8- SOLID REASONS ALL NON-PROFITS NEED A WEB SITE...Written by Thom Reece
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Service Delivery Our economy is increasingly based on timely exchange of information. All successful non-profits must deliver right information to right person, at right time. A web site is a powerful way to deliver services for those organizations in business of providing people with information. Since this includes almost all non-profits, need and benefits of a website accessible 24- hours a day, seven days a week, become obvious. Advocacy To mobilize people around an issue, an organization must get word out quickly and provide people with convenient tools for responding. Because it's so easy to update a web site and have vital details available instantaneously, web is a perfect way to encourage people to act on issues that greatly concern them. Timely action alerts can be sent via email to various organization maintained data bases ...instantly. It's easy to respond to a call for action when one can email one's legislative representatives or link to other volunteer bulletin boards on Internet. Cross linking with other like-minded organizations provides a "synergy of action" that would be impossible with a well crafted web presence.Research Research may take many forms. An organization may wish to keep up with legal, political, scientific or other mission related developments. Alternatively, it may wish to learn about grant getting opportunities. Two excellent starting points for almost any kind of searching are Google and Yahoo. Probably best directory devoted entirely to nonprofit organizations on web is Action Without Border's web site. This includes a page of foundations and links offering grant opportunities. Cross linking with these organizations provides a wonderful networking opportunity and usually leads to additional opportunities for all linked organizations. Communication It would be hard to overemphasize advantages, cost savings, or numerous virtues of email. Email offers best of phone and mail. It is as fast and as reliable as phone, while compensating for frailties of human memory by preserving a written record, as does mail. Further, email allows for asynchronous communication, meaning that one can read one's email on one's own time, rather than having to play telephone tag. Of course, it also encourages clarity of expression by remaining a form of *written* communication. Web sites facilitate email correspondence when they make publicly available email addresses of organization staff. Sites can offer options which make sending a message as convenient as filling out a form. They can also invoke an email mailer on many browsers when visitor to a site clicks on right button. If you are worried about getting too much email, more than you have time to answer, consider discarding any mail delivered by US Postal Service and using time you save to answer few email messages you are lucky enough to receive. They will likely be more valuable, more interesting and you will be able to respond to them more quickly with better results than most of your incoming "snail mail". :-) In summation... strong benefits enjoyed by all non-profit organizations, from development of a custom website, are many and varied. A strong web presence provides a solid economic basis for additional revenues (donations), cost savings, and enhanced services to members, volunteers, and public at large. Since most non-profits are understaffed... dramatic labor savings and management efficiencies gained with a comprehensive web site can mean difference between success or failure... growth or survival!
Thom Reece is the CEO and Senior Consultant for On-Line Marketing Group... His website... On-Line Marketing Resource Center ...( www.e-comprofits.com ) is visited by thousands of internet marketers daily. Thom can be reached at: 808-929-7377, Fax: 808-929-8711, or by email at: thom@e-comprofits.com
| | A Simple Business TestWritten by Bruce McCurtain
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"best case" scenario comes true. Look at your numbers. Would you want to give up your day job, risk your home, savings and sanity for amount of money your best case scenario brings in? Being in business is far more complicated than just this test. But you can decide whether risk has any potential for success using this simple exercise. If best case scenario doesn't provide enough cash for you to live on idea either needs to be scrapped or wrapped in with other ideas for a more complete business. You can practice this by analyzing businesses that you patronize. What's overhead? Employees, leases, rents, cost of goods sold, debt service, etc. What's likely income per day? Week? Month? Is what appears to be left over worth it? Learn to analyze on a "best case" scenario and you'll find many business ideas are indentured servitude in disguise. As long as you're going to be a wage slave, you might as well let someone else take risks!
Bruce McCurtain has owned, operated or partnered in ski areas, marinas, campgrounds, title insurance, hotels, land development, restaurants, and many other businesses. He spends most of his time working on the new frontiers, whether that is in business development or reorganization of existing operations
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