A great way to reach out to your constituents, funders, activists, and supporters is to engage them in online seminars, or webinars.

What's so great about webinars? Well, webinars can cover any topic you want — from training your board of directors on how to be great advocates for your mission, to hosting an online press conference about a new report for media contacts, to learning the ins and outs of an important piece of legislation that's important to your supporters.

Webinars offer a unique opportunity to meet with your users, even if you may be spread out across the country or world to share information, answer questions, and engage. And, with a variety of tools available, they can be inexpensive to host and cut down on non-essential travel (which is a bonus for your wallet and the environment!)

Kami Griffiths and Chris Peters, two über-experts on webinars at TechSoup Global, just produced a neat pair of articles covering how to plan for successful webinars and also how to ensure that they meet your goals. Check out 10 Steps for Planning a Successful Webinar and Tips for Conducting a Successful Webinar to learn how to incorporate online seminars and trainings into your engagement and outreach plans for 2009.

And, if you're not sure what a webinar is all about, take an hour out of your day to participate in an upcoming TechSoup Talks! webinar hosted by Kami or review previously recorded sessions. They're FREE and full of useful information on a variety of nonprofit-specific topics. Also, if you work for a public library, TechSoup's MaintainIT Project offers free webinars on a variety of library-specific topics of interest (and a full archive of all previously recorded events too).

Photo of a webinar screenshot from the MaintainIT Project on Flickr.