Last week we had the pleasure of facilitating a nonprofit marketing focus group for the Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington. That group had a spirited discussion around nonprofit website issues. So I thought I’d write a series of articles exploring the website landmines that nonprofits hit most often. If you’re considering building a new website, we’ll try to steer you away from these landmines. Or if you’ve already hit one, then we’ll give you some advice on how to heal your digital wounds. Here’s the first one:

The well-meaning volunteer website

“We had a volunteer (or student) create our site and it just doesn’t work right. We’re going to have to completely redo it.”

What happened: While volunteers and students often mean well, most don’t have the skills, time, and experience to really make a working site for a nonprofit. If you are like many nonprofits, you were approached by a volunteer who simply said something like, “I can make you a nicer website.” Or maybe it was a student or teacher who wanted to do something for you as a class project. Or maybe it was a board member’s friend. They mean well and you, because you’re always watching resources, said, “Great, make it nicer!”

The volunteer probably then asked you a few questions like, “What do you want it to look like?” or “Do you have a few websites you can show me that you like?”

A few months later and you have a website, one that maybe even looks nice. Or maybe you have a website, but it’s not entirely finished. There are items that had to be left behind because the volunteer moved on to other things or the class project ended.

Then you start asking questions such as, “How do we make updates to this?” or “Can I post video to it?” or “Can we make it do this and that?” or “Oops, we forgot to add a donation button to it, can you do that?” You get promises, excuses, or no response at all. Worst of all, neither you nor the website volunteer really agreed upon a goal for the site, on what it was supposed to DO and who it is designed to serve and how you can measure its effectiveness. And ultimately I’m willing to bet there is nobody in your organization who is ready to start working on maintaining the information in the site so it has value to the visitors.

How to avoid it: I’m not going to let nonprofits off the hook here. Too often you will say yes to a volunteer effort without fully understanding the long-term ramifications and goals simply because you don’t want to burden the volunteer with meetings and board reports.

Burden them. Make them understand that your site is going to be more than a design exercise. I won’t get into the entire process here, but I would stress that your volunteer is going to need to work with you and your board to outline clear goals, a timeline for building the site, a plan for maintaining it, and a number of follow-up meetings at 6 and 12 months post-launch with you and/or the board to discuss what’s working and what’s not.

If they are unwilling to engage with you in this process then they are wasting your time and theirs. If they are serious about working with you, then they’ll stick around. If not, they’ll fade away or find another project where they can donate their time.

It’s not a bad thing because these steps are absolutely necessary in the long-term effectiveness of a website. Without discussing and agreeing on the process it will be a lame duck project, with no maintenance plan and no one within the organization to champion or shepherd the site.

How to fix it: If you hit this one, then you’ve got a website that does not meet your needs and one you probably cannot update easily. You could simply have the complete site redone, using the process above to help guide you. But, you also may be able to save the site.

One of our clients had a site suffering from these problems. This executive director often said she was ashamed to send people to it because it did not reflect the organization in a positive way. By systematically going through the steps below we were able to save the current site and turn it into a site she and her organization are proud to have. And now employees and volunteers within the organization are engaged in using it as a resource rather than a hassle because of the steady stream of feedback from it. Here’s the simple roadmap:

First, sit down and write down a few goals you’d like the site to accomplish. These can be simple, like we want more donations from our website or we want more people to sign up for our newsletter. Or perhaps we want the site to be a hub for all our events. Don’t worry about how to get the goals done, just worry about what you want to do.

Second, decide if you want to go back to your volunteer or choose another route, such as finding another volunteer or hiring an individual or company to help you. This can be a hard choice but always remember that your website often is the most public face of your organization and it deserves thought, purpose, attention, and ultimately resources.

Third, pick just one of your goals to start and then have your volunteer or new vendor identify some ways for your site to achieve that goal. Ask them to attach time and, if you’re hiring, money, to that goal. They’ll return to you with some ideas and a cost (either time or money). If you’ve chosen a new company you will get some valuable feedback on the quality of your site and some good dialogue about other problems that are lurking beneath the surface.

Finally, if you’ve decided to make a change, consider how to measure your ability to reach your goal. Are you getting more traffic? Are you getting more donations? More sign-ups to your newsletter? By building this type of accountability into your website you will learn, over time, what works for your organization and what does not. And in marketing, that puts you ahead of 90% of everyone else.

If you’ve stepped on a website landmine and are feeling a little dazed, please contact us and we’ll take a look at the damage and make some suggestions on treatment.