Canunify is grateful for the many referrals we receive, and your personal recommendation means a lot to us. Our business and ministry edition website and communication tools are getting a great deal of attention, with clients in Canada, United States and Europe. We are here to help and we are convinced that we can make a difference.

Enjoy the holidays, with our best wishes.

What is a Rich Site Subscriptions (RSS):
Every time a new sermon is preached, a new blog entry is posted, a new event is added or a new article is posted on this site, a file is created, summarizing the new content. Certain web-based and desktop applications can be configured to seek out those files, and notify their users when the new content becomes available. We offer subscriptions for articles and also for sermons, which take the form of a podcast. Please check out this site for additional details on RSS and for links to RSS readers.

Jump in with both feet:

When you join a social network, create a profile – but don’t just stop there.  Start a group or join other existing groups.   Sites like Facebook have groups – these groups give people who have a common interest a place to enter into discussions, share links, videos and photos and even promote new ideas.  Finding a group of people who would be interested in your cause is a simple matter of searching.  Let’s say you are looking for a group of people who are interested in helping victims of domestic violence, do a search on domestic violence and check out the groups that come up.  Try these searches:  Museums, Animal Safety, Diabetes.  If a group doesn’t exist that suits your needs… start one!

Do not discount MySpace.  Check out the the MySpace Impact Awards (http://www.myspace.com/impactawards).  The Impact Rewards honor organizations who work to create a positive difference in the world.  It may not win you donation dollars, but it will go a long way to creating trust and recognition in the online community.  The only thing you are required to do is set up a MySpace page for your organization and share your message.

Interact with the people you connect with on a regular basis.  Set aside a fixed amount on time on a daily or weekly basis to log in, check out your profile and share with others.  This is about building relationships.  I doubt that you would walk up to a stranger on the street and ask for support or money.  The same holds true for your online connections.  Let people get to know you and your organization and the trust will come.

Set your organization up to receive donations:

This may seem obvious, but in fact many Not for Profits don’t do this.  Both Facebook and MySpace have charity contribution widgets.  Facebook has Causes and MySpace has teamed up with PayPal to create donation widgets (PayPal account is required).  However, I should note that statistically, the donation amount is smaller ($10 or so) but it is from more people.   This is known as the Long Tail of Fundraising.  You get your message out – it reaches more people who give less but it spreads out (like a tail) over a longer period of time.  In addition ebay has Ebay Giving Works which allows people who are already auctioning items to donate a % to your organization.  Smaller sites like  Network for Good focus on gathering people who are looking to incorporate philanthropy into their lives.

Post Your Events and Invite Connections:

Facebook and MySpace both have public calendars for you to advertise your events on.  Google has one as well.  The advantage is the calendars get indexed in the search engines – just one more way for people to find your web site.

Share… Share… Share and don’t forget your web site:

All roads lead to Rome.  In everything you do your main goal is to get people back to your web site.

Set up a blog on your web site and link it to your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Google accounts.  This allows you to work once and spread the word in multiple places.  There are automated software programs such as twitterfeed (www.twitterfeed.com)  that send your post to twitter.  You can set up your Facebook account to have the status automatically update with your Twitter account.  In addition you can use the Blog Networks or Blog RSS Feeder Applications to automatically import blog posts into your Facebook profile.  I also use Ping.fm to blast out announcements to my Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn status lines.

Let’s assume you have 100 friends on LinkedIn or Facebook.  You send your message out to those 100 people.  Those 100 people then send it to their friends, say another 1000 people.  Those are 1000 people that you would have not been able to otherwise reach.  That is what Social Networking is about.  It will take an investment of time and energy to have it pay off, but it will pay off.

Keep Your Eye on the Conversation:

With the rewards comes some risk:

Reputation Management: Once you unleash the social networking beast, it can be hard to rein in.  You have to keep on top of what is being said about your organization.  Setting up news and blog alerts in Google and Yahoo is a very smart idea  (http://www.google.com/alerts  http://alerts.yahoo.com/).  You can track what is being said on twitter through twitter monitoring tools such as twitter scoop ( http://www.twitscoop.com/)  and other software available online

Not all bad press is bad. If something is constructively critical of your organization, you have an opportunity to correct it.  You can rebut or make right the complaint without hiding it and actually win the trust of those “watching”.

Message Dilution: An organization’s message and purpose can get diluted in the Social Networking arena.  I akin this phenomenon to playing telephone – when the message passes through many mouths and ears, it can be altered.   The reality is, on the web, people are having conversations without the organization or corporation being involved.  This means that you will not always have control over what is being said – and you know what, that’s ok.  Releasing some of the control is not necessarily a bad thing.

More ways to Share Your Stories:

Itunes can be used the same way as blogs for Podcasts and YouTube and Google Video for Video Feeds (all free).

Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new website to support our CBS Ministry Edition and invite you to visit us at www.cbswebministry.com.

The launch of this website represents a major milestone in our mission to delivery quality communication solutions to church and ministry organizations that are:

Affordable – cost effective to implement and maintain, and the built-in reporting capabilities will help you understand the effectiveness of your communications.

Capable – 18 key features (and growing) built right in and all accessible via a very powerful Content Management System (CMS) to deliver the functionality our church and ministry organizations require.

Compliant – designed to help you comply with PIPEDA and CANSPAM i.e. - Members area, pages for Privacy Policy and Terms, Forms Management for control of personal information, opt-in / opt-out features for all email and voice broadcasting.

Easy to use – no previous knowledge or experience is required to enable you to add content and maintain your website, send email and voice broadcasts, and even personalized and branded email templates, ecards, and newsletters.

Stable – business class / commercial grade technology that has been thoroughly tested, and delivers high availability and performance.

Supported – free product support that begins with handling the technical aspects associated with set up, and extends through-out the relationship to assist if you ever need help with something or have a technical question.

The CBS Ministry Edition website design excels in all areas and is easily integrated with our email and voice broadcasting services to create the ultimate communication platform. "Now, if we only had a Relationship Management system integrated….. (Stay tuned integration of a CRM product has begun)."

The CBS Ministry Edition is professionally designed and provides access to the tools you required to succeed in a digital world.

We invite you to take a tour of our new website and welcome your feedback.