Google's nonprofit program offers a variety of services your organization can leverage to the benefit of your community. If you aren't a member of the program (read their eligibility guidelines) here is a run down of what the service offers:

• Free or discounted version of Google Apps for your organization
• Free AdWords advertising
• Premium branding and increased uploads on YouTube
• Free licensing for Google Earth, SketchUp, and Maps API

The services they offer at a free or discounted rate are worth the time it takes to apply, which isn't very long.  A few thoughts on proceeding:

• Apply to the nonprofit program with an email address that's not your personal account, like googlegrants@yournonprofit.org. After approval, at the very least enroll in Google Grants (which will give you up to $10,000/month to spend on AdWords) and YouTube for Nonprofits.
• When setting up AdWords, you have to set up a unique account that's not already in use.  You might want to consider using the same googlegrants@yournonprofit.org.
• For ease of access, use that same email to set up your YouTube channel.  You'll want to link your YouTube channel to AdWords.  Once you're in AdWords, look to the bottom left corner to link them.
• Use the same email address again to set up both Google Analytics and the Google Webmaster Toolkit. Both of these services require you to install meta data and code snippets into your site to verify ownership. Once in place you should link AdWords to Google Analytics, and then Analytics to the Webmaster Toolkit.
• To link AdWords to your Google Analytics, head to the Tools and Analysis tab in AdWords and click on the Google Analytics option, this will walk you through connecting the two services.
• To link Google Analytics to the Webmaster Toolkit, go to your site profile in Analytics, click Admin, then Property Settings, scroll down to the toolkit section, click Edit and link the profile on Analytics to the profile on the toolkit.  When you are finished, click Apply on Analytics.

The point in linking these services  is to gain an understanding of how users find your content and to allow you a level of control in that process. And using one designated account to manage access will save a lot of headaches.  With this account, you can grant access to other users, but this master account remains untied to any one person.

You'll also note the benefit of linking these various tools when the data from one service begins to appear in another.  For instance, you'll see better query data from the Webmaster Toolkit appear in Analytics or traffic data appearing in AdWords.

For more information on the nonprofit program - http://www.google.com/nonprofits/

Evan Ratcliff, writing at Wired, has an interesting take on the Stimulus Bill. He proposes that the government’s act of  putting all the  stimulus-spending data on Recovery.gov “may be more than a minor victory for the democracy. It could be a stimulus in and of itself.” By making government information available in databases with “machine-readable formats,” such as RSS, XML and KML, new business can be created, boosting the economy in the process. Ratcliff quotes Sean Forman, CEO of FortiusOne, "The data is the infrastructure." Entrepreneurs, such as Forman, are eager to get their hands on spreadsheets “squirreled away on a federal agency server,” so they can turn a profit by making it useful to someone by reorganizing the data.

Ratcliff compares where we are to day with government data with the situation in 1996 when the feds opened up GPS signals to the public, spawning a $6 billion industry. He lists other examples: Tiger census data, Google Earth, Microsoft Visual Earth, Zillow, Trulia, CloudMade and Swivel as companies that are opening up government data that was previously out of reach to the public and making a buck in the process.

Now this is stimulus we can believe in.

Politicalwire.com highlights how Google layered county voting results from the last seven presidential elections on to Google Maps and Google Earth. It's an incredibly quick way to look at past election results. It really is a "great resource" for history buffs, political junkies and geeks. Google also has a good page to keep you up to the second on the twist and turns of Election 2008. They have a index of various election maps, including this one showing the "fundrace," which highlights where in the country the campaign cash is coming from.