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Nonprofit Websites

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Started 2 years ago by sugarplumclarey
Latest reply from AMEEKER

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JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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Chris, based on your resources, my advice is to move the site to Wordpress and purchase a theme.

The process would cost you all at the most $150 bucks.

Woothemes is a place where you can purchase an affordable theme that can support the general content pages of the site. Additionally, if you are able to have a consistent publishing schedule Wordpress will make it easy if you do choose to blog.

As an organization, the number one thing you should be doing is building your email list. The site should make it dead simple for someone to give up their email address. Incentives (free reports, free tickets, private invite only events) help you increase the number of conversions to build that list.

I use a few services to manage my lists. I recommend Aweber, but I also use MailChimp and Campaign Monitor.

Aweber has great tutorials on their site to help you understand the basics of email marketing.

For any non-profit organization thinking about the web, the number one question I would be asking is - "What would Obama do?".

The Obama site is still the most innovative use of the web I've ever seen for a (non-profit) organization. They make it dead simple for you to connect with "what they believe" - "their story". They also make it dead simple for you to share that story and lastly, most importantly - they make it dead simple for you to give up your money and really not get anything in return. But, you feel like your getting something because you buy the story.

Non-profits aren't much different. You're constantly asking money for what's mostly intangible. You better get your story right. Good writing, images and video are in disposable to get that point across.

If I ran a non-profit's web efforts I would be dissecting Obama's digital efforts inside and out.

Posted 2 years ago #
chrisgillespie
Short North/Victorian Village
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I think large non-profits do make it part of their budget, but those of us replying are small. Ultimately, I'd like to demonstrate the effectiveness of the website by measuring increases in volunteers and/or donated money (the online donations will be next up, as soon as I clear a little room - it's easy enough to do, but I'm looking at a few options). That may pave the way for paid work. We are only now about to hire our first paid position, and it's a volunteer coordinator. A very important position for us. We were only able to afford $2000 (we scored a grant), to pilot this position for this year. We hope to grow that, too.

Posted 2 years ago #
chrisgillespie
Short North/Victorian Village
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My above reply about our resouces was @artbomb112.

@JonMyers: Thanks for the insights. I took over a website hosted at GoDaddy, and have thrown in a bunch of custom code to at least do things like allow us to have folks sign-up for emails, etc. I've been looking into sites like Wordpress as alternatives, as well as plug and play code and new hosting. It's so much to cover, and difficult to narrow down the choices. Thanks for some excellent options. I'll look into them.

I'm taking to heart your advice on getting the story out there. I think that's exactly what we need. We are part of the community, we are community building. The website, in combination with events, can both help us in getting volunteers and money, as well as fulfill our purpose of betterment of the park for the community. Need to find an elegant way of communicating this. I hope the meeting helps to get folks on board with a vision for the website, and how it relates. I think it will.

If there are other suggestions from anyone, or if anyone wants to help out, let me know. Thanks :)

Posted 2 years ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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Chris, if you all need someone yapping at you all about this stuff for an hour I would be happy to go deeper. Let me know. As you can tell, this is my world and I love thinking/ talking about this stuff.

I have plenty of space on one of my servers if you need hosting donated.

Posted 2 years ago #
chrisgillespie
Short North/Victorian Village
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Thanks, Jon! It will probably be about a month before I put together that meeting, but I'll PM you and see if you're available. Any advice to save us some legwork would be really great :)

Posted 2 years ago #
sugarplumclarey

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JonMyers wrote >>
Aside from the lack of a financial incentive, the problem with donating a website that wins attention and awards is that it usually takes a team.
Additionally, the organization you're building a website for has to be actively engaged in the process. In order for the site to get elegant, beautiful and usable results you need content.

I think that "elegant, beautiful and usable" might be a little bit of a reach given most nonprofits' limited staff & budget. I'd lower the bar to "looks like it was designed this century." Content generation isn't too tough if you keep the website simple: mission, vision, staff, etc. From there you can always update if you have the means, but I think an attractive, low-maintenance homepage is a must!

Posted 2 years ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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No doubt about it, I'm with you there.

Trust me, these days I think you actually have to go out of your way to make an ugly site and yep, loads of people do it or they don't care, which blows my mind.

There's really no excuse if you can type a few words into a search form and hit the search button. It takes research and a little time to find a decent approach.

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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For being a nonprofit that I would assume has some money to throw around... the Columbus Partnership certainly has a lackluster website:

http://www.columbuspartnership.com

Maybe if each of their members pitched in $10, they could find someone willing to scrape something together for them.

Member List: http://www.columbuspartnership.com/images/2010_TCP_Members,_Titles_Affliations.pdf

Posted 2 years ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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With all those PDF/Word files on the the homepage, the site is the digital equivalent of a dog park where nobody has cleaned up after their dog.

Shitty.

Posted 2 years ago #
AMEEKER
Weinland Park
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A simple redesign can do so much for a non profit. We recently redesigned a Crime Stoppers site in Southern Ohio, immediately before their biggest annual fundraiser - a 5K Run/Walk on Thanksgiving Day. Among other things, we integrated some simple PayPal features so they could take registrations online. The result? They registered more than three times the number of participants than usual, and more than tripled their profit from the event. For a small non-profit, that simple change has TRIPLED their annual budget for the upcoming year. TRIPLED. That's a big deal when you're working in the five digit range in the first place.

Posted 2 years ago #