14 Email Do's and Dont's

Ways to make your messages more efficient and effective

Anyone who regularly uses email to communicate with coworkers or other professional contacts has probably noticed that, despite its many positives, email can also be incredibly inefficient.

Think about it: How many times have you volleyed a half-dozen messages with a coworker over the course of two days just to schedule a meeting? How many hours of your life have you wasted trying to decipher messages missing one key word? And how many tasks did you interrupt today alone so you could respond to a note that just arrived in your inbox? When you consider how many issues email can pose — and how many of your nonprofit's staff members use it to communicate on a daily basis — you can begin to see just how much this tool can actually hinder your organization's ability to get things done.

The good news is that you can get back to a state of efficiency without giving up email altogether; you just have to get rid of some bad email habits — and convince your co-workers to do the same.

Get in Touch With the Hippie Culture

by Jay Brandley edited by Lynne Hand

The term hippie is often misunderstood by many. When thinking of the word or term hippie, many people often picture a bunch of people with beards, headbands, peace signs and bell-bottom jeans (see above).  Well, there is much more to the concept of what a hippie or the hippie movement is.

Online Forum Membership – Is It For You?

by  Heather Pears

Are you lonely because you don’t know anyone else who collects pet rocks? You don’t need to be alone; chances are there is an internet forum for people who love to talk about pet rocks.

That might seem a silly example but on the internet there is a forum, or discussion board, for almost any topic you can think of. People like to talk about things and share ideas and an internet forum is one of the places that allows you to do that.

Go On, What's Your Favourite English Word?

(edited by Lynne Hand)

What is the most popular word in the English language?  There have been several polls over the years, remarkably (which is a nice word), it would appear to depend, on your personal experiences.   Mother is the most beautiful word in the English language, according to a survey of non-English speakers.

More than 40,000 people in 102 countries were polled by the British Council to mark its 70th anniversary in 2002.

False Friends by Margaret Watson Years ago I studied Spanish at Queen’s University in Belfast. The class was very intense, getting you from beginner to translator level in 10 months, or that at least was the theory. We weren’t the usual bunch of students in that each of us had pressing, but different reasons for […]

MY first holiday overseas was to the quiet, almost sleepy (well it was way back then) French seaside resort of Hendaye Plage.

It was a school trip for a bunch of 15 year olds who for the most part were venturing outside Britain for the very first time.