The New Organizing Institute is bringing together the Internet gurus from the Kerry, Dean, Clark, and Edwards campaigns as well as MoveOn, the DNC, AFL-CIO, and top fundraising and direct marketing consultants to teach 2006 campaign staff how make the most out of their websites and email lists.

Sounds impressive.

Experts in these areas will show you how to conduct a successful email fundraising campaign, organize volunteers online, outreach to bloggers, coordinate your field and online work, and make smart choices about political technology.

You can create a custom sign up box for your Myspace page so that your new friends can sign up for your list with one click.

Then, your new friends will be automatically entered into your DIA Headquarters into a group you've created just for them. This way, you'll be able to see who's signing up through your Myspace account and easily contact them later.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to your DIA headquarters and create a new group for your Myspace signups. Be sure to copy the group key, a number found at the end of your URL when viewing your new group. It will look something like this:

https://secure.democracyinaction.org/YOURSHORTNAME/hq/groups.jsp?groups_KEY=47223

So, in this case, you need to copy the 47223. We'll use it later.

2. Go to your Myspace account, and click " Edit profile"
Paste the code below into your " About me" section. Be sure to change all the placeholders with your org key, your Myspace URL, and your group key.

DIA members IAVA will appear on MTV at 8 pm EST tonight for a special entitled "Iraq Uploaded".

"Iraq Uploaded" will be hosted by Gideon Yago and will explore how the
personal videos and blogs from Troops in Iraq are informing the American
public about the war. It is a powerful and fast-paced show that IAVA
supports fully. "Iraq Uploaded" will highlight unfiltered videos and
military blogs that have been coming straight from Iraq through sites like
www.iava.org.

Because you can never get enough of Myspace, here's an interesting breakdown of the pros and cons of creating one for your org. Basically, if you want to reach the youths, a Myspace page is a good bet.

DIA members currently workin' it on Myspace include The One Campaign and Greenpeace. Am I missing one?

You might want to reconsider heavy use of images in your future email blasts, according to M+R's latest release. Apparently, even cute pictures like this don't do much to boost response rates.

Check out their in depth report, including best practices and tips.

Howdy Partners.

If nothing else, make your campaign pages witty. Cause and point--DIA member Freedom States Alliance created the vanity url gunguys.com, " Where everyone is a straight shooter". Kinda cute, right?

The site offers daily updates from the Gun Guys on issues such as gun buy backs, America's "shooting gallery" and the illegal gun trade. Serious stuff, in a piquant package, often draws a larger crowd to your issue.

This weekend I saw An Inconvenient Truth, aka " The Al Gore Movie".

Rather than wax poetic about my thoughts here, I suggest you visit Climate Crisis.net for their What You Can Do action center.

Kudos to DIA member CCAN for being in the right place at the right time to sign people up to receive e-alerts as they left the theater.

Today is United Nations' World Refugee Day - a day designed specifically to remember the millions of refugees around the world. DIA member Refugees International offers compelling post cards created with the Tell-A-Friend tool that urge friends and family to donate towards the more than two million people in Darfur who have been displaced from their homes.


You can also try recent heavyweight Save Darfur. If you haven't sent a postcard to The Prez yet urging him to push for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, today is the day.

Get your daily dose of political cartoons from DIA community member The Center for American Progress.

We're hiring.