GrantStation
and CharityFinders
are proud to offer you a free webinar on "e-Strategy
for Your Nonprofit"
This webinar shows how any nonprofit can develop
and execute an Internet strategy to further
its mission. We’ll examine how nonprofits
are using the Internet, how they’d like
to be using the Internet, and how they should
be using the Internet (but may be unaware of)
– and how to bridge that significant gap
easily and quickly. We’ll select one participant,
and we’ll analyze their existing website,
make recommendations on how it (and everyone
else’s websites) can incorporate new,
strategic features, and finally, we’ll
actually build them a working, e-philanthropy
prototype site in just minutes.
Please
click here to see dates/times and to register. |
|
What Kind of Website Should Your Nonprofit Have?
Part One
Any nonprofit can have one of two broad types of websites.
First is a “brochure-ware” site, which is purely
informational. A brochure-ware site can be one page of unformatted
text or hundreds of pages of text, graphics, animation,
audio, and video. Either way, because it simply provides
information, the site is considered a brochure-ware site.
The second option is an interactive “e-philanthropy”
site, which is both informational and transactional. An
e-philanthropy site includes a brochure-ware portion but
also contains transactions that enable visitors –
donors, volunteers, staff, and others – to interact
with the nonprofit (and each other), and to support the
organization in ways that sustain its mission, both tangibly
and intangibly (more on this in part two). Note that adding
a link from your brochure-ware site to a third-party site
where money is collected (e.g., PayPal, etc.) does NOT make
it an e-philanthropy site and is unlikely to produce compelling
results.
A brochure-ware site may have a lot for the user to
see, but an effective e-philanthropy site also has a lot
for the user to do.
Most nonprofits want an e-philanthropy site, yet few actually
have one. Why not? The answer typically boils down to one
or more of the following obstacles:
- Cost - Developing a complete, secure
e-philanthropy site using a traditional “custom
development” approach can cost hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
- Time - Developing an e-philanthropy
site typically takes months, often over a year.
- Technology skills - Developing an e-philanthropy
site requires deep technical skills.
- Technology infrastructure - Developing
an e-philanthropy site requires significant hardware,
software, and network resources.
Any one of these obstacles is enough to dissuade all but
the largest and bravest nonprofits from even considering
an e-philanthropy web site. Fortunately, a number of e-philanthropy
Application Service Providers (ASPs) now provide tools that
permit nonprofits to eliminate these obstacles and build
their own e-philanthropy web sites quickly, easily, inexpensively,
and with no training or technical skills. The cost can be
as little as a few hundred dollars. The time to build a
site can be as little as a couple of hours – provided
you have first developed your site content (i.e., text and
images). The technical skills required can be as basic as
the ability to use a web browser. And the technology infrastructure
needed can be as simple as a PC connected to the Internet.
In Part Two, we ’ll discuss what features you should include
in your website. |
