 350 people!
Here are some of her resources:
Beth Kanter’s Blog
Spreadsheets blog
Beth Kanter’s Wikipage
Microsoft 365 for Nonprofits with Joe Baskin from All Sector
Last week, New York Cares welcomed Joe Baskin, Vice President of Consulting from All Sector Technology Group. Joe donated his time and expertise to train our community partners on Microsoft 365. He provided a very informative training, which included detailed guidelines for educating staff about moving to the cloud, preparing for migration and steps for the transition. Since many of our community partners currently use Microsoft Outlook, Joe’s tips were particularly relevant. Joe also addressed common misunderstandings about moving to the cloud and provided a live demo of the program. Moving to the cloud can be an affordable way to make your nonprofit more efficient. Please let us know if you are interested in moving your organization to the cloud by emailing jillian.otis@newyorkcares.org. We would be happy to discuss your options and help guide you through the process.
New York Cares rang the NASDAQ bell! 4.16.2013
New York Cares rang the opening bell for the NASDAQ stock market in honor of New York Cares Day Spring!
Pictured above from left to right HandsOn Tech Associates (Kristen Fujii, Jillian Otis, Josh Rae)
Google Adwords for Nonprofits Training with Justin Dombrow
Thursday, April 11th marked our first Google AdWords Training. Held at Google’s NYC Headquarters, Justin Dombrow, Senior Account Manager from Google’s Atlanta office, presented a 3 hour training on how to use Google AdWords effectively. Although there were only 48 seats, we were able to pack in a record 60 people! Justin went over everything from the basics of creating different campaigns to the more complex aspects of the program, such as using match types with your keywords. AdWords can be a complicated subject but Justin broke down the program components, making it more manageable and much easier to understand. Many nonprofits currently using AdWords reported that they were able to get personalized advice for their organization and newbies were able to gain a solid foundation to start using the program.
A special thanks to Google for providing space and breakfast and to Justin for his amazing presentation!
If you weren’t able to make our training, you can find Justin’s presentation here. Enjoy!
Google as a Tool for Nonprofits- SINC
On Friday March 22nd, HandsOn Tech NYC was invited to participate in the Staten Island Nonprofit Conference. After taking the ferry and a short bus ride, we arrived at Snug Harbor Botanical Gardens and set up our room for the first breakout session with Tanuja Gupta from Google. With many organizations in attendance, she explained how nonprofits can benefit from using Google products like Google Analytics, Adwords, Google Earth and more. She gave detailed case studies of how nonprofits used cloud-based products during Hurricane Sandy and how these nonprofits were able to effectively manage their volunteers and clients. During the rest of the conference, we were able to network with other Staten Island nonprofits and discuss potential HandsOn Tech projects. It was a great opportunity to work with organizations in Staten Island and to visit beautiful Snug Harbor!
