Google has a service called Alerts that will monitor News, Blogs, Web, Videos, Groups, or aggregate of all five.

When you set up an alert, you choose terms to follow, what you want to monitor, the frequency at which you wish to receive the alert, and enter an email address to send the alert to.

When your terms and the type of post you are monitoring is discovered by the service, an alert is sent to the email address you've assigned to the alert.

Nonprofits (and others) can use the Alerts to:

• Monitor what is being posted about your organization
• Monitor what is being posted about your constituents
• Follow trends within your industry
• "Listen" to individuals of interest

I set up a new email address that I'm using specifically for the Alerts. I don't really want to slam any of the email accounts I commonly use with additional stuff. I also have a couple of accounts that get so much spam that the Alerts would just get lost in the noise. If you can set up a separate account, it seems like it might be a good idea.

Alerts are a quick and easy way to keep up-to-date on issues that matter to you.