Philanthropy has always been more than a line item in our financial statements. It’s one of my favorite things about being an employee of Jelecos - being able to witness and take an active role in giving back to community organizations – Nebraska Golf Classic, Project Harmony, Nebraska AIDS Project, Girls Inc., The Rose Theater, to quickly name a few. In light of that, I wanted to share some of my experience on a handful of best practices that nonprofit sites should follow.
Cater to the people
Who is your audience? What are they looking for? Are the visitors to your Web site in search of information, entertainment, involvement or are they there to make a purchase or donation? This is an essential question to answer so you can cater and hone your content to the type of visitors the site will attract. Put yourself in their shoes and brainstorm the types of questions they will be looking for your site to answer.
Information Clarity
Now that you have defined your audience, how are you going to organize the information in way that is easy for them to obtain? Have clear and effective calls to action on every page – if you offer online donation, can you easily see the donate button on every page? Create short and scannable pages. If you need to present a lot of information, start off at a 10,000 ft. view and let them drill down. Make sure to include subheadings and lists to help the reader scan through to the information they’re searching for – Internet users don’t like reading large blocks of text.
Tell a Story
Storytelling is such an amazing way to get your message across. Make sure that it’s stressing the impact that your organization has made. In this way, you are using the voices and words of the those you’re impacting. Some pretty clear examples of storytelling that are out in the world right now is kiva.org. According to their site, “Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.” After a quick tour of their site, you quickly see that each entrepreneur has a story and how your micro-investment will be put to good use.
As I said, these are just a handful of the best practices to keep in mind with your site. If you’re interested in discussing how we could help you organization grow on the Web, schedule a meeting with our team!
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