Ever wonder how other organizations run their web projects so successfully? Learn through Talance Client Spotlights, where you can connect with peers to pick up inspiration and proven tips you can apply to your website or online course.

Liz Engelman

Liz Engelman’s greatest enemy is the unexamined question. As a dramaturg, her job is to identify the questions a play asks, and the questions to ask of the play. She’s a bit like the confusion police; identifying the difference from good and bad confusion –anything from intentions, to anachronisms to logical gaffes. With her help, a play can be closer to the playwright’s initial vision. In short, she helps make plays become their best selves. For anyone who’s thinking, “There’s no part of my life that wouldn’t benefit from a little dramaturgy,” have hope. You can apply to Tofte Lake Center, a nonprofit creative retreat that looks a little more like your most idyllic summer camp fantasy in Ely, Minn. TLC’s purpose is to apply the principles of dramaturgy to all artistic pursuits. Read on for more about how a very in-person organization builds community online.

How does one become a dramaturg?

I first heard about dramaturgy when I was a junior in high school, when I was taking a class called Madness in Literature. My teacher said, “Liz, you should be a dramaturg,” and I said, “Dramawhat?” She replied that I had the ability to look at the big picture and relate it to the specific. And vice versa. And I thought, “That’s cool, but how is that a job?”

Later, when I concentrated in theater at Brown, my professor suggested that I create an independent study in dramaturgy. I thought, “Okay, two different people are telling me to do this; I better listen…” So I did.

How did that evolve into Tofte Lake Center?

After 20 years of working as a dramaturg, I began to realize that there are ways of telling stories other than through the theatre. Each media has its own narrative, its own way to tell a story. I wanted to create and environment for these different types of stories to emerge. Often we hear about starving artists who live miserably in a garret somewhere creating their life’s work, and I thought there had to be a way to live as an artist without a struggle – to be nurtured and inspired and surrounded by beauty in the process. So I did what a dramaturg does: articulate the intention, build the story, take yourself seriously… and the dream starts to form.

What kinds of artists visit the center?

I like to say creative thinkers rather than only artists, as many creative people don’t identify as artists. However, most people who come are: they are playwrights and writers of all genres, (novelists and poets), musicians, visual artists, dancers and choreographers. The Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theatre Company has been in residence each of our 4 years, and have become a community face for the center. Our artists have come from all over the country (and Australia!) for their weeklong residencies, and we have been fortunate to receive funding from the Jerome Foundation to support our emerging artists program for artists who reside in either Minnesota or New York.

How do you represent a decidedly in-person creative retreat in the online world?

At first it was hard to think of how to translate an experience that’s very location-based onto a screen. Then I started thinking about how to communicate TLC’s values–conversation, innovation, community, creativity, sun and water. When I thought about how to share the impulses of and behind TLC’s story, the role of the website became clearer.

The website has become a way of maintaining our off-campus community. The site has been a way of deepening and broadening it, to partner with artists and make connections, using the site as a conduit for conversation. I used to think of a website as a static thing. I thought of our old website as an online brochure. Now it’s malleable, evolving — a way to tell our story.

I’ve found images as a way of building partnerships and interest, too. One of the artists whose images we included in our Flickr gallery thanked me for sharing his work. Letting people know I could link to their profile was a major way of building traffic to the site. The partnering opportunities have been more helpful than I’d imagined. I want to continue to find ways to use more photos as an attractor to the site.

A collaborative online gallery of Tofte Lake Center artists

What are some of the most helpful parts of your website?

Putting our applications online has been most helpful. I was getting submissions via e-mail before, and I would have to send each e-mailed application to our review panel, one at a time as I received them, and they had the most difficult task of having to keep track a hundred incoming individual applications. An applicant might resend something, and the panelist might forget where they put it, and worry that something got lost. It was thus immensely time intensive on my part. Now applicants can submit online, and it’s all stored on the website. I heard from someone who applied last year who was so happy to see that the application was now online. It was a mature professional step up.

Tofte Lake Center's online application for artists

What did you learn through a major website redesign process?

I was not expecting to learn as much as I did. I had been thinking more about the result than the process. It took longer than I thought, and this turned out to be extremely informative. The process was completely dramaturgical: identifying what I was trying to do and the best ways to structure and say it. Working on a website is a continual process. The story keeps evolving.

I also learned that just because another organization used their website in a particular way, it doesn’t necessarily apply to mine. They made certain choices in how to tell their story, but that’s not my story. Realizing that: that’s what a dramaturg does.

Ever wonder how other organizations run their web projects so successfully? Learn through Talance Client Spotlights, where you can connect with peers to pick up inspiration and proven tips you can apply to your website or online course.

Caitlyn Slowe

Caitlyn Slowe is a master juggler. She’s the go-to person to manage what’s published and when on the Health Imperatives website, a health agency in Brockton, Mass. As her organization has discovered, the items that appear on the site receive a huge boost in traffic, so hers is a key position. Here’s how she manages the homepage and about 20 smaller sites on top of her other job duties. Hint: organization really matters.

What’s your title, and how does that fit in with managing the website?

I’m the Manager of Special Projects for Health Imperatives, and one of the “projects” that my title refers to is our new website. Health Imperatives has about 40 different program sites ranging from family planning programs to a domestic violence shelter to GLBT youth services and so on.

My title was created last year when we were preparing for the launch of the new website. In addition to managing the website, I still continue to do my previous responsibilities like grant writing, event coordination, budget tracking, report writing, etc., for several Health Imperatives programs.

What areas of the site are you primarily responsible for?

I manage all of the main page content for www.healthimperatives.org and about half of the program sub-sites (some programs manage their own). On the main page, I find and post content for “In the News,” create the Slides for the slideshow (and usually the pages that they link to) and post program updates under “Announcements.”

I also manage all of the main Health Imperatives social media sites, which currently include Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

How do you keep up on learning website manager skills?

I love NTEN’s (Nonprofit Technology Network) blogs and webinars on web design and management, and Mashable also has some excellent articles and tips on managing websites and social media. The Nonprofit Facebook Guy has great info geared specifically toward nonprofits. I’m fairly new to web management, so I basically try to read anything I can find relating to nonprofit web design or social media!

What does your day-to-day strategy look like for keeping the site updated?

One of the challenges I have with managing the website is that it is not my only job responsibility, so to make it more manageable for myself, I create a calendar for each month and map out how/when I’ll update the three sections of the main page (News, Slides, and Announcements).

A snapshot of Slowe's planning calendar

I seek out and write the News blurbs and design the Slides in advance so that I can spend a minimal amount of time dropping them onto the site when their day comes up on the calendar. It’s worked well so far!

I try to update at least two different main page sections per week to keep the info fresh, and I leave each item up for at least one-two weeks (unless it is time-sensitive) so frequent site visitors will see as much new content as possible.

For social media, I rely heavily on HootSuite to help me keep up to date. I aim to do at least one tweet per day, and I limit Facebook to three posts per week (usually Monday, Wednesday, Friday). HootSuite allows me to schedule a week or more worth of Twitter and Facebook updates in advance, which is a huge time-saver!

Hootsuite is a huge timesaver for Twitter campaigns

It’s been half a year since the new site launched. What trends do you see in usage?

We have seen an exciting increase in traffic to our website since the new page launched, and it seems that people are enjoying the new format. Google Analytics is a great tool to show results in real numbers – for instance:

In 2011 between 1/29-2/28 we saw 1,580 (unique) visitors

In 2012 during that same time month-long period we’ve had 4,123 (unique) visitors (yay!)

We’re also seeing an increase in new users (vs. returning users), which tells us that our website is reaching a broader audience than it has in the past.

We’re finding that events/trainings that are advertised on our main page slideshow are receiving drastic increases in attendance. For example, a recent recurring training saw a 150% increase in registration after we advertised it on the main page slideshow. Very exciting to see these results, and we’ll definitely continue to advertise this way!

What’s the most useful part of the site?

I’d say that the slideshow has been the most useful part of the site, because it’s the first thing visitors see and can help us direct them to certain program sub-sites that otherwise may not have gotten as much exposure.

The Shopping Cart has also been a very useful tool, as it allows people to make donations to specific programs and also lets them register for trainings or events online, which is definitely the preferred method for our web-savvy visitors!

If there’s one takeaway from 2011, it’s that the economy is haywire and technology is evolving faster than an oiled bullet. In that kind of nutty atmosphere, it can be a challenge to predict what will happen to web-based technology in the coming months.

What does 2012 hold for nonprofit websites?

We do see a few trends emerging for the next year, however. Here are our predictions for 2012 web trends. Take note for when you next talk to your web design firm about and also pay attention to so you can to succeed in your NGO or company.

1. More design for mobile devices.

Look around you. What’s in the hands of the people surrounding you, including your own? An iPad or iPhone? Nook? Kindle? Tablet? Blackberry? Everybody’s using some kind of handheld device. While corporate websites have been mobile-compliant for years, nonprofits will finally start to catch up. Want to peer into the future of mobile design? Read Mobile Web Design Trends and Best Practices.

2. App-lification of websites.

All those people with mobile devices are getting used to responsive design that they can manipulate with their fingers. Move over “point and click,” and make way for “touch and swipe.” People are beginning to expect interactive design with websites, so expect to see websites look and behave more like they came from the app store.

3. Websites focused on user experience.

Since people are spending so much time with their heads bowed over their handheld devices, they also expect to understand what to do with an app without having to guess. This means websites will be built with careful attention to user experience design (UX), in other words, built with humans in mind. Nonprofit leaders might finally understand that the less people have to think about a website, the more likely they’ll donate, sign petitions, volunteer or otherwise participate. Finally!

4. Less Flash.

We’ve long believed Flash to be big and clunky plug-in, with way too many distracting splash screens and blank spaces on the iPad. There are other technologies out there that make web movies and play on a host of devices, so expect to see more of these letters in the alphabet soup: AJAX, CSS3 and HTML 5.

5. Move to online donations.

Smart charities are already asking for money online with little more than a click. Many smaller nonprofits have been slow to relinquish check-cashing for ecommerce web design. We see some of that fear waning, and expect more nonprofits that don’t allow online donations to begin earning some electronic cash.

What do you think will be trending in 2012? Give your vote for one of these five in the comments below or tell us what you think we’ll see in the future.

[Image: Flickr user rjrgmc28]

Then why do so many non-profiteers forget these same requirements when it comes to their own websites? If sites like Amazon or Dell or eBay were run the way many nonprofit websites are, they’d be out of business as soon as you can say “customer loyalty.”

Double-standards don’t work with online visitors. Whether someone is looking to spend $10 on a Mother’s Day gift or give you $10 for your next fundraising effort, they’re still looking for a positive experience. They’re looking for the right kind of feedback and ease of use. They want what we all expect when it comes to a welcoming and comfortable online experience.

Here are e-commerce some ideas you can apply to your website – no matter if you’re selling products or simply trying to gain an online following:

1. Easy to find contact information

Shoppers like to know that they’re dealing with real people at a real company when they’re handing over a check or credit card information. They want to have a phone number in case something goes wrong with shipping. They want the assurance that someone is there to help if they need it. Lack of contact information – or hard-to-find contact information – can erode trust and make people less likely to have a transaction with you, whether you’re accepting dues, donations or sign-ups for your next event.

Non-profit fix

Make sure your contact information is on every page of the website in an easy-to-see spot. Some of the most common spots are at the top of the page in the header or on the bottom of the page in the footer. Also make sure you provide multiple ways for people to reach you, including your physical address, a phone number, an e-mail address and a contact form. The more you can give adds to the level of trust.

2. Prompt and friendly feedback

As soon a shopper clicks that Submit button and authorizes money or personal information to transfer to someone else, they like a little assurance. Asking for feedback as soon as a person has acted on something (they call this “conversion” in the biz), also allows an e-commerce company to learn from the experience. Successful sites give chances for feedback immediately.

Non-profit fix

Ask for feedback immediately upon accepting some kind of information from your visitor – as soon as they sign up for a newsletter or send you a donation. You might create a quick survey asking for feedback on their experience. Ask them how easy it was for them to find what they were looking for, if they have ideas for improvement or if anything stood out as particularly good or bad about the process.

3. Clear Navigation

Take a look at some of the most popular shopping sites, and study their navigation. Even Amazon, which sells just about anything you can imagine, has a fairly simple and pared down navigation. Successful e-commerce sites make it easy to find items with well-named categories. Each category is also populated with items – no orphan categories allowed.

Non-profit fix

Think about what you want your visitors to accomplish when they come to your site, and shape your navigation accordingly. Remembering that people read from left to right, put the most important item on the farthest left navigation item. Make sure you don’t repeat items within navigation, and make sure each menu item leads somewhere. No “coming soon” pages!

4. Effective search

If a shopper is looking for barbeque tongs, they’ll often just type “barbeque tongs” into a search box to find them. It can be much easier than navigating through menu systems, especially if those are complex menu systems.

Non-profit fix

Make sure your content management system has a built-in search engine that delivers the most helpful search results. Your visitors should be able to enter keywords and find any applicable content that matches those keywords. It’s even better if you can guide your visitors through categorized searches, if you have a website with heavy content.

5. Detailed product information

Shoppers like to know what they’re buying. They like detailed shopping information, including prices, sizes, specifications and pictures. The more information available makes people more comfortable with parting with their money or personal information.

Non-profit fix

Every time you ask for a transaction from your visitors – money or signing a petition or any kind of interaction – provide them with as much information as possible. If you’re collecting money for the next youth trip, show pictures of the last trip and give an itinerary. If you’re trying to save endangered tigers, provide numbers of wild tigers and details of how any funds will be spent.

6. Clean Checkout Process

The last thing e-commerce sites want to stand between a shopper and their purchase is a clumsy checkout process. They do everything they can to make it smooth and involving as few steps as possible. The more steps between deciding to pay and actually paying equals more opportunities for abandoned shopping carts.

Non-profit fix

Make it easy to accept donations or sign-up forms. Once someone chooses to give you money, let them review their order, enter their billing information and check any additional fees on the same page. It also helps is your shopping cart or submission form are completely integrated into your website – it pays not to use a third-party service for this. If you must include other pages, make sure they’re short and match your site exactly.

7. Dependable Customer Service

The best shopping sites take pride in their customer service. They make it easy for customers to find contact information (see above) and also get in touch if they need more involved help. They also make privacy policies, return policies, shipping rates and FAQs easy to find from every page. Well served customers are happy customers, but there’s also a practical use for these good practices. The more information they provide to shoppers up front, the fewer questions they have to answer.

Non-profit fix

Copy these same pricniples, and you’ll have a happy constituency. Have a special address or system you can use for support, and present a phone number for people who prefer not to use technology. Create an FAQ that addresses the most commonly asked questions that come in. If you’re collecting personal information, make it clear what you’ll do with that information in a privacy policy.

8. Multiple Payment Options

The best sites are open to accepting your money any way you care to give it: credit card, check or PayPal. They’re also open to people who have cards other than Visa or MasterCard, by accepting AmEx and Discover.

Non-profit fix

If you’re accepting money, provide as many payment options as possible to help the money flow in. You can subscribe to a payment service that allows all the major credit cards, and also provide the option of sending in electronic or paper checks. PayPal is useful, because that opens up the choices your donors have for paying.

9. Prevalent Store Policies

The best online stores make it clear what their return and shipping policies are, and lay out their other store rules. Many simply put it in an FAQ or page with links to more detailed pages.

Non-profit fix

If you have terms and conditions or privacy policies, make it easy to find. Spell out exactly what you do with private information. Tell your visitors how you might be interacting with them (newsletters, Facebook, etc.). Informed visitors are much more likely to be happy about making transactions with you.

10. History and Credibility

One of the reasons so many people feel safe about buying from Amazon is that they know so much about them. They know the company’s history, they know Jeff Bezos is a nice guy and how he built it. They also know that history includes years testimonials from happy customers. That’s what sets a fly-by-night company from one people feel comfortable doing business with.

Non-profit fix

Tell your story. If you’ve been around for awhile, talk about your beginnings. Even if you’re new, you probably have individuals with a positive history who work for you – tell their history. Also demonstrate the good work you’ve done in the past. Show how you’ve used funds and the positive impact your organization has made. Tell your visitors why it makes sense for them to trust you, and they will.

It’s true that your website should be a reflection of your organization’s goals and audience, but there are a few proven tools that we suggest again and again because they simply work. They make a more interactive website. They drive more support. They deliver information most efficiently.

I happen to be right, but you don’t have to take my word for it. I ran a check against some of best top non-profit websites out there – the ones that were official nominees for the 14th annual Webby awards – to see what tools they had on their homepages.

Here are the top eight and why they work so well. Keep reading and you’ll see the breakdown for Teenage Cancer Trust, ASPCA, One, SocialVibe and The Nature Conservancy.

Search

There’s only so much information you can cram onto your homepage. Search provides a way for website users to tap into your reservoir of information.

Donate button

You’ve got to earn money, and people want to give it. Don’t stand in their way.

Newsletter

Establish a regular newsletter and then encourage people to sign up. This way you can remind them that you exist and that what you do matters.

Slide show

Slide shows are an efficient way to display evocative, image-based content in a confined space.

Blog

Blogs not only keep your constituency informed of what you’re doing, but they also help fill your website with content. That gives search engines more to latch onto, and therefore drive more people to your website.

Social media plug-in

Whether you have an initiative on Facebook or Twitter or some other social networking platform, bring it into your website. It serves as a cross-promotional element and gives people other ways to interact with you.

Featured stories

Websites can go stale quickly, but a list of featured stories or news items can keep it fresh.

Here are the tools those top five non-profits are using on their websites. Look familiar?

Teenage Cancer Trust

• Search
• Donate button
• Slide show
• Latest news
• Newsletter
• Directory/support network

ASPCA

• Search
• Join now button
• Donate button
• Newsletter
• Highlighted stories
• Online shop
• Social media accounts

One

• Join now button
• Search
• Slide show
• Newsletter
• Blog
• Social media accounts

SocialVibe

• Slide show
• Newsletter
• Facebook link
• Twitter feed
• Blog

The Nature Conservancy

• Search
• Newsletter
• Slide show
• Interactive map
• Social share
• Social media accounts

1. Let everyone on your staff and board give feedback on your design, and apply everyone’s preferences.
2. Put someone in charge who doesn’t care about the website.
3. Replace pages or menu items with PDFs.
4. Make your mission statement about six paragraphs long and put it front and center of the homepage.
5. Hide the donation forms. It also helps to make it really hard to use.
6. Don’t apply any kind of strategy to the site. Just throw it up and assume you’ll get support.
7. Make sure you don’t look “too polished,” because no one will give you money unless the site looks like it was built on a shoestring.
8. Assume no one looks at your site.
9. Put up a bunch of unrelated pages with an unclear and incoherent message.
10. Design for your board members (or yourself) rather than your audience.
11. Leave development to a volunteer.
12. Leave design to a volunteer.
13. Play hot potato with updating website pages. The biggest sucker is in charge of keeping it current.
14. Forget about your other communications efforts. Never cross reference them. Never meet with the people in charge of putting them together.
15. Make your decision on a web developer based on cost alone, assuming you don’t always get what you pay for.

Monique Cuvelier spends her days at Talance sorting through the muck and creating fabulous non-profit websites. Contact her for advice on how.

Wikipedia is ranked the 6th most popular in the world (fifth most popular in the US), so it might come as a surprise that it has only a staff of 10, and the rest of it’s enormous success is built on volunteers. Wikipedia is a non-profit. (Cash-strapped non-profits: think about that next time you’re wondering how you’ll get everything done on your current budget.)

Of those 10 employees, almost all of them are focused on keeping the website up and running. They manage the site, handle design, manage servers, babysit the network – generally make sure that the information goes where it needs to. The volunteers, on the other hand, feed the site, make sure the copy is correct, handle bite-sized tasks, which in the aggregate, are enough to make Wikipedia one of the biggest sites on the planet.

The important lesson here is not just that you can accomplish great things with volunteers, but that they need to be applied to the correct task. If something is as integral to your organization as your website, pay for it. You’ll free up volunteers for other tasks that meet their individual skills without weighing them down with such a complicated task as a website, but you’ll never be emotionally beholden to someone who’s donating their sweat (and possibly tears) to your site.

[Photo credit: AVP Volunteer 2 by yuan2003, on Flickr]

As any charitable organization knows, volunteers are superstars. They give love and expertise and don’t ask for a dime in return. They can be especially helpful if your organization has a website. Bearing in mind that an entire Web development project is long-term and requires dedicated knowledge and commitment that you’re better off hiring someone to do (upshot: it’s easier to fire someone whose work you’re not happy with), there are still plenty of other tasks you can assign out to people who want to help. Here are a few.

[BTW, did you read Engaging Volunteers in Your Marketing Efforts or Volunteers and Website Management?]

1. Social networking cheerleader
2. Add comments to blogs
3. Contribute blog entries
4. Participate in discussion on bulletin boards
5. Data entry (i.e., cutting and pasting info into a new site)
6. Website promotion
7. Adding your website to directories
8. Writing news updates about events
9. Website literacy workshops
10. Checking for dead links
11. Updating old content
12. Convert press releases for websites
13. Usability testing (i.e., make sure everything works in a logical way)
14. Bug reporting (i.e., look for and report errors or problems)
15. Identify requirements for new development
16. Browser testing
17. Taking pictures for the website
18. Formatting and uploading pictures
19. Making videos for the site
20. Uploading videos onto a service like YouTube or Vimeo, and adding them to site
21. Help manage wiki

Anything we missed? Add your ideas below.

It helps to see what other organizations are doing right to guide your own Web strategy. Here are six stand-out examples from non-profits that have a presence with websites, Twitter and Facebook.

Websites

10ThousandDoors.org is a gutsy move by the United Methodist Church to be a truly interactive experience. The whole site is innovative, but the Talk page is a new breed of discussion boards that has really opened up sharing and communication.

Take the Walk has a great counter on its homepage. They tally the number of miles supporters have walked to support fighting AIDS in Africa. The placement is perfect: front and center. This ensures the site is geared toward pulling in new supporters.

Twitter

Ashoka started promoting their e-book through Twitter and quickly built up a following. This multi-tasking post is smart, because they thank their followers, help everyone feel included and continue the promotion all in one Tweet.

The town of Richmond, VA, had a double-header of a good idea. First, they started a city wiki (others here), and then they set up an automatic Twitter feed that publishes any updates to the wiki. It gives you a real-time, accessible view of any changes that happen at the town level.

Facebook

Peta launched a Facebook Cause to raise funds and donations to protect animals. They’ve raised nearly $60,000 and have enabled others to recruit more supporters and raise funds on their behalf.

Synagogue 3000 claimed a great web address so they’d be easy to find on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/synagogue3000) rather than the ugly and hard to remember stream of numbers that Facebook adds to the end of your URL when it assigns one to you. Click here to set yours.

Asking for monetary support should be integrated into every website belonging to a non-profit, synagogue and church. But there are other ways to let your members give than just writing a check.

Web developer Jeff Robbins had a great idea you can replicate for your charitable organization. He has developed a slew of tools for web developers for free, but for those who want to show their gratitude, he created an Amazon wish list full of tools and trinkets from all price ranges that he wants or needs:

And he’s getting them. His fans have bought him books, podcasting equipment, and other tools that he uses in his work.

It works because sometimes it’s easier for people to give support when there’s a tangible goal in mind. It’s the same reason I prefer to give my niece and nephew an actual gift for their birthdays rather than a check. I can picture them using the gift instead of simply absorbing the cash.

Money is great, but supplies cost real money, so you might as well make a list of them and ask for donations. Does your organization need a netbook, printer, digital recorder, books, hanging file folders, office printer, snacks for the lounge – anything that Amazon sells, which is basically anything? Set up a wish list, and you might be surprised at what you get.