Comments on: New NTEN Affinity Group: nptechhelp

By: David

David — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:14:40 +0000

You can try now, and thank you for bringing it to our attention that IE7 has issues with special characters in RSS feeds that no other reader that we’re aware of encounters.

The feed wasn’t malformed, IE 7 simply choked on certain characters.

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:56:48 +0000

I just tried out that feed in IE 7. It’s giving me an error :

An invalid character was found in text content.
Line: 25 Character: 65

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL FOR COMPUTERIZED WORKERS</p> <p>I guess the feed exists but is malformed somehow? I don’t have Firefox on this box yet so I can’t check with that.

By: David

David — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:24:57 +0000

Allan, there IS a RSS feed: http://www.rfpdb.com/data/feed

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:37:51 +0000

That’s great David. I would like for there to be an RSS feed though. Where’s the RSS love?

By: David Kutcher

David Kutcher — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:30:27 +0000

I know this is an old, old post, but I want to put it out there that both non-profits and non-profit tech workers can benefit from the RFP Database at http://www.rfpdb.com that is a free and public place for organizations to publicize their projects as well as for vendors to find new projects to bid on. There are lots of projects listed from non-profits of all shapes and sizes and the database is always seeking more!

By: abenamer

abenamer — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:58:02 +0000

I think you’re right msf123 — my unintentional bit of consciousness-raising among us nonprofit tech workers is only a start but we’re getting there.

By: msf123

msf123 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:43:44 +0000

“Iâ€™m just disappointed that our reputations stand so low with our vendors and consultants that the first thing they think about a closed forum for nonprofit tech workers is how unprofessional we supposedly are.”
Exqueeze me?
How about their reputations with us? Having spent some long years dealing with vendors on behalf of a large corporation, I can’t even believe the amount of rampant incompetence, over-pricing and absurdly bad service the non-profit sector puts up with from its vendors. You’re right – we are unprofessional – because if I had let on to anyone in my last job as a web professional that I spent 5 seconds worry on what a vendor’s opinion of me was, I’d be laughed right out the room. They sell, we buy – they can’t make it work, we buy from someone else. Humanitarianism does not extend to allowing inept companies with an attitude run all over us while we worry about what they think.

By: abenamer

abenamer — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 04:33:03 +0000

We have some interesting issues here. I actually am going to ask the list to let Deborah join simply because she’s a long-time proponent of nonprofit tech causes and she has no known specific partnerships with vendors. On the other hand, sg, aka Surya Ganguly is a manager with NPower NY.

NPower NY just like ONE/Northwest are now partnered with salesforce.com. This makes both NPower NY and ONE/Northwest less than neutral when recommending a solution. Don’t get me wrong — I’m actually going to write an article about how I’m turning into a salesforce.com fanboy but I’m a bit wary about the position of non-profit consultancies and their partnerships with big vendors. This is not because I believe that big business is bad — heck I like big vendors at times but because the nature of our list is such that it gives free competitive intelligence about products and services.

By: sg

sg — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 02:56:04 +0000

Sorry you saw my perspective as “absurd” Allan I didn’t say peer-review journals are bullet-proof, but that they are… reviewed by peers! Self-evident maybe, but much better than any other model of publishing the academic community has tried, and it has stood the test of time. The point is not whether mistakes are made, rather that mistakes are caught.

Please sign me up! I am a 501(c)3 full-time employee, with a .org address.

By: deborah909

deborah909 — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:52:56 +0000

Dear Allan: As I mentioned in my recent blog article, I think that this is a good idea. And even if I didn’t, I would support freedom of speech and freedom of association on general principles. Consenting adults do not need our permission to communicate privately with each other. Warm regards from Deborah