Understanding Understanding

A few weeks ago, I told you about the 2009 eNonprofits Benchmarks Study, which allows you to compare the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns to that of other nonprofits. Today, M+R released its 2010 Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study, reporting the effectiveness of nonprofits’ Facebook and Twitter efforts. In a conference call today, they discussed some of the highlights.

Are your organization’s e-mails as effective as they could be? Are they as effective as other organizations’? Measure your results against this handy metrics table based on results of the latest nonprofit benchmarks survey.

“Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. “

In today’s Times, David Brooks writes about young neuroscientists finding sources of cultural differences and prejudices. Here are two of the cool findings he reports.

Study shows morality is judged more harshly when the events asked about are to take place next week vs. in 10 years.