Over the years, and the appeals, I’ve learned much about the factors that determine success in fundraising – and even more about what to avoid doing – and I’ll always be learning, because that’s one of the privileges of working with so many different charities, across such a wide variety of campaigns and media.

Social media have been around for years now, so it might be reasonable to assume that our attitudes to them, and the way they’re used, should be reaching some kind of maturity. But they still feel very much like the new kids on the block in the media mix and they still seem to be much misunderstood, not entirely trusted and certainly not proven in the eyes of many.

The old volume vs value debate is always ongoing and is as pertinent as ever with the arrival, and spread, of social media. But the way people communicate has changed, the tools we have are different, and so the debate has moved on…

Swipegood makes donating even easier, Google updates offering to non-profits, check-in to Facebook events and Twitter may be soon to roll out brand pages

We are marking Twitter’s game-changing micro-blogging service’s fifth birthday by highlighting five significant charity landmarks that have transpired in 140 characters

Google had a good idea about a year ago with a Gmail Labs feature called Mail Goggles, which required you to solve math problems in order to respond to email. If you failed to answer the math problems correctly, no email for you. Perhaps community users – especially those of, say, the Red Cross – need a pair of Twitter Goggles. Earlier tonight, someone who updated the Red Cross’ official Twitter account was apparently getting “slizzerd”.

The following article from Mashable (via @meanwritehook – thank you for sharing!) interested me, since it not only shows a company using Foursquare to increase sales, but also shares the results – which is the bit we all want to know about.

When they first came to office, the Obama team had a mantra: “Never waste a good crisis”. They then spent the next two years doing exactly the opposite. In the past few months we’ve seen a couple of decent crises – the first involving WikiLeaks, the second involving the political upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt. Both involve the internet in one way or another.

Can’t help feeling rather let down by Malcolm Gladwell. Somehow, I didn’t expect him to be so blinkered and limited in his thinking – and to miss the point so completely. It strikes me he’s taken his position and is too hung up on defending it, at the expense of good reason or exploring alternative viewpoints.

This is a useful graph to add some context if you have not yet tried Facebook advertising for your charity or nonprofit – although most charities I’ve come across have put a toe in the water at least by now, and many have found Facebook ads can work well for them.

Just as it was during the recent uprisings in Tunisia, the role of social media in the recent upheaval in Egypt has been the subject of much debate since the unrest began on Thursday.

I wanted to share this post by Laila Takeh, Digital Manager from British Heart Foundation, because it captures a chat we had on Twitter the other day that I found really interesting and useful – and I thought others might too:

The Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2010 report is full of interesting insights if you are blogging and want to promote your blog – or your website, for that matter – to a wider audience.

Sad to hear that Ivy Bean passed away. Didn’t know that until I saw this list.

Interesting to see those Breast Cancer awareness campaigns making an appearance. Perhaps we’ll see a successful charity-generated version in 2011?

Cash machines should automatically give customers an option of donating to charity, the coalition proposes tomorrow in a green paper designed to define the elusive “big society” in Britain.

Third Sector reported yesterday on some recently published findings by nfpSynergy (I’ve clipped the article on my Posterous), which prompted me to ponder on these points in particular:

One of the areas I often end up exploring with clients and at conferences is the difference in demographics between Facebook and Twitter users, between the platforms and what they can be used for.

Latest Charity Awareness Monitor also indicates that persistent or obtrusive fundraising puts donors off

The proportion of people who think charities work professionally has increased by more than a sixth over the past three years, according to a survey.

Facebook is rolling out a new way to filter the news feed. Users with access to the redesigned feature see a drop-down arrow beside their Most Recent news feed tab on the home page, revealing filters for status updates, Photos, Links, Pages, Games and friend lists.