Well, Pope Francis is on Twitter (@Pontifex) with more than 2.5 million followers, and there is even a Pope app.

One Chinese Buddhist organization in Taiwan is so social media savvy that it uses it in multiple languages, maintains a satellite television presence worldwide, and does podcasts. And an evangelical protestant church in the US is just about as multi-channel as you can get, with a FB Page, Twitter feed, blog, smart phone and tablet apps, albums on iTunes, and online videos.

Quite frankly, all this social media activity has been spurred by the declining numbers of people claiming to be religiously affiliated in any way. That disaffection is particularly remarkable among young people. For instance, a Pew research survey found that one-third of Millennials in the US say they have no religious affiliation.

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Nonprofit Blog Carnival

May 2013 Nonprofit Blog Carnival. The May Nonprofit Blog Carnival was all about "Dear Board" letters. What would you like to say to a nonprofit board if you could? Well more than a dozen experts came up with ideas, resulting in a plethora of ideas for lighting a fire under your board. Get these while you can!

Nonprofit Blog Carnival Call: Data For Good Uh oh! Could a theme about data be more relevant? Of course, we're all using data for good purposes, right? Put your data hat on, and than send your post to the June Carnival, hosted by Wild Apricot.

Fundraising

• If you want to raise funds, aim your sights at the elderly Jeff Brooks says that young donors are really as rare as unicorns ("statistical anomaly" actually). It's their parents and grandparents that you should be after.

• Millennials will reinvent charity On the other hand perhaps, as John Bare writes in this CNN piece, the term "donor" will become out of date. Young people may just recreate what it is like to "give."

• How to Raise Money With a Newsletter Tom Ahern explains that email newsletters and print ones are different beasts. AND, the printed ones are better at raising money.

Communications/Marketing

• Benchmarks and Best Practices for Nonprofits and Video Beth Kanter summarizes a recent report about nonprofits and video. Turns out there's a big "achievement" gap. NPOs do think video is important, but few actually budget for it.

• How to Produce and Promote Your Organization's Dynamic Video Story For NPOs who do have video in their sights, the Foundation Center and Purple Duck Marketing are teaming up for two June webinars. One is "Using the Power of Video to Raise Money and Support," and part two is "How to Create Your Organization's Compelling Public Service Announcements."

• How to turn email content into blog posts Is your blog a content glutton? Here are some tips from John Haydon about mining your emails to create more blog posts.

Social Media

• When Is It Okay to Repost Content to Facebook or Any Social Network? This question has certainly haunted me. There's a tendency to not want to get in people's face so to speak by repeating your posts on social media. Tracy Sestilli of Social Strand Media says frequency should vary by network. Fortunately she breaks it all down with a handy chart.

• Five Tools for Your Social Media Intern Thinking of putting that summer intern on your needing-to-be-energized social media? Social Media BirdBrain Robyn McIntyre has some ideas that will keep that assignment from going south.

• Content calendar templates for social media Those social media updates aren't just isolated bits of information. There should be a plan for them, and they can be coordinated with your fundraising campaigns. Marc Pitman tells how it is done and even links to some examples of calendars.

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Nonprofits are becoming bolder when it comes to how they raise money to support their missions.

I remember when "profit" was not a word you used within nonprofit organizations. But, charities have gotten tired of being trapped in a "starvation cycle" where they teeter on the edge of insolvency and dare not run surpluses much less talk about them in front of donors.

Now many donors prefer to fund sustainable charities that look as though they will be around for the long haul and that may be able to actually make a difference in the social issues they address. Fortunately, financing outside the box of traditional fundraising is becoming easier.

New hybrid forms of nonprofits have emerged, and new ways of funding them seem to crop up daily. B Corporations, a cross between a business and a nonprofit, are spreading, and funding mechanisms such as social impact bonds have become popular among large funders, foundations, and government entities.

As a consequence, nonprofits are no longer dismayed by becoming more business-like these days. Indeed, they are urged to adopt the best practices of businesses by many experts. Starting commercial ventures to help meet their bottomline needs is commonplace, and many charities seek to become a bit more risk-taking like the best social entrepreneurs, bringing some of those traits in house.

Here is an array of articles on this site that address these issues:

• The Importance of Treating Your Nonprofit Like a Business
• Before Starting a Nonprofit, Consider Other Business Structures
• What Philanthropic Equity Means for Nonprofits

How has the conversation about profit, business ventures, and new financing methods changed at your nonprofit? Let us know in the comments.

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The demographics are clear.

Baby Boomers started turning 65 in 2011 and, for a long time, at least 10,000 of them will continue to do so every day.

They are also flocking to the Internet. The number of people 65 and older on the Internet has been growing 16% per year in the last decade. Jakob Nielsen, a researcher of technology usability, says that "older users are the last Internet frontier."

Yet Nielsen's recent research has revealed that, although websites have improved, they are still way too daunting for older users. That's because designers do not take into account the physical deficits that we all encounter as we age.

Nielsen found in his latest study that people 65 and older are 43% slower when using websites than younger users. Furthermore, that decline starts way before any of us become seniors and progresses at a rate of 0.8% per year.

This has enormous consequences for nonprofits, since they rely so heavily on the older generation to donate and volunteer. To learn more about the Nielsen usability study and tips for making your nonprofit website easier to use, see my summary at Aging Donors Need Better Websites.

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