Through the Noise

Mary Collins and Stefan Woehlke founded Carpe DC Food Tours as a way to communicate the history and culture of Washington, DC through food. Focusing on the dynamic neighborhoods of Shaw and U Street, the start-up gives tourists and locals a deeper understanding of the streets and people that have made Washington, DC such a creative and fascinating place, rich with arts and literature and often obs...

NPPD: Nonprofits get free google apps in the U.S. but the process is a bit more complicated for international nonprofits. If you need help signing up for these useful apps, contact Infamia, and they'll give you a hand, for free. Today we chat with Debra S. Satkowiak of The Institute of Makers of Explosives, an organization representing the commercial explosives industry, including mining, blasting...

Today we sit down with Shaun Masavage, the CEO/Founder of Edge Tech Labs, a product development firm that recently launched their first product, DrinkMate, a personal, portable breathalyzer that works with your smartphone. Now available for Androids and iPhones, this compact tool has a great back story which we hear some of today. If you have a fantastic idea for a new tool, this is an episode you...

Today's problem of the day is how to rectify a protected Twitter account with the need to reach a wide audience. And this ties right into our guest, Horacio Gavilán, Executive Director of AHAA, the largest national trade organization "representing the entire Hispanic marketing, communications and media industry." The word Hispanic was invented in 1972 by the U.S. Census Bureau to encompass 37 diff...

We start today's episode by checking in with Mickey of Infamia for the Nonprofit Problem of the Day. Now that you have a Member Community, the challenge is to integrate it into your CRM so your users (and staff) have full functionality. Today is a bit of a departure as we sit down with Robert Shea of Grant Thornton, one of our rare guests from the private sector. In the Washington region though, e...

Our latest Nonprofit Problem of the Week: setting up a Member Community. How could a Member Community benefit your organization? Today we have a very timely guest -- Dr. Shawn DuBravac, Chief Economist of the Consumer Technology Association, the organization responsible for the world's largest technology trade show which just wrapped up in Las Vegas. With over 150,000 attendees and 3500 exhibitors...

Our latest Nonprofit Problem of the Week involves an association management system that was acquired and installed without proper integration into the association's website, leaving members unable to login and interact with the organization. Don't let your members or donors down with a compromised system, contact Infamia today to ensure your processes are working smoothly. Today's guest is Cynthia...

Today's Nonprofit Problem of the Week addresses CRMs. Are you pleased with the technology you're using to manage your member and donor relationships? Do you have all the functionality you require -- without tons of extraneous options? Call Infamia if you are ready to stop struggling with this essential part of nonprofit management.  And our guest is Joseph Doss of the International Bottled Water A...

Today's nonprofit problem of the week: Wonky mobile apps that inexplicably changed fonts. Have you had issues with your mobile app behaving erratically? Infamia can help... Join us today for a conversation with Kris Admundson, the Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education as we explore some of the new "No Child Left Behind" law and what it means for state boards o...

Levanto of Obadal, Filler, MacLeod and Klein, a law firm specializing in public policy and association management. Many quite small nonprofits don't have the ability to maintain a full-time staff -- or hire one person who can wear every hat -- and that's where association management firms come in. We explore different reasons nonprofits would have a lawyer on staff and how a single issue organizat...

Do you feel the stress of working in an office, huddled over a computer is taking a toll on your body? Or worry about that old running injury that keeps flaring up? Today's guest, Michael Bowers of the American Physical Therapy Association has some ideas for you -- and 95,000 people at his fingertips that can help you address problems of your physical body so that your mind can work freely without...

Today we take another cultural departure from Washington, DC and chat with Jon Pratt of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. The Council exists to make nonprofits more effective and helps share resources, education, and training among nonoprofits working in Minnesota. This helps their member organizations stay current on trends and technology even while focusing primarily on their core issues. Min...

Have you ever wondered what it's like to work alongside local communities and businesses in far reaching corners of the world? How to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS across villages in Malawi? Talk about access to justice with indigenous tribes in Timor-Leste? Spread a message of peace on the ground in Papua New Guinea? Find out from the experts in the second half of our two-part series with leader...

This holiday season, we invite you to sit back and enjoy a stimulating two-part series addressing today's leading development issues: from climate change and capacity building to education and health and nutrition. Our conversations will engage experts, working on the ground, from Counterpart International, an international nonprofit that's been working for 50 years – and in more than 65 countries...

Have you struggled to make connections to your supporters? Found visitors to your website visit a single page or two before leaving? You won't want to miss today's episode when we talk with online communications consultant and the founder of EPolitics, Colin Delaney. Many nonprofit organizations get buried in the details of their own work that they have limited time to seek out techniques to ampli...

Today we're excited to welcome Cost Tree as a new sponsor. You may recall their appearance on episode 124. Thanks to their generous support, we're able to sit down today with Stephanie Berkowitz of the Northern Virginia Family Service. The NVFS is an organization working to strengthen communities in Northern Virginia by providing life-saving tools, resources, and training to those who need it most...

Providing a life-saving and life-changing service is something many organizations strive to do -- but once you've hit gold and have found a solution, the challenge becomes how to let potential clients know it exists. This is a good problem to have and one currently facing Code of Support, a four-year old organization based in Washington, DC. Code of Support is something of a "matchmaking organziat...

We were lucky to get David Humphries in the studio today -- he's not traveling to all corners of the earth facilitating community-based education and development right now. We had a great conversation that goes from Kenya to Colombia to Liberia and connects the dots between vastly different communities to find a common thread of success. We've heard this from previous guests on Through the Noise:...

On Through the Noise, we often explore the value of collaboration between individuals and organizations and today we sit down with Burt Edwards whose work with InterAction facilitates collaboration between organizations with similar goals. Operating from the idea that organizations are more successful when working together, InterAction is something of a clearinghouse of information for those worki...

John Porter, today's guest, has been named a Living Legend of Alexandria and has contributed to the success of the community his entire life. He first worked in Alexandria Public Schools as a teacher and was later principal of TC Williams for 22 years. He's well-known around Alexandria and is now helping his hometown in a different manner. As Executive Director of ACT for Alexandria, he helps fund...

Housing insecurity is one of the greatest problems facing millions of Americans today and the lack of safe, quality, affordable housing invites a host of other problems that can affect one's health as well as limit access to employment and healthy food. Fortunately there are many creative and thoughtful people working on this and we have one of them in the studio today. John Paukstis of Habitat fo...

Ever wondered where your money is going? Looking through your books at the end of the quarter or end of the year to discover that all your hard-raised money has evaporated into unforeseen costs? This is a common problem for nonprofits who have yet to figure out the difference between direct and indirect costs and how to accurately anticipate and budget for them. If your organization has struggled...

Does your branding say what you think it's saying? Today's guest, Danielle Baron of ABET, reveals the problems her organization faced when undertaking a rebranding. As she explains, if you asked 200 people what ABET meant, you could get 200 different answers. By undertaking a massive survey and hiring outside consultants for the rebranding, they were able to craft a uniform message that is direct,...

Today's episode is a little different. We're joined by Mehdi Sadaghdar, star of the popular YouTube series, ElectroBOOM. Videos on ElectroBOOM receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views, and the success of the series could be a lesson in communication for nonprofits and other organization. ElectroBOOM is valuable and popular, not just for the fascinating and funny way that Mehdi Sadag...

The folks at 501cTech describes themselves as "the people who help the people who help the people," and today we sit down with Todd Peterson who runs their Client Services division. Are you storing sensitive data on an Excel spreadsheet or flash drive? It's time to modernize. No matter how many staff an organization has, it will require IT services and 501cTech provides a full-range of services to...