In late February, Google announced a significant change to its search algorithm. While it usually doesn't talk much about how its crawlers review Web pages, this particular change was worthy of notice because it will affect essentially every website, including one run by your nonprofit. Starting April 21, Google's search algorithm will have greater focus on "mobile friendliness" in determining page rank. In particular, when supporters look for you on their mobile devices, your page rank will be greatly affected by whether your site has a full level of optimization. That means less visitors and fewer people getting interested in your cause if your site isn't optimized. Nonprofit content management tools with mobile device optimization in mind can help you manage this significant change to the way your supporters see you.

Before we truly put an end to 2014, let's remember the best moments.

While some people like to think that looking back on 2014 is strictly limited to December, we at PICnet believe that a year-in-review should happen in January. After all, December is part of the year, so it's rather silly to consider the year finished before the ball actually drops. In any event, 2014 was a big year for us and we saw a lot of things happen in the nonprofit sector, from payments to petitions. Here are some of our best articles from the last year. We think you may find them enlightening and fun.

When Action for Healthy Kids chose Soapbox Engage, beyond the clicks and code of a powerful and beautiful website that supercharges their mission, they found a true partner:

“I do believe that Soapbox stands by its mission,” said Anthony Moss, Web and Database Manager for Action for Healthy Kids. “They speak the nonprofit language well and want to forward the mission of nonprofits. From my experience, that’s rare - and it’s true across the company. We, as an organization, really appreciate that.”

Action for Healthy Kids faced a common dilemma at the core of every nonprofit: how to gauge impact. Specifically, as a nonprofit mobilizing thousands of volunteers to catalyze change in schools across the nation, how could they know how many schools they were touching?

In Soapbox Engage and Salesforce.com, Action for Healthy Kids found their answer:

“We purchased a list of 130,000 schools across the country and uploaded it to Salesforce.com,” explained Anthony Moss, Web and Database Manager for Action for Healthy Kids. “We then directed users to our website where they could search for the school with which they are affiliated by utilizing the Soapbox Engage Salesforce search tool.”

When Action for Healthy Kids elected to build their new website with Soapbox Engage, they chose more than just a great looking, mobile-friendly website that was easy to manage and useful for event registrations. They adopted a powerful platform integrating with Salesforce.com in ways that have transformed core business processes.

“The process for applying for our grants has completely changed as a result of Engage,” said Anthony Moss, Web and Database Manager for Action for Healthy Kids. “It was a painful, painful thing before. We’d have to send people to Survey Monkey and dowload responses in an Excel file.”