It’s unfortunate that it sometimes takes a natural disaster to remind of us what associations and nonprofits are capable of. Although Saturday’s terremoto Chile was of a greater magnitude than the one six weeks ago in Haiti, fewer people, thankfully, have died. Regardless, the death toll is close to 1,000 and rescuers are still searching for possible survivors and surveying the infrastructure.

Of course, the difference between these two quakes is poverty level and infrastructure sophistication, but Chile still needs global aid as hundreds of thousands of citizens are displaced. Several nonprofits issued alerts and statements over the weekend.

The American Red Cross made an initial pledge of $50,000 from its International Response Fund. The Chilean Red Cross is working closely with the Chilean government to lead the emergency response teams.

National Nurses United’s RN Response Network issued a standby alert to its volunteers and initiated preliminary outreach to emergency centers in Chile. They are also still deploying nurses to Haiti.

Unicef issued an alert stating they are monitoring the situation in Chile and are prepared to step in to help if necessary. “UNICEF will assist all those affected by the earthquake in Chile, especially the children,” said a spokesperson for the agency.

AmeriCares is sending a rapid response team to Chile to help, and medicine and medical supplies are being prepared for shipment, as well. The organization is also working with affiliate organizations in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia to coordinate its disaster relief efforts.

Habitat for Humanity is working to provide low-income displaced families with shelter as the country recovers.

World Vision is sending tarps, tents, blankets and water containers for survivors as soon as Chilean airports reopen.

Although operations in Santiago seem to be running semi-smoothly today (buses are running and people are going to work), this quake reached more remote locations than the one in Haiti. Many bridges and buildings have collapsed and the death toll remains uncertain.

If you or your organization would like to donate, click here to find out how. Once again, organizations have enabled donations through text messaging, which makes it easier than ever.

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Happy Friday! And congratulations to the Crimson Tide of Alabama for winning the BCS National Championship Thursday night! MemberClicks President Thomas Howard is a proud ‘Bama alum and since no one in the office is really a Texas fan (sorry to the Longhorns out there), a lot of us were pulling for the Tide in Thursday night’s game. (I do feel awful for poor Colt McCoy, though.)

I hope everyone had a good week, and if it was your first full workweek after a holiday vacation, I hope it didn’t go by too slowly. And there was some great stuff around the association blogging community this week!

1. Following his webinar, Jeff De Cagna wrote about the trends that will affect associations in 2010 and beyond. Organizations should not overlook the importance of Jeff’s “Mobile Everything” bullet. We’re rapidly becoming a mobile society and this can affect how your association communicates and gathers content.

2. Keeping with the “mobile” theme, check out the three iPhone apps every nonprofit needs to know about. There’s some good info here your nonprofit could use for its mobile strategy.

3. Over at Acronym, Joe Rominiecki took a trip down memory lane by digging through the Association Management archives from 2000. From outsourcing to collaboration to knowledge, Joe discussed how each concept was applied in 2000, and how associations have improved since then. Loved this post.

4. Cindy Butts wrote this week about fundraising and staffers missing opportunities. She used a great example of an fundraiser that told a story to relate to the audience, and accepted both credit card and PayPal payments. Takeaways: make (giving) personal and make it easy.

5. This post is technically from last week, but it’s so great that I can’t help but share. Jeffrey Cufaude’s The Many C’s of Community really grabbed my attention when I got back to work Monday morning. He writes, Community is a spirit that resides within every individual, but it is manifested in very personal choices. I’m not even going to try to say it better myself.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone (despite the painful lack of college football!)!

(Image source: Jae C. Hong, AP, via NYT)

It’s time for the weekly grab-bag of association and social media blogs. Here’s what I found especially interesting on the interweb this week.

I Upgraded to HootSuite 2.0 Because It Works by Chris Abraham at socialmedia.biz. My Twitter stream was abuzz with this message Thursday as HootSuite, a popular Web-based Twitter service, released a new update. HootSuite lets users track multiple accounts and mentions, and the new release has a powerful monitoring feature. In the interest of full disclosure, I upgraded MemberClicks‘ HootSuite account, but haven’t gotten around to playing with it yet. It’s on my weekend to-do list!

Transitioning from Young to Young Professional by Aaron Wolowiec for ASAE’s Acronym. Aaron’s post really resonated with me — I think the dilemma he describes of young professionals trying to be taken seriously is a common one. Some of his tips are common ones (e. g. find a mentor, develop a network), but they’re suggestions we’d all do well to remember. “Being persistent” is the key.

10 Insights Gained From Spending 7,280 Hours on Social Networking Web sites by Heather Mansfield for Nonprofits 2.0. Heather is the nonprofit community manager for change.org, so she’s spent a lot of time on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Her insights are extremely valuable and are backed up by her many years of experience.

Google rules by Jeff De Cagna for SmartBlog Insights. Jeff, the editor at large of SmartBlog Insights, asks associations to question whether their point of view lines up with Google’s core beliefs about how the company should run. Google’s best practices referenced: “Google doesn’t need to control everything,” “Google doesn’t need to be evil” and “Google doesn’t need to be evil.” Great stuff here.

ASAE’s mobile hub for the annual meeting and expo is freakin’ awesome. Direct your mobile phone’s browser to http://asae09.org/m for the mobile version. Basically it aggregates information about the conference from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social networking sites. If you log in with your ASAE info, it connects to Twitter and will automatically add the #asae09 hashtag. Plus there’s a schedule of events and you can add stuff the “Contributions” tab to share with everyone.

Social Media Mavens: An Interview with Kodak’s Tom Hoehn by Mack Collier at The Viral Garden. Mack interviewed Kodak’s director of interactive marketing and convergence media about the company’s social media strategy and some of its best practices. There are some great thoughts here from a huge company’s “social media maven” – and many of them can be applied to smaller organizations.

Share your favorites blog posts or news articles in the comments, and have a great weekend!

“May we live in interesting times.” I don’t think that saying has ever been more true than today, in 2009.

My “aha!” moment came on November 4, 2008, the day Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S. Obama focused his campaign not on the color of his skin but on a grassroots effort that used Facebook, Twitter and his Web site to a great advantage. He mobilized a huge percentage of young Americans to campaign and raise money and his behalf, and his efforts resulted in the greatest fundraising success a presidential candidate has ever known. Regardless of whether or not you agree with Obama’s politics, there’s no denying the man and his staff ran an amazing campaign. Social media played a key part in his success.

Thanks to my journalism background, I’m especially interested in how we communicate. I’ve worked for a newspaper, and, although it saddens me that so many are in financial tatters, I’m excited to see where the next decade takes us.

However, I often feel like I’m hyperconnected — I’m running on information overload and can’t close the laptop or set down the BlackBerry for fear of something happening in the world without my knowing. I’m certain I’m not alone.

Although we all need a balance between our online lives and our offline ones, it’s still important for your organization to have an online presence. If you ignore tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you may find your organization becomes ignored itself.

Social media can help or hinder all organizations and companies — it depends on how you use the available tools. You can be shouting to an empty room on Twitter or using it to engage your members, cultivate relationships and share information.