Your Website: An Investment Worth Making

Most non-profit organizations use email, and many have websites, but most do not effectively maximize their website’s potential. Often hampered by a lack of resources, skills, or a vision of how the Web can be used, non-profits frequently lag behind commercial and government organizations in website utilization.

The potential of the Web is tremendous for non-profits, with uses ranging from a simple informational resource for volunteers to a full-fledged Intranet tool, allowing staff members to collaborate, organize and share information. How can your organization harness the Web’s potential for your work? A good place to begin is with the development of a Web Site Strategy that reflects your needs and resources.

First, look at the goals of your organization and think about how your website can help you meet these goals. Are you poised to increase your capacity? You could utilize your site to show the value of your expanded services. Are you beginning a fundraising campaign? You can accept donations using PayPal or a custom-developed interface. Do you need to keep in touch with volunteers? Allow them to sign up for periodic email e-newsletters.

If you already have a website, sit down with some key organizational players (staff, volunteers, board, donors) and look at what your site says about your organization. A professional-looking, easy to use website indicates a professional organization. If your site is beginning to look dated or disorganized, consider building a new set of templates to keep the look of your site consistent. Start by organizing the information on your site into logical sections that make sense to your visitors. If you have many different kinds of visitors (such as volunteers, clients, and donors), consider organizing your site with sections for each audience. Create templates that use a consistent navigation structure on each page, allowing users to access each section from anywhere in the site.

Whether you already have a website or are building fresh, remember that content is what users want, and what will bring them back. Visitors are likely coming to your site to learn something (how to volunteer, where your office is located) or do something (make a donation, sign up for a raffle). Keep your content organized around these tasks. Information on your site should be kept as short as possible and divided into chunks that are easily scanned. Web users have notoriously short attention spans, so make use of lists, subtitles, and headlines to quickly direct visitors to the information they need.

Be sure to take a step back and look at the big picture content, too. Your site should immediately communicate the identity of your organization, its mission, and a sense of action – a feeling that “something great is happening here” that makes people want to be involved.

Finally, it is critically important to keep your site up to date. Nothing frustrates a web user more than dated content. Make sure your organization plans to make a time and financial commitment to adding fresh content to your website on a regular, on-going basis, such as once a week. A good approach is to appoint one staff member or volunteer as “web editor”, but be sure not to make them do all the work. An effective, engaging, useful website will take the participation of your entire staff: everyone in your organization must contribute photos, articles, testimonials, quotes, etc. to the site through this editor. In other words, the web editor's job is to post all the information provided to them by the entire team – not to come up with all the information to post on their own. A variety of perspectives keeps content fresh and resonates with many audiences: volunteers, contributors, and the community.

The Web is a critically important communication tool for non-profits. If your organization does not have a website, or hasn’t updated its content in a while, it’s time to make an organizational New Year’s resolution for 2007. An investment of time and resources into this outreach tool will have huge rewards for your organization in the end: increased community participation, better informed clients, and more donations. For more information on how to increase the power of your website to bring in donors, volunteers, and clients, contact do good Consulting at laurahuth@dogoodconsulting.org.

     by Rachel Weber, do good Consulting’s website designer

A Resolution on Resolutions

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. As a goal-oriented person, this surprises me, but in 36 years, I cannot recall making even one New Year resolution. I am not alone: many people avoid New Year’s resolutions for a variety of reasons. Is it because they (and I) fear setting such a goal and failing? Is it because a one-year timeframe is too long? Is it because our goals are too grand or ambiguous? Is it because we are setting goals that we feel others want for us rather than those we want for ourselves? Are our goals re-active rather than pro-active?

I thought about this over Christmas and decided that this year, with all the recent change in my life, I would set a New Year’s resolution. Instead of focusing on the goal itself, though, I would place more emphasis on the specifics of how I planned to accomplish my goal.

GETTING MORE ORGANIZED. This, I determined, would be my 2007 New Year’s resolution. But this goal – without definition – is so broad it left me feeling anxious and uninspired. Hence, I turned to focusing on the specifics and came up with two things I would do this year toward my goal of becoming more organized.

Properly sort and file all incoming and outgoing emails. No more will I allow 2,000 emails to accumulate in my inbox. My new policy is that there can never be more than 100 emails in my inbox – for any reason. If there are more than 75, I must review my inbox and take care of any outstanding or pending issues. This means responding to or processing past-due requests, creating necessary filing systems, or deleting messages that I no longer need until I reach my 75-message goal. I also pledge to immediately add all information from new contacts to my Outlook contacts immediately (and not wait for this to miraculously happen on its own) as well as to properly process all attached files into the appropriate folders on my computer so I’m not frantically searching for them later.

Review every item in my (paper) in-box at the beginning and end of each week. No longer will I view my in-box as either a bottomless pit or long-term storage location. Every Monday, I pledge to go through everything in-box item and either flag it for work that week (and place it in a time-specific slot on my calendar), file it as needed, or discard if appropriate. Each Friday, I will once again review my in-box (which should be quick, since my plan is for it to be empty!). If flagged files still appear at week’s end, I will review the reasons for this and work on them (time management, communication, research, etc.)

For me, this goal is both broad (getting organized), but also very specific (email and in-box goals). The specifics help me work towards my larger goal each and every day and not just arrive at this time next year without having done anything toward achieving my broader goal. It is also a goal I myself truly want, not one that I simply feel I “should” do. So now I find myself for the first time inspired by a New Year’s resolution. I can already visualize my Outlook inbox shrinking to a manageable size, and my paper in-box not taking over my desk. I have now also shared by goal with you (actually nearly 1,000 of you!) and feel very committed to achieving it. Ask me again next December how many emails are in my inbox. I guarantee you I’ll say “no more than 75!"

     by Laura Huth, do good Consulting President & CEO

Group Spotlight: Cunningham Children's Home

Cunningham Children's Home, nestled in north Urbana on 32 rolling acres of land, is lucky to have an asset like Cloydia Hill Larimore on staff. When I sat down with the Vice President of Public Relations, Development & Marketing last month, she was bursting at the seams with pride over Cunningham's successes, most notably the expansion of programs and services the agency offers.

Cunningham Children's Home, which dates back to 1894, has grown from an orphanage and deaconess house to include a residential treatment center, a special therapies program, independent and transitional living program, a special education school for residents, specialized foster care, spiritual counseling and support, and a special education day treatment school for young people who live in Champaign County.

Cunningham was started by a group of Methodist Episcopal women who were given the home and its surround acres by Judge Joseph and Mary Cunningham for the purpose of opening a home for children. Over time, the United Methodist Women developed the agency into a residence for wards of the state, and later into a multi-faceted organization providing mental health treatment and other supportive services to children, youth, and families with serious emotional and behavioral problems.

One hundred eleven years later, the United Methodist Women are still very involved in Cunningham's affairs; in fact many serve on the board of directors. On any given day, Cunningham serves 167 youth, with 40 of them living on site. The children range in age from infants born to young mothers in their independent living program to 21 year old clients.

Children at Cunningham enter a one to three year program which prepares them for daily interactions and life outside of a structured facility. The goal is for young people to transition to less structured programs such as foster care, an independent living program, or returning to their family or public school. Cloydia explained how amazing it can be to witness growth in children's ability to interact with others on a daily basis after going through Cunningham’s programs. She shared stories about the children, and how small changes can make a huge difference in their lives—referring to these moments of change as “little Cunningham miracles.”

To learn more about Cunningham Children's Home, stop by Lincoln Square Village in downtown Urbana the weekend of April 20-22 for Cunningham’s Festival of Quilts, one of the group’s annual fundraisers. To learn more about volunteer opportunities, see http://www.cunninghamhome.org or email Cloydia Hill Larimore at clarimore@cunninhamhome.org.

  by Julie Bennington, do good Consulting Community Liaison