New and Improved: Healing Hands Ministries

Healing Hands Ministries was chosen by NPower Texas to receive a free website makeover. Their site at the time had minimal content and was utilizing the free Mac website tool. They wanted a site that would clearly state their mission, one that was unique in design and easy to update. The site was designed to match the marketing materials and utilizes Joomla to manage the content. The organization hopes to improve donations so they can continue to further their mission to help those in the community with medical and dental care.

Get Your Videos Ready!

Do you ever visit YouTube? Well I go there often. There are so many videos from so many topics, you could never get through them all. Well I'm not the only one who goes to YouTube. YouTube is a FREE online server where you can post your own videos in a personalized channel. Non-profits are starting to utilize it for their organizations. At YouTube, you can create a custom channel for your organization and post videos. This is great because if you have a lot of videos, you can store them there for free vs. storing them on your own web server. This saves bandwidth and space. YouTube also gives you custom code so that you can embed the videos into your website but they still reside on their servers. Another value to YouTube is that folks will have easier access to you and would likely see your video there first before they would at your website. Another type of video services is GodTube - same concept but more religious based so if you are a faith-based organization, consider using it as well.

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Design Tip: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Do you remember your dad saying that? We'll mine always did and it's true. When a potential donor comes to your website for information or maybe to make a donation, a good visual of your organization can bring positive feedback. Capture your visitors attention with photos. Wouldn't it be nice for people to fully understand the work you do? You can do that by displaying photos of your organization doing what it does best for others, whether it's feeding the homeless, educating children or saving a displaced pet. Photos that tug on the heartstrings can eventually tug on the purse strings. It also helps people see just how far you've come. So the next time you're updating your website, don't forget the photos.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

You may have heard a lot of buzz lately about content management systems (cms). More and more companies and organizations are migrating to them for a number of reasons. With a CMS, you don't have to have any HTML experience to update it. So this makes it easier to keep your website up-to-date without having to pay a designer $100 to change a few words. So which CMS is the best? Again, there are tons out there. Some of the most popular are Drupal and Joomla. I lean more toward Joomla when setting up CMS tools with my clients. As a designer, I'm able to easily design a nice look and incorporate the needed Joomla elements to make the template work properly. Another great thing about Joomla is they have an active development community meaning developers are constantly creating little plug-ins that you can use with Joomla. You can have a simple site with Joomla or a more advanced site - it doesn't really matter. There are also many free templates out there that you can instantly use. As a non-profit, you of course would want something a bit more customized for your organization so it will likely take you contacting someone who is experienced in developing with Joomla to create a custom design. After that, it's pretty smooth sailing. With an id and password, you can start making you own changes. You can read more about Joomla by visiting www.joomla.org. Also, explore their "Extensions" to get an idea of what you can add to your site.

Fundraise with Online Auctions

NpowerTexas, a non-profit IT consulting firm, is fundraising for their organization by having an online auction. An online auction is a great way to get extra funds for your organization. You can also do it with almost no expense. First, register your organization with EBay and set up an account. Next, set up an account with Mission Fish. Mission Fish and EBay have partnered together to help non-profits fundraise with online auctions. What makes this great is that EBay will refund your submission fees if you are registered with Mission Fish. They also base that on the percentage of funds being donated. So, if you place items up for auction and 100% of that goes to your organization, then you will receive 100% of your fees back. By using PayPal to process your transactions, you are charged probably a lower fee than most credit card processing companies. Then get all your board members together and start pulling together items for the auction. Your board members should be a huge asset to distributing out invitations to potential buyers of the auction items. See if they can send out an email to the folks in their company to help get the word out. Consider too, that your items will be available on EBay for people everywhere to vote on. Not only can you raise funds but you can get the word out about your organization with minimum marketing.

Why I Started This Blog

I have been working with a variety of non-profits for awhile now. What I've found is that many don't know where to begin when it comes to IT or getting their site on the right track to attract potential donors and members. With that being said, I have been asked to speak at a few workshops and brown bag lunches to talk about the web and it's great potential for non-profit organizations. Now, I'm taking much of my presentations and experience to this blog. I know that many non-profits are 80% or more volunteers so sometimes there is the lack of time or knowledge available to get going in the right direction. This blog is going to cut some of your research out. I will use my 13 years or web design experience and experience with non-profits to post ideas and reviews of open-source tools that could be used. This is by no means the be all and end all to web design and strategy but it's mostly based on my opinion and background.

Every week, I will be posting an interesting notation or idea for your websites or I may post a review or information on a valuable tool.

If you have questions or would like me to discuss a particular subject, send me an email at patsy@thatsunique.com and I'll work a post in.