The document provides 8 rules for effective non-profit websites: 1) Carve out a unique positioning, 2) Help volunteers and mentors self-select, 3) Offer donor-friendly experiences, 4) Build donor appeal, 5) Show interesting visual measurements of fundraising goals and progress, 6) Become an education destination, 7) Leverage social networks, and 8) Encourage viral sharing of content. It then discusses each rule in more detail with tips and examples.

1. CHRISTINA STANFIELD
strategist
www.LinkedIn.com/in/cstanfield
Best Practices for
Non-Profit Websites
July 3, 2009

2. 8 Rules to visitor engagement
1. Carve Out Unique Positioning
2. Help Volunteers and Mentors Self-Select
3. Offer ‘Spender’ Friendliness
4. Build Donor Appeal
5. Show Interesting Visual Measurement
6. Become an Education Destination
7. Leverage Network Marketing
8. Infect the Viral Web
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

3. Getting to unique web positioning
• Consider your ‘competitive’ set and make a list of the top 15
– Who services the same constituents?
– Who offers similar services?
– Who else do your donors/volunteers support?
• Visit the set’s websites and look at what they’re saying
• Group your peers’ main messages into four buckets
– Which competitors sound alike?
– Which are dissimilar?
• Consider these four buckets a ‘continuum’ and graph them
– Figure out where your organization’s current message fits
– Decide where you’d like to move… preferably into OPEN space
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

4. Example of a competitive perception map
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

5. Rule 1: Own your differentiator!
• People spend very little time looking at a web page and absorb
much less than they do from print, so choose ONE message to own
• Once you decide your unique positioning, make sure that everything
you communicate - your language, look and user experience - all
reinforce this one message
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

6. Volunteers
• Being able to search for opportunities based on lots of criteria is best practice
– Interest
– Location
– Date / 3 month calendar of events and service opportunities
– Greatest need
• Testimonials, videos of clients/volunteers/sites, and teaser activities like a ‘Match
Your Passion Quiz’ draw people in
• Connecting offline for orientation and site visits increases connection and lets long-
term, committed volunteers self-select
• Volunteer Match is tied into United We Serve and offers a great way to attract people
who might not find you on their own. Consider partnerships of this sort
• Building out a volunteer section may require creation of new content and
organizational coordination
– Job descriptions
– Databasing
– Intake procedures, training and offline event planning
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

7. Some great volunteer sites and functionality
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

8. Mentors
mentoring USA has a simple, thorough process:
Step 1: Make a one year commitment for one hour a week
Step 2: Choose three locations in order of preference that meet your
interest and schedule
Step 3: Complete the mentor application and provide three references
Step 4: Attend a New Mentor Training and get fingerprinted
Step 5: Site placement within three weeks of training and background
check completion
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

9. Online applications
Again, length and depth
select out people who
are not committed.
Include personal
information, education
and training, language
skills, volunteer
experience, site
preferences, essay
question(s), three
references, personal
history, and
background screening
information
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

10. Rule 2: It’s all about fit!
• Training volunteers and mentors takes a lot of time and resource
you don’t want to waste
• People volunteer and mentor for different reasons. Make sure you
know exactly who you want and give people enough information
about the experience they’ll have that they can decide if they’re a
good fit before they walk through your doors
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

11. ‘Spender’ friendliness
• Donations are another way people choose to part with their hard
earned money
• Non-profit sites should strive to provide the same user enjoyment
and buyer satisfaction as do retail sites
– When the experience is easy, pleasant and maybe even a bit thrilling,
people return more often and spend more each time
– The visceral and interactive nature of the web allows the act of donating
to become extrinsic-ly, as well as intrinsic-ly, satisfying
• Legacy planners are a way to appeal to an older and more
established online donor. Consider including a way to donate
directly from your IRA
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

12. Emulate fabulous retail experiences
Criteria include:
– Ease of use, navigation that clearly identifies site content
– Ability to find what you want, a functional search field and site map
– Feedback from other customers
– Online and offline contact options like phone and email
– Colors and imagery make the site!
Cite: The Webby Awards; National Retail Federation; Web Marketing Association; Time Magazine
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

13. Retail sites people love
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

14. Rule 3: Raise the bar!
Strive to meet the criteria that make for the easiest user navigation and
best overall web experiences
– Not just competing with other non-profits
– Another signal that your organization is unique and innovative among its
peers
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

15. Donor turn-ons
What donors want from charity websites:
1. Your Mission (on homepage)
2. How their money will be used (on homepage)
3. Photos of people they will be helping
4. A ‘donate’ button
5. Donations to date
6. A funding goal
7. Ways to keep in touch
8. Other ways they can help
Cite: Jakob Nielson's Alertbox, March 30, 2009. Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

16. What those could look like
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

17. Donor turn-offs
In a study by Jakob Neilson, people reported abandoning a possible
donation for the following reasons:
– 47% were usability problems relating to page and site design including
unintuitive information architecture, cluttered pages, and confusing
workflow
– On 17% of the sites users couldn't find where to make a donation
– 53% were content issues related to writing for the Web including
unclear or missing information and confusing terms
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

18. Rule 4: K.I.S.S.!
• The big problem is bad content usability
• Speak plainly and answer donors’ main questions, the first two on
your homepage
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

19. Visual measurement
• We know that potential donors want to know your donation goal and
want to be able to see how you’re doing along the way
• Think of it as ‘gaming’
• If we make it interesting, they may come back
• If we make it really interesting, they may tell a friend about it
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

20. Rule 5: Use tell-a-friend worthy visuals!
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

21. Rule 6: Destination, learn!
• Acting as a resource will bring more people to your site and will
make you more credible to the people who visit
• Visitors to this section might include press, students, individual
donors, foundations and volunteers
• A robust resources section would include
– A POV on current local and federal issues, updated at least
quarterly
– Downloadables like presentations and charts
– Links to other resources and partners
– RSS feeds
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

22. Network marketing
• Facebook is the most popular site, with
MySpace and LinkedIn distant seconds
• Second Life has an entire Non-Profit
world where you can test what attracts
and introduce a broader group to your
organization and work
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

23. Rule 7: ebay Giving Works works!
• Getting listed is easy. People can opt to donate to you as they
sell, and buyers can search for things that benefit you. A no-
brainer for immediate action
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

24. Rule 8: Infect the viral web!
• Beyond emailing something to a friend, the ability to post to
‘rating’ type sites like DIGG, MIXX, and Yahoo! Buzz is
important for constantly attracting new attention
• If updated regularly, RSS feeds are a great way to keep top of
mind and reinforce authority. A feed for updates to and news
that affect your constituents would be ideal
• Offering permalinks to material on your site will encourage
others to repurpose your content, thereby increasing your
visibility online
• Blogging can be effective if done by a staff member who works
closely with clients and can contribute on a daily basis. But if
you can’t commit to keeping it current, it will do more harm than
good
Christina Stanfield, Strategist

25. You’re off to a great start…
Best wishes for
a wonderful response to your website
If you have questions, please get in touch:
www.linkedin.com/in/cstanfield
Christina Stanfield, Strategist