Posted by Taira Jordan and Alix Johnson on June 21, 2010

Madera Group is working with The Body Positive to strengthen the next generation of female leaders, freeing them from obsession with external image, and supporting them in developing self acceptance so they can focus on living life to its fullest. Young women of today are bombarded with advertising and a popular culture that promotes an unhealthy relationship between eating and wellness.
Posted by Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist on March 19, 2010
Amy Sample Ward with Netsquared wrote a good roundup in February 2010 of the social media response to the Haiti earthquake in January. She writes that “the way we think about and turn to social media in a time of disaster is changing.” Amy’s article discusses how mobile technology is impacting the process of mapping, fundraising, and missing persons.
Posted by Manny Hernandez on February 6, 2010
This weekend, I was reading the interview of Techcrunch with Gina Bianchini (CEO of Ning) in Davos. In it, Gina argues that that she doesn’t see Nign as a competitor of Facebook or Twitter.
Posted by Manny Hernandez on February 4, 2010
Recently, I had the great opportunity to deliver a couple of sessions of a workshop titled Social Media for Nonprofits to approximately 20 small nonprofit groups in the Bay Area.
These are the slides from the presentation (with a few enhancements I made to them thanks to the feedback I got from participants). You can download the presentation if you prefer watching it offline.
Posted by Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist on February 3, 2010
Our good friends at Network for Good offers us their view into the crystal ball of online fundraising in 2010 in this good article about upcoming trends for the year. Here’s the high level summary:
Posted by Amy Wachler, Communications Associate on December 10, 2009
The Madera Group partnered with Strategen Consulting to co-host a special fundraiser celebrating Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner’s first year in the California State Assembly and to support her re-election in 2010. More than 100 friends and supporters gathered at the David Brower Center last Friday evening to honor Nancy’s hard work and success in passing several key bills through the legislature.
Posted by Amy Wachler, Communications Associate on November 16, 2009
Gilbert Bendix, a friend and neighbor of the Madera Group, truly embodies the spirit of giving. Gil, a soft-spoken 85-year-old, has been giving to charitable organizations for years, including Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano and MBIRA, a non-profit organization that preserves and promotes Zimbabwean music.
Posted by Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist on August 26, 2009
Allyson Kapin has a great post on Frogloop, Care2’s nonprofit online marketing blog on 10 Tools and Strategies to Market Your Nonprofit on a Shoe-String Budget. She writes: “If your nonprofit is not taking advantage of free tools like Add This, a widget that encourages users to share your organizations articles or web pages on the most popular social networks or branded toolbars like FreeCause, then your nonprofit is missing out on some big marketing opportunities.”
Posted by Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist on
I liked Matt Wilson’s article in the July edition of the NTEN e-newsletter on the State of Mobile Advocacy, having written on this subject myself. Matt works for Mobile Commons, one of the vendors innovating with mobile advocacy. He writes: “There are now several vendors working in the nonprofit sector who have built target-matching applications for voice calls, similar to the district-matching features in the online advocacy arena. This is allowing organizations to connect their constituents directly to the phone lines of Congressional offices, skipping the Capitol Switchboard. This leads to longer average call times, as advocates are more likely to abandon the call when they are connected to the switchboard.”
Posted by Andre Carothers, Senior Strategist, Madera Group on August 21, 2009
Success in social marketing and fundraising means making our clients visible in a crowded online marketplace. Our agency works with clients to develop a strategy that not only uses social networks, but also persuades others to pass the word on. That means creating inspiring and thoughtful messages that work for both email inboxes and social networking sites. It means telling a story that communicates the meaning of the work we are describing, and showing the results that come from it.