Your Website: An Investment Worth Making

This story originally ran in the January 2007 issue of Doing Good . Almost three years has passed and with pervasive use of the Web, this story is more relevant than ever. Consider this: just two years ago, the number of potential donors using the Web to find out more about the non-profits who contact them was 44%. This jumped from 25% in 2005. If your non-profit’s website isn’t in the center of your organization’s radar screen, the time to change that is now.

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. 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 dogood@dogoodconsulting.org.

This story was written by Rachel Weber, who designed do good Consulting’s website.

Q&A: When is Grantseeking a Good Idea?

Dear do good,

Some of my board members are advocating strongly that our organization apply for more grants to help weather the recession. I'm not convinced this is a good use of our staff's time; and I'm not sure where this fits in with our group's overall fundraising priorities. When is it a good idea to look for grants?

- Free Money... Maybe, Springfield, IL

Dear Free Money... Maybe,

Thanks for a great question. Foundation and government grants can be a healthy part of your organizaton's fundraising mix, but before you begin your quest it's important to understand your organizational priorities. All strong and sustainable fundraising programs are built by first maintaining and deepening relationships with current funding sources, so your organization's first priority should be making sure those existing relationships are maintained and as strong as they can possibly be, whether they are individual donors, foundation representatives, or business donors.

As your organization ponders this issue, it's important to keep in mind that grant funding in general comprises only about 14% of charitable giving in the U.S. Giving from individual donors on the other hand accounts for over 75%. For grassroots non-profits, it's a safe bet to structure your organization's fundraising efforts proportionately, putting the bulk of your muscle into building a base of individual donors who will sustain you if a major donor or grant falls through. If increasing your grantwriting activity is going to pull significant time away from your individual donor efforts, that could have serious short- and long-term giving consequences on your organization.

If you determine that you can bump grantwriting efforts up a notch without jeopardizing other fundraising efforts, you should next assess your organization's capacity, both for the grantwriting itself as well as for the actual implementation of the proposed project. Has your organization received grants before? Do you have experienced grantwriters available to help? I often suggest that grantwriting be taken on as its own, well-organized project because of the 'overhead' effort it takes to put together a proposal and all the supporting materials and interface with the funding entity. If you have these resources on hand (time, labor), you likely have momentum that can be put to use toward writing a grant or two. If not and you still decide to move forward, it is essential that you factor in the learning curve it will take to see a return on your efforts. Even the best grantwriters are rarely awarded more than 50% of the proposals they submit, and for beginners, this number can hover much, much lower (less than 10%). Does your organization have the time and people-power to make such an investment?

Writing the grant, too, is only the beginning. If you are fortunate to be awarded a grant, it's likely that your organizaiton will need to set aside as much as 10-20% of your grant-funded project time for evaluation and reporting. What resources (financial and human) will it take to really complete the project and is your organization really prepared to follow through on the grant project should you be awarded?

Finally, consider what makes your project grantworthy. Grantmakers are giving money to see a purpose – their purpose – carried out. Your project should be compelling with respect to the vision and mission of the grantmaking organization, and directly in line with their funding purposes. You must research these areas very carefully when choosing where to submit an application. If you find an appropriate grantmaker, carefully review the Request for Proposal (RFP) and guidelines and become fully familiar with what will be required of you in the proposal process, through the life of the grant, and in the closeout process, for deviations from what the grantmakers ask for can render all your grantwriting time for naught.

If after these considerations your board members still feel that pursuing more grants is indeed what's best for your group, there are a wealth of resources to support you, including the Foundation Center, NonProfit Guides , and our local Central Illinois NonProfit Resource Center. Good luck!

-Elizabeth Simpson, Group Dynamics Specialist, do good Consulting

ONE SIMPLE ACT: Improve accessibility

In each month’s Doing Good, you’ll find one great tip to implement over the next month. By taking this one small, achievable action each month, you can make big changes in your organization’s and your own performance, increase donations and volunteerism, and expand your group’s visibility. Give it a try!

This month's ONE SIMPLE ACT focuses on being welcoming to people with disabilities.

Did you know that October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month? Take this opportunity to think about what your organization is like for clients, volunteers, or potential employees with limited mobility, low vision, impaired hearing, cognitive disorders, or mental illness. Could your organization be easier to find, enter, interact with?

GROUP PROFILE: Spence Farm Foundation

In the 160 acres that surround Spence Farm, which plays host to the educational non-profit Spence Farm Foundation, anything but large-scale, conventional farming is going on.

On Livingston County, Illinois’ oldest farm some of the most interesting and compelling farming work is being done. Aside from the family that owns the farm raising an interesting variety of heritage breed and heirloom variety animals and plants, the farm is serving as a living laboratory of sorts to the Spence Farm Foundation, using the fields, the animals, and the goings-on to teach the public about the art, history, and practice of sustainable small family farming.

And this is catching the eye – and mouths – of many important dignitaries, including chef, restaurant owner, and television personality Rick Bayless, award-winning chef Paul Virant, and even President Obama.

Paul Virant, an award-winning chef who runs Vie, a remarkable and mouth-watering restaurant in Western Springs, Illinois, understands the critically-important work Spence Farm Foundation is doing to teach up-and-coming farmers, transitioning farmers, children, and the public about their food, the land, the history of farming, and about the art and practice of sustainable farming.

“The work going on at Spence represents our future and our history,” Virant says of the Foundation. “I’m a huge advocate of supporting small farms, that’s why I support Spence Farm Foundation. At the core of what they do, they are educating farmers on how to do farming the right way.”

Virant uses Spence farm foods such as ramps (wild leeks native to Illinois), cattail shoots (really!), red bud flowers, wild mustard greens, farm-harvested maple syrup, whole wheat flour, Spence Farm’s rare Iroquois white corn and roasted cornmeal in his foods. For Vie, which specializes in seasonal foods, Virant also buys all sorts of fresh produce from Spence Farm and other farmers in the Stewards of the Land program, which is supported by the Foundation. In fact, the foods from Spence Farm and other local farms supply nearly everything produce-wise for Vie. Lemons and artichokes are the only non-local produce Virant purchases.

And that’s why Virant finds time between running his farm-to-table gem, raising a family, and traveling for work to donate to raise the visibility of and funds for the Spence Farm Foundation – an organization that helps to create more local, sustainable, family-run farms across the U.S.

This past Sunday, over 200 guests gathered in the fields of Spence Farm to support the work of the Foundation at the organization’s 2nd annual Harvest Feast, raising over $30,000 to help fuel the organization’s critically important educational and training programs.

From school children to urban dwellers to beginning and transitioning farmers, Spence Farm Foundation operates a series of workshops, trainings, and programs to better connect people to the land, teach farm history, and foster the creation of new sustainable farms and family farmers.

On any given day, Foundation staff and volunteers can be found using the farm’s unique historic backdrop to:

• Provide hands-on farm experience for children/school groups
• Give farm tours for an up close look at what sustainable farming looks, feels, and smells like
• Offer new farmer training for new and transitioning farmers
• Host farm heritage events to teach about the history of farming
• Present workshops and trainings for kids, new and transitioning farmers, and others on sustainable farming, candlemaking, beekeeping, seed saving, equipment repair, and many other topics.

The Foundation collaborates with organizations like The Land Connection, UI Extension, and Central Illinois Sustainable Farming Network to provide free training to beginning farmer program participants, such as Stewards of the Land.

Farms like Spence are rare – a dying art and profession – casualties of large-scale corporate farming. Yet the demand for local, healthy, and sustainably-grown food continues to skyrocket. More want to know where their food comes from, to meet their farmers, and support a new way (the old way, really!) of feeding their families. And this is the Foundation’s mission and goal: to cultivate new farmers doing things the “old way”.

The Foundation uses volunteers to help run workshops, give tours, develop new programs, and reach out to audiences in both rural and urban settings. To learn more about the exciting programs and opportunities at Spence Farm Foundation, to schedule a tour or sign up for a workshop, see www.spencefarmfoundation.org or contact 815-692-3336 or info@spencefarmfoundation.org. Or join the likes of Rick Bayless, Paul Virant, and President Obama (who requested Spence Farm’s rare Iroquois white cornmeal for his birthday this year) in supporting Spence Farm Foundation by sending a gift to: 2959 N. 2100 East, Fairbury, IL 61739.

- by Laura Huth, do good President & CEO

PHILANTHROPY DAY: Recognizing the Outstanding

The non-profit sector is fueled by millions of workers contributing their time, talents, and passions towards causes as diverse as environmental protection, human rights, health care, affordable housing, and preventing abuse. Each day across our country, employees labor away developing programs to improve the lives of those in need and building better communities. Joining them are some amazing individuals and organizations donating important funds to make non-profits run and to provide the important programs to those in our communities who need these services.

These fundraisers and philanthropists provide a key component in fueling the non-profit sector. While they are often not out on the front lines fighting hunger, preserving wildlife, or expanding education, their work is a critical backbone in making such work possible.

Each year, the East Central Illinois Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (ECIAFP) recognizes those involved in this work – either as employees, volunteers, or donors – through the group's annual Philanthropy Day Awards. ECIAFP is a professional organization that those involved in non-profit fundraising may join for professional development and networking purposes.

On Friday, November 12 at a luncheon at the Champaign Country Club, seven outstanding individuals and organizations from East Central Illinois will be recognized by ECIAFP for their amazing contributions to this field.

If you are involved in non-profit fundraising, click here to learn more about joining ECIAFP. Click here to register for the November 12 awards luncheon, which is from 11:30AM-1:30PM.

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