The quickest shortcut to making your website look polished is to use icons. These little pictures, plenty of which are cheap or free, look way better than anything most mortals can do with Photoshop. A little pop of color, used judiciously, can help bring life to bland webpages. Coordinated sets of icons also make pages look like you put a modicum of thought into how the out-put looks. And, importantly, visitors are more likely act based off a compelling picture rather than a chunk of text.

So stop snagging any old picture off Google Image Search (naughty, naughty!). Here is a list of free icon sets guaranteed to make any non-profit’s webpage better, whether you’re into donations, social media, activism, environment, or health and human services. Have you seen anything I’ve left off? Leave a link in the comments.

Donations

Donate Now Buttons

Festive Donate Buttons

Open Source Icons (including money icons)

Themed Fundraising Buttons for Email

Credit Card and PayPal Icons

Social Media

Vector Social Media Icon Set

Scribble Social Icon Set

Scribble Social Icon Set

WG Social Media Icons

Double J Social Media Balloons

Buddycons

Health and Human Services

Fruit/Food Bank Icons

Education Icons

Jana free baby icon set

People & Disability Icons

Medical Toolbar Icons

Environment

Environment Icons

Ecology Icons

Recycling Icons

Weather Icons

Water Icons

Activism

Endangered Animal Icons

Sign Up Petition Icon

World Flag Icons

Military and War Icons

Multi-ethnic People Icons

[Photo credit: Tree of Light by JPhilipson, on Flickr]

If you’ve been thinking about how to scrap your paper bulletin (and you should be), but you’re not sure how to sell it to your members, take a page (virtually, of course) from this ad I spotted in InformationWeek:

InformationWeek
Worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

InformationWeek will be carbon-neutral within 10 years. As part of this commitment, four 2009 issues will not be printed – instead they will be available to our readers as interactive PDF downloads.

What’s more, we’re working with nonprofit organizations to protect and restore the world’s forests. InformationWeek will plant a tree for each of the first 5000 downloads of every green issue.

Please join us. To find out more or tell us what you think, go to informationweek.com/green

There’s so much I love about this campaign. First off, they realize that paper publications rank with junk mail in most households. No point in going directly to the recycling bin. Think about that the next time you stuff an envelope with your bulletin.

Secondly, they’re giving their readers lots of notice and letting them know these PDFs are “interactive” – added value and preemptive marketing! So start, notifying your members that you’re going digital, and tell them about the benefits of shifting to online pubs.

Thirdly, they’re planting trees. Who on earth would have a beef with that? Makes you want to go download a document. It’s good for the planet.

Finally, they’re providing more information and asking for feedback. I’ve talked with many organizations that say they absolutely cannot afford to let the paper bulletin go. But if they ask their members what they think, they often find they don’t care one way or the other.

This is a simple campaign, and one that can save you a fair bit of money too. By the time you save postage and printing, you can probably hire someone to help layout your digital version and attract more readers along the way.

[Image: Flickr user Ryner12]

If you’re anything like me, you hit the Google search anywhere between 100 and 1 million times a day. And, if you’re like me, you don’t give a second thought to how much energy you use up. This article in The London Times quotes physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, who says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea.

His estimations are in part from a recent report by industry analysts Gartner Group, who said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions.

Yikes.

Last week, I found a computer on the curb and felt bad someone was willing to throw out a perfectly functional machine when many people could really use it. I’ve already advised you on how to safely and thoroughly remove all your personal files from your computer. Now here’s why you should keep your computer out of the landfill (thanks BestStuff for your list!).

E-Waste Statistics You Should Know:

1. About 220 million tons of old computers and other tech hardware are trashed in the United States each year (Environmental Protection Agency, 2001).

2. About 63.3 million desktop computers will be taken out of service in the year 2002, and 85 percent of them will end up in landfills across the country, constituting an ever-growing environmental hazard (National Safety Council, 2001).

3. By the year 2005, one computer will become obsolete for every new one put on the market (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001).

4. Fifty percent of computers being recycled are in good working order. They are discarded to make way for the latest technology (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001).

5. Experts estimate that we will have more than 500 million obsolete computers in the United States between 1997 and 2007 (Poison PCs).

6. Five hundred million computers in the world contain 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, and 632,000 pounds of mercury (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

7. The average lifespan of a computer has shrunk from four or five years to two years (National Safety Council, 1999).

8. About 70 percent of heavy metals found in U.S. landfills comes from discarded electronics such as circuit boards, wires, steel casings and other parts (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

9. Only 12.75 million computers, including monitors and keyboards, will be recycled in the United States in 2002 (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

10. Americans are buying more computers than people in any other nations. Currently more than 50 percent of U.S. households own computers, and therefore, generate the most e-waste (The Basel Action Network, 2002).