(Note: This is a weekly round-up of NTEN members doing and sharing
their nptech awesome. Members are in bold. Tag your own news with "nten
member" or "nptech" to help us find your awesome online, or contact Annaliese
with your updates.)
Even on vacation, Beth Kanter manages help nonprofits become more tech-savvy! How does she do it? Why, by inviting guests to blog! Some of us here at NTEN are pretty interested in geo-tagging and geo-locating tools and their potential for nonprofit application, so we are thankful for this guest post on Beth's Blog about 10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World.
Amy Sample Ward is great at aggregating news and notes about nonprofits using and learning to use social media on her blog. Her latest weekly round up of "great reads" is up, and NTEN member Idealware is included.
I think we'd all do ourselves and our audiences a favor if we read this article from Jake Brewer and The Sunlight Foundation: "Rethinking Advocacy Email." It's pretty provoking -- but at the same time, says what I think most of us email-campaigners have been thinking and asking ourselves for a while. Join fellow NTEN members Jon Stahl and Chris Tuttle in the comment discussion!
Azavea was named a finalist in the Winning Workplaces and Inc.'s 2010 Top Small Workplaces. Congratulations!
Speaking of kudos, Beyond Nines was given a nod in a recent FastCompany article about web hosting companies. Here's what the reviewer had to say about their specialized focus on serving nonprofits: "Beyond Nines gets my Point of Difference award for Hosting with a Heart, and snagging a sector that needs help because they dedicate their lives to helping others."
Don't forget: IdeaEncore is wrapping up its July "Share it Forward" share topic, but you still have time to share! Please share examples, templates, or links to other resources online regarding nonprofit employee policies regarding tech -- anything from hardware to social media!
We're really excited to announce the newest NTEN 501 Tech Club. Please welcome the Northern Colorado 501 Tech Club! (That's NoCo, for short!) Thanks to Joyce Raby for organizing the local nptech group for her community. Stay tuned to NTEN online community calendar for upcoming 501 Tech NoCo events, as well as other nonprofit tech community events.
If you have an up-coming NTEN 501 Tech Club not listed here -- we need to get it on our calendars! Leave a link in the comments here, or add on the community calendar here:http://groups.nten.org/cal.htm
A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources. Read more posts on our blog.
If you haven't seen the "Double Rainbow" spin-offs, you should check them out right now. (You don't know about "Double Rainbow"? We'll just pretend you didn't admit that. Why? Because it reflects poorly on our productivity vis-a-vis yours, smarty pants.) The Kermit mash-up at the bottom of the page is the best. IOHO.
You should probably know, however, that human beings have spent 15 years in aggregate watching "Surprised Kitty" -- longer than it took to land a man on the moon. Fortunately, the article that calculates all the time we spend looking at cat and dog videos links to all those videos, as well.
If that doesn't keep you busy -- or you just can't tear yourself away from the digital world, trapped like Jeff Bridges, forever dodging electric frisbees (but enamored by the cool glow-stick outfits) -- John Haydon has a great case study on launching a Facebook page.
Did the whole Jeff Bridges hoo-haw up there confuse you? It was a Tron: Legacy reference. Disney has been marketing that movie for 3 1/2 years, in multiple stages. So, congrats! You've avoided the hype thus far. But is there anything we can learn from their marketing tactics? (Other than the obvious, of course: don't go snooping around abandoned video arcades. Can you tell we're a little excited?)
We know that you, my fellow NTEN community members, are rock stars.
You can write fundraising email copy in your sleep and hand code your e-appeal while making breakfast and watering your plants. You track metrics while you're on the treadmill (without falling off).
You are fundraising email campaign ninjas!
Like all good ninjas, you don't do it for the glory, you do it because it's right. But we want to shine a spotlight on your selflessness and showcase your amazing work.
If you've been using email, websites, videos, and other electronic communications tools to give your stakeholders a choice other than paper mailings, we want to celebrate you. Four prizes totalling $20,000 will be awarded to organizations demonstrating innovation and results in paperless fundraising. The Paperless Choice Challenge submission period ends August 16th, 2010, so get your entries in today.
On Wednesday, Facebook began rolling out a new feature: Questions. The idea is simple. You ask a question and the Facebook community can answer. Yes, the ENTIRE Facebook community, not just your friends.
Scale, social software smarts and real identities have the potential to add up to something really magical. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg, wrong as he is about many things like privacy, has said that his goal with Facebook is to build empathy and connection between different people all around the world. If he was in it for the money, he would have taken Yahoo's $1 billion offer years ago and run. That goal of cultural change may very well be served better by Questions than by any other Facebook feature to date.
His article sites a question about Rush Limbaugh:
The question is one of those that can clearly be taken as bait. But instead of vitriole, we get a sensible, and pretty compelling, answer. Marshall thinks this just might be the first step toward civil dialogue -- and away from the kind of rhetoric that has been so divisive lately.
Is Marshall right? Or is this just another move to position Facebook at the center of all things web, as most of the pundits are saying:
That’s astounding really, but equally astounding, if a whole lot less obvious: your site visitors are increasingly getting to your site from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Why is this important? This socially-sourced crowd spends upwards of 15 minutes per day, every day, on social media sites, 3 to 7 times more than on any other major web property.
Increasingly, consumers define their world in this social context, and there are a whole bunch of them. Should you be considering this important demographic when you redesign your site next time around? Definitely.
First Step – Analytics
Still not convinced. No problem, I’ll lay out a few quick suggestions for sorting out whether this social demographic is, in fact, a big, or at least increasing slice of your website traffic. Take a moment to investigate the following data:
Analytics: Configure and then analyze reports from your web analytics to see which page on your site is the first stop for folks referred from social networking sites. Is it your homepage, a standard landing page, or deep-linking to a press release, article, or transaction page (e.g. advocacy action or donation)? While you're at it, sort out what percentage of your site traffic is coming from social sites in the first place. After Google.com (search traffic), we’re betting Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn and other social sites are up there in the Top 10 Referring Sites list. Even more striking, we’ll bet that among NEW visitors, these social sites rank even higher.
Source Coding: If you’re not doing it now, set up source coding for the links posted in your interactions on FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Use bit.ly to create short urls, because it supports source code tracking. For transaction pages (e.g. email signup, contact us, donation, petition, etc.), ensure that you're configuring your online software to accept, store, and report on these source codes for all transactions. Scrutinize these reports: how much of your conversion traffic is coming from social media sites?
Audience Overlap: Use Rapleaf to sort out what percent of your Facebook audience is also on your email list. Why? A big chunk of your repeat site traffic is probably coming from the emails you send out. If you have a large overlap between your Facebook and email audiences, then a whole bunch of your repeat traffic is living in the social context as well.
Optimize Your Site for the Social Segment
Assuming that we agree that social media-sourced visitors are an important segment for your site, let’s take a look at how you might optimize your website for this new demographic.
First, find the right context for driving social media audiences to your site. Make your life easier: remember that Facebook fans, for example, tend to respond best when presented with FB-focused calls-to-action. For example, FB ads return higher click and conversion rates when the call-to-action on the ad links to an FB asset, such as a Page. The first way to optimize your site for social media then, is to refer visitors to it -- but only for the right opportunities:
Programmatic Calls-to-Action: Direct social media supporters back to your site to complete actions not available on FB or Twitter or LinkedIn -- donations, advocacy actions or petitions, email sign-up, event and volunteer registration, job application, membership form, surveys, polls, etc. We see this a lot in event fundraising, where FB badges and other tools are deployed for event participants (to help them raise more $$ for the charity), but all peer-to-peer giving actually takes place BACK on the organization’s website. (Note: Causes does provide some of these actions, so consider using it if Causes is right for your organization or initiative.)
Data Centralization: Visitors could read your blog on FB via FB’s Notes function -- where you can syndicate your Wordpress blog automatically out to FB Notes -- but it may be easier and more efficient for you to direct fans to the blog on your site, where you already have excellent reporting tools set up, and that allow you to see traffic on your blog from all sources. Balance ease of reporting and analysis with campaign effectiveness; sometimes getting the answers all in one place merits a minor reduction in results.
Intentional Cross-Pollination: A common tactic these days is to direct traffic between your online outposts intentionally. For example, acquire fans via Facebook advertising and then present them with FB posts that link them into an action incorporating an email opt-in, intentionally creating the opportunity for FB fans to get on your organization’s email list.
All that being said, let’s assume you're redoing your organizational web site, and want to make it work well for your visitors arriving from social media communities. Here are a few tips for making it work best:
Targeted Landing Pages: Control your destiny where you can. Maximize impact and conversion when posting to Twitter, FB, or LinkedIn by directing fans/followers to a well-constructed landing page which includes a no-click or one-click, simple, clear call-to-action; pithy, scannable, punchy supporting copy; clear identity branding; and for-this-task-only navigation. If it’s just content, then link directly to the content. Don’t confuse visitors by linking to your homepage, for example, and then letting them search around for that article you told them about. That only increases abandons.
Incorporate Social Supporters and Social Content: Go out of your way to use FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn APIs to incorporate social media posts and fans alongside your traditional site content. Your pages will feel more social, content will be real-time, and your supporters will be hyper-evident to any and all visitors. We call that “exposing your community”. Social media oriented visitors appreciate it because it makes your site more relevant.
Add ‘Share’ and ‘Like’ to Content: The social media crowd are sharers in spirit and practice, so help them to do just that: let them circulate their gold nugget finds with their network. Use the Share function (e.g. the big share box with tons of social sites or individual icons for FB, Twitter, etc.) next to individual media like articles, photos, and videos. Add in FB’s “Like” rating feature next to key digital assets, as well. Ratings add dimension to your information by helping visitors judge the value of content more quickly and robustly. If it works for Hotels.com, why wouldn’t it work for your site? Remember, you can switch “Like” to “Recommend” if appropriate -- and because folks can’t “Not Like” your content, you don’t have to worry about managing unflattering ratings.
Blogs: Add Blogs to your site to introduce a different kind of media to your site content mix. Turn on commenting to stimulate group dialog around your posts.
Discussion Groups: Consider adding a discussion board to your site. You’ll need a community manager to make it thrive over the long haul, but helping your supporters engage, educate, and support one another is a sure-fire tactic for helping the social digerati feel at home in your online world.
House Network: Bite off the whole enchilada an socially-enable your site fully by supporting visitor profiles, friending, activity feeds, discussion, ratings and reviews, etc. Or you can take a half-step. We’ve jump-started campaign sites with simple profiles, blogs and discussions, leaving open the opportunity to add in more social features as the community flourishes. You choose how fast and far you socially-enable your site.
Adding social content, supporters, and features to your site makes socially sourced visitors feel more at home, and introduces all your visitors to their peers -- your supporters, their thoughts, advice, opinions, insights, needs, recommendations, and ratings. Long before Facebook, there was Geocities, which failed. Facebook is approaching 500 million active members, and is accumulating members at about 100 million every five months. What’s the difference between Geocities and Facebook? Well, many things, but primary among FB’s success factors: helping people connect automatically and integrating the very concept of connecting into the user experience.
The truth is, people don’t connect with organizations, they connect with other people. Putting your audience and their world front and center is the best way to optimize your site for the social crowd -- and everybody else.
Two houses stand side-by-side. One has a nice, tidy entry way, the other, a boring, paint-peeling façade. If someone is shopping for a home to invest in, they're more likely to enter the home with the nicer entry first, right? When someone visits your website, the first impression they'll likely get is still your homepage. The homepage of your website is key to engaging your visitors by getting them the information they want and sharing your important message.
“What audience am I building for?” is commonly the first question people encounter when they start a redesign, but I beg to differ. While the characteristics of your audience are important, they should not be the first thing dictating your design direction. Your audience is yours because of who you are. Your online presence is not about your constituents starting the conversation: at first, it's about you having the chance to give your 30-second pitch about who you are, what you do, and why it's important. It allows you to introduce yourself and only then engage the visitor in a virtual conversation with an ask, be it to donate, sign-up for our newsletter, register for an event, volunteer, or use your resources.
So, my recommendation for the first questions to ask in your planning process are: “What is our 30-second pitch?” and “How can we translate that to our website in a user friendly design?”
Regardless of whether a visitor is a member of your specific audience or not, people are people. While you should add a personalized touch to your website, the guidelines to make your site appealing are generally the same. Visually prime locations are the same for everyone. Keep this in mind when you begin prioritizing the messages and ask(s) on your homepage.
There are 4 steps I typically recommend following as you build your site. Since we are a culture of acronyms, I fondly call it the “PREP” method: Plan – Research – Execute – Proact. (I should point out that proact isn’t actually a word, but in my opinion if you must act to be active, then you must proact to be proactive.)
PLAN
People look for the 5 Ws on a home page: Who (are you)? What (do you do)? Why (should I be interested)? Where and When (if it's related to an event)? Consider your homepage your visual “30 second pitch” or “elevator speech”. You have a limited amount of attention from a visitor. Use it wisely to convey your main message.
Analyze any prior web traffic: If you use Google Analytics or another tool, look and see where your site traffic is going. More importantly, find out where users aren’t going. With this information, you can make decisions on how to consolidate information in other locations, reorganize your site map, or identify links to external sites that may be drawing users away from your site.
RESEARCH
Refer to the scientists: There have been many website eye movement tests that analyze what attracts a viewer’s eye and where the most valuable real estate on a page is. Conclusions indicate that the upper left of a page is the highest viewed area, headlines draw the eye before pictures, and more.
Colors are important: Not all people see things the same way. In our eyes, we have the least number of receptors for the color blue. As we age, the blue receptors are the first ones to go. This doesn’t mean don’t use blue, it just means you have to be careful of blue text on certain background colors like green, grey, etc. Before you pick your site colors, test out the different color options and make sure your site is visually friendly to all ages.
EXECUTE
Keep it simple: If there is too much going on when someone views your homepage, it's likely they'll miss your key message or action item. Choose the top 2-3 actions you want your audience to take -- i.e. Donate, Register, Request More Info, etc. -- and highlight them with graphic buttons. Repeat it in the navigation. Make it clear what the call to action is and you'll find your users gravitating towards it.
Make it even simpler: Yup, it’s so important, I'm highlighting it twice. Not only does this apply to your homepage design, but to your navigation, as well. Try to limit the choices people have and ensure they don’t have too many ways to find information, or they may get frustrated or lost. For example, try to keep all general information about who you are on one “About Us” page instead of breaking it out into multiple pages (Our Mission, Our History, Our Staff, Our Story, etc). You have the power to funnel people toward the messages you feel are important.
PROACT
Keep the content updated. Social media is all about the conversation going both ways. Why not try to incorporate this idea into your website? Showcase stories of your constituents or participants, give updates, and make things organic so that people have a reason to come back and stay connected.
Listen to your users. What are your constituents saying? What are they not saying? Ensure that your vision of the flow is translating properly. Check back with your analytics to see where people are dropping off and where they're aggregating. Find out why you're losing them -- Is there an external link that overpowers the message? -- and find out what info people are trying to find the most and how you can expand that message.
Many times, as designers and technical people, we get caught up in the fancy tools, tricks, and capabilities of advanced technology. The key to building or redesigning a great website is to make it easy for a user to visit and use, while smartly representing your organization’s mission and personality. As you make your plans, choosing between fancy Flash, images, and simple buttons, keep asking yourself if your choices make things better for your user and/or strengthen your organization’s message.
Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging?
We could get into a traditional marketing discussion about target audiences and personas, but let’s go at this challenge in a different way. Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time. To keep it simple, let’s group your website visitors into three categories:
Strangers: People who know nothing about you.
Friends: People who like your organization or cause.
Fans: People who LOVE your organization or cause.
What kind of content does your website need for each of these groups?
Strangers: People Who Know Nothing About You
If someone knows nothing about your organization and lands on your website, what’s the first thing you want them to see?
It’s not your mission statement. Trust me.
What you want them to see is the answer to their question.
If a stranger lands on your website, odds are they are searching for the answer to a specific question about something going on in their lives right now. Maybe it’s a problem they want to solve, or something they heard from a friend or saw on TV that piqued their interest. They went searching, and Google or another website with a link to yours pointed that stranger to you, thinking that you might have the answer.
What three questions are strangers who land on your site most likely to have? For some nonprofits, the answers are obvious. If you run an animal shelter, one question will be “What animals are available for adoption?” If you run a Meals on Wheels program, one question will be “How can a senior get food delivered?” If your organization addresses a particular disease, one question will be “What is the treatment?”
The best way to build rapport with strangers is not to babble on about yourself; it’s to be a good Samaritan who answers their questions. These questions are almost always programmatic in nature, and rarely about donating, volunteering, or otherwise helping you out.
Devote space on your home page and/or within your navigation to answering the three big questions most likely to bring strangers to your site. When you do, they are more likely to become friends, which brings us to our next group of visitors.
Friends: People Who Like Your Organization
Friends know you, at least a little bit. They may have an incomplete picture of you, but the one they do have is favorable. What do they want to see on your website?
No, it’s still not your mission statement.
Tell your friends some good stories.
Stories are the quickest and most memorable way to explain what it is you do, how you do it, for whom, and why. You want these friends to get it.
Tell stories about people like them, so they can see that they belong. If you are trying to get more young families to participate in your program, tell a story about (you guessed it) a young family already in your program.
Tell stories that appeal to their inner guardian angels. Show them how they – through being your friend -- can look out for someone else or change someone’s life for the better, even if only in a small way.
Tell stories with a sense of adventure or wonderment. Appeal to that inner child that’s looking for a break from the day-to-day responsibilities of adulthood.
Help them learn more about what you do, but not through long statements of need or bulleted lists of programs and services. Images tell stories too – often better than words – so don’t forget photographs and video as you create your website content. Connect with your friends through good storytelling, and some of them will grow into big fans.
Fans: People Who Love Your Organization
Fans are people who know you well, and they love you. They are ready and willing to help – as long as you make it easy for them. What do they need from your website?
Anyone for the mission statement? Anyone? Of course not!
Give your fans clear calls to action so they know exactly what they can do to help or support you – which means not asking for them for “help” or “support.” That’s too vague. Be specific. Ask them to donate $50 towards a specific campaign. Ask them to volunteer for an hour. Ask them to retweet your event invitation to their followers.
Empower them to help you on their own time and in their own ways. Give them downloads and checklists they can use at home, work, or in their community to advance your cause in their own small way (it will feel big to them). Give them pass-along content like short videos and sample email text that they can share with their friends.
Give your fans the personal touch by encouraging them to connect with you in lots of different ways. When they mention you on Twitter, comment on a Facebook update, or reply to your email newsletter, respond with a thanks or some other kind of encouragement.
Integrate your real-time communications channels into your website, for example, by using Twitter or Facebook widgets or RSS feeds that bring the live conversation to your site. It reinforces for your website visitors that you are “here and now” with your fans if they can see that ongoing conversation.
You Never Know Who’ll Come Clicking
You never know who will stop by your website, so be prepared. Answer questions for strangers. Tell stories to friends. Make it easy for fans to interact with you.
And what about that good ol’ mission statement? If it’s a paragraph full of jargon or otherwise meaningless words to most website visitors, bury it on your About Us page. If it’s short, in plain English, and meaningful to your next door neighbor and your next door neighbor’s mom, then you can put it on your home page. But only after you’ve made room for those answers, stories, and interactions.
Thirty-eight percent of American mobile phone users -- 120 million people -- access the web via their mobile device; fewer than 30 million are iPhones or Android phones. (Mobile Access 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project). This percentage increases dramatically among the under-served 30% of the population without reliable non-mobile Internet access (Pew). The growth of the mobile web will continue to be very rapid in the coming years -- and will have substantially more reach than iPhone or Android applications. According to a research report by Morgan Stanley, mobile web usage will exceed all other web usage by 2015.
This leads to a common misconception: that your organization must immediately "mobilize" its website, by creating a mobile friendly version of your existing website.
This approach misses two key facts: one, users are already using your website on their phones, and two, mobile web users have different needs than desktop users.
In reality, when planning a mobile web strategy, you should consider the following factors:
I. Web surfing behavior on a mobile phone differs from the desktopTraditional web pages are a place where users seamlessly browse a multitude of links in a discovery process. Not so with the mobile web. Mobile web usage is relevant and successful when it can deliver the exact information that the mobile user needs or wants. Mobile browsers, even on smart phones, are not conducive to searching, browsing, or exploration. Sending someone to the mobile version of the front page of your website will likely not be useful to the viewer -- or your organization.
Mobile web pages are effective when they deliver precisely targeted information. For example, simple or pre-populated forms, maps and location information, simple advocacy tools such as petitions, or simple instructions such as consumer or medical information. This is the type of content that should be converted into mobile optimized web pages and can be very effective for you and your constituents.
II. Mobile visitors have limited non-standard browsers with which to get information
Mobile phones come in all shapes and sizes. Even smart phones vary significantly. (If you have a Blackberry, try asking an iPhone user if your phone is "smart" and prepare to be teased.)
Most phones have little screens (see chart below) and render graphics poorly. Additionally, there are dozens of browsers and formats among the hundreds of makes and models. This requires building mobile web sites to the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator is text and images and not much of either. In some cases, it may make sense to create separate optimized mobile sites for iPhone, Android, and one for all others. This will depend on the particular use case and the audience. Media and content rich mobile sites may serve to frustrate rather than serve your audience.
III. How will I get people to my mobile site?The technical and behavior differences between mobile phone web users and computer web users noted above impacts the ways in which your potential audience will discover the mobile site. Users rarely enter a URL onto their phones; instead, they follow links. Mobile sites are most commonly accessed via sent links (primarily text messages, Twitter, Facebook and email) and secondarily, through mobile search.
Your organization should have a strategy to engage its potential mobile audience at least via those primary channels. A successful mobile web program typically requires a call to action beginning with a text message (or Tweet or email) which conveys the preliminary information and then drives people via link to the mobile web page which has been optimized as discussed above.
The mobile web is big today and will be huge tomorrow. In order to win at the mobile web, you need to understand how it is being used by your audience and optimize your content for those purposes.
Websites have changed a lot over the past few years. Content management systems (CMS) have transformed standard expectations -- about posting news and updates without web design skills, managing donors and other constituents, opening up sections of your site to your community, tracking results, and more. And open source systems such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone have brought these features within reach of organizations with limited budgets and staffing.
Yet, when it comes to organizing the redesign or replacement of an older-style site, many organizations expect to manage the process much as they had the last one. To get the most out of a modern site, however, you need to have a different kind of project management approach.
Matching Planning to Site Goals
Some things, quite naturally, remain the same, like having clear goals and good planning. Other things have changed with the technology, such as maintaining flexibility throughout the project. Getting these things matched up correctly can make all the difference in managing a successful web project.
Interactive and decentralized are the two adjectives that best characterize what’s different, or can be different, in the best sites today.
To oversimplify a bit, modern web sites can be more interactive. They don’t have to be, and not surprisingly, "interactive" runs a continuum, but essentially, this means more staff or volunteers with wider skills can report, write, edit, and publish news and other articles; it doesn’t just have to be a technically trained communications specialist. But interactive also means members, donors, supporters, and activists can do things on their own that build up your organization and its causes. Not everyone wants, or needs, the same amount of “interactive", but it sets the tone for many web planning conversations these days.
To oversimplify again, modern web development technologies are also more forgiving of changed minds, evolutionary thinking, and learning from experience. You still pay a steep price for not planning and organizing, but your site may not need the extensive linear calendar and preordained centralized decision-making that dominated web project management for many years.
Not every site can or needs to balance these changing expectations the same way. What can be challenging for the strategist is when someone says something like, "Our new site should have a 'members only' section." The organization may not have much consensus about the goals, planning, and staffing they need to match expectations. It's all about getting things into the right balance.
Here are five thoughts and lessons to consider:
Escape the linear calendar. Older-style traditional sites pretty much required a progression that ensured the design work was done first. For some projects, that may still make sense. With a modern CMS, however, you can create the basic framework of the site independently of the visual design and then layer that in later as part of “theming” the site. It really depends on what will best serve your goals. A project can proceed in traditional phases, which might run along the lines of: overall goals and features, sitemap, wireframe, visual design, customized features, initial content, training, building out the rest, converting data, and finally, launching. Or it may proceed iteratively, with traditional processes overlapping and the site launching in a limited way and then undergoing progressive refinement and expansion. Modern CMS tools make it possible to update and build out a lot of content relatively independently of selecting and refining a site's visual design theme. Should you do this? It may help you meet overall schedule deadlines and help your team refine its decisions about the site. In other cases, it may confuse reviewers to see the content without the design. The point is, you have choices.
Build the project team around program staff and other “content specialists”, not just around those with traditional technical skills. Modern web projects should take advantage of staff with design skills, including Dreamweaver, Photoshop and the rest; work with those tools still plays an important role. But the overall success of a CMS-based web project will depend less on them and more on ensuring that the broadest possible team is ready to contribute content in a timely way. It may be a marketing and communications team; it may include an Executive Director’s personal blog; it may be rotating news from program staff; it may be volunteer commentators from the board, key activists, and allies. The project plan needs to focus on defining who will provide the content and ensuring it plays out that way much more than was the case five or ten years ago.
Be realistic about time from organizational staff. Potentially at odds with the last point, just because the new tools lower the barrier for organizational staff to participate and contribute doesn’t mean they will have the time and internal support to do so. If an outside developer’s budget gets trimmed based on the expectation that organizational staff will build out content, create the CSS, or perform other essential activities, the team needs to be sure those staff members will have time within the project schedule.
Monitor and look to integrate the interactive features, don’t add them a la carte and leave them to fend for themselves. Interactive tools for donations, event registration, email sign-up, polls and surveys, contacting your legislator, commenting on blogs, linking to social media -- these have all been around for a while. Picking and choosing among tools from the digital buffet table today may end up confusing your constituents and frustrating your executive leadership. Since every organization now has access to these types of tools, it makes sense to focus on those that really make a difference -- for your organization -- and that you can collect and compare numbers (metrics) for. This works best when you can integrate those tools with each other and a single back-end contact database -- the CRM (contact relationship manager) -- alongside the CMS.
Using interactive tools won’t automatically substitute for staffing and organization. Understaffed organizations and under-organized ones that want to use a lot of decentralized, community-oriented tools may find that their new site slips away into fuzzy messaging and co-option by partners on the fringe. More likely however, it may just fizzle away entirely, those on-line community features -- commenting, discussion forums, petitions, surveys, take action -- sitting there underutilized. You still need things like the circuit e-mail -- and now social media, outreach, lively web landing pages, and staff monitoring of your interactive features.
You, dear NTEN community, know the importance of technology in meeting your missions. For us, technology is more than e-mail servers or software installations. Sure, we need those things to do our work well, but we know the real impact lies elsewhere: using handheld devices to collect data in the field, crowdsourcing maps to help under-resourced communities get the services they need, putting the power of your mission right into the hands of your stakeholders with mobile apps.
We're glad you get it, because we need you to help us meet OUR mission of ensuring that every nonprofit can use technology to make the change they want to see. We're incredibly excited about a brand-new program to get us one step closer: the Technology Leadership Academy.
The Academy is a 9-week online training program designed to help nonprofit leaders understand how to manage technology to both meet their basic operational needs and meet their missions.
> Learn more and apply to the Technology Leadership Academy here.
The Academy will be a unique opportunity to learn and interact with your peers while creating a tight network of nonprofit leaders working toward a common mission: to use technology to create more social change. Thanks to the generous support of Microsoft, we're able to offer the Technology Leadership Academy at no charge to qualifying organizations. You must apply for acceptance to the Academy, and there are, of course, some application requirements.
But oh, will it be worth your time. Your instructors during the weekly core sessions will be top nonprofit leaders like Beth Kanter, Katya Andresen, and Edward Granger-Happ. You'll also have the opportunity to interact with field experts like Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group and Author of Open Leadership, in Ask the Expert sessions. The online sessions will take place weekly from September 29th through November 22nd. You can see the full schedule here.
At the end of the 9 weeks, you'll be able to:
Articulate the value of technology in your organization for yourself, your staff, funders, and other key stakeholders.
View technology as integral to every department in your organization.
Recognize options for funding IT projects in your organization.
Staff technology effectively.
Manage the organizational change that technology can produce.
At the end of the course, you will receive a certificate of completion from NTEN and Microsoft. Space is limited, however: for this pilot effort, we will only be able to accept 50 organizations with budgets under $2 million.
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Jeff Patrick, 
Christy Van Heugten, 
Kivi Leroux Miller, 
Jed Alpert, 
Steve Backman, 
