NP Times / Special Report: Webmaster Of Your Domain

By Craig Causer

Software brings running a Web site in-house

Many nonprofits have been seduced by the Internet’s siren song of instant gratification. But, they have learned that it takes time to gather content, design, build, test, and finally go live with a Web site. Webmasters were the architects and Web effectiveness often relied upon their talent and efficiency.

So when the Florida-based Venice Foundation received word that a prospective donor was interested in giving $1 million based on his reaction to the nonprofit’s re-launched Web site, one might consider patting the back of the Webmaster.

The problem is there was no Webmaster.

The Venice Foundation is one of a growing number of nonprofits designing and updating Web sites using software platforms that make Web design so easy, it eliminates the need for a Webmaster.

“We’re still working on securing that $1 million gift, but it’s an excellent sign,” said Teri Hansen, president and CEO of The Venice Foundation. “Basically he said that he was looking at all the Web sites for community foundations in Florida and liked the content at ours ... and the site was up for just a few weeks at that point.”

Utilizing the VisionMgr™ platform, developed by Internet management solutions company Neulogic and offered through Community Foundations of Amercia (CFA), The Venice Foundation enriched its content, offered prompt news updates and became more user-friendly, Hansen said.

It’s a change that has been on the way for some time, according to Carla Dearing, CFA’s president and CEO. “How foundations do their Web sites, historically, is each individually,” she explained. “We analyzed the Web sites of our community foundations and realized there was a whole lot of overlap in terms of content and functionality. There was a real opportunity to work with a system that had the best of both worlds.”

Before this platform, CFA did not have a Web presence. It served as the lead client and a catalyst for the VisionMgr™ system, underwriting its development to the tune of more than $2 million. CFA put the platform in place as a way to offer resource-starved community foundations a less expensive method for maintaining a Web presence. Because it’s a shared platform, those that have joined through CFA are only responsible for a portion of the cost of the ongoing upgrading of the system, Dearing explained.

Saving money is one thing, but any trip down a software aisle will reaffirm that cheaper does not guarantee that a program is easy to operate. As evidence of the ease of use, Hansen said that The Venice Foundation employs a part-time, 19 year-old to handle content and updates on the site. Her training consisted of a two-hour conference call, after which she was up and running with all the new tools.

“Making changes in the system is as easy as using Windows,” agreed Rick Batyko, vice president of communications at The Cleveland Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio. “It’s all point-and-click and it’s designed to be very easy. There is training but we’re talking minimal.”

The Cleveland Foundation went live with its improved site about a year ago. It previously posted on its Web site what had amounted to “a kind of a brochure.” All changes had to go through a third party to get posted, Batyko said. It failed to present well. It didn’t have any significant functionality, and it was costly to maintain, he added.

“My one reservation going in was that I might be constrained in what I could do visually,” Batyko admitted. “I was afraid there would be templates we’d have to fill out just like if I bought something off the shelf from Microsoft or one of these make-your-own Web page packages. But it wasn’t.”

Following the re-launch, the foundation saw a 400 percent increase in traffic. The number one downloaded file on the site comes from its target audience of professional advisers, proving that the increased traffic is also “quality traffic,” as Batyko described it.

The improved site also includes features that are new to the nonprofit, including being able to process credit cards and online stock transactions. Those tools were important to the organization since its competitors -- the Fidelities, Vanguards and Schwabs -- enable people who have accounts with them to conduct transfers online from their money market account into a charitable gift fund. Now, The Cleveland Foundation offers the same service.

“At the same time that we were looking at redoing our Web site, we were going through a whole re-launch of our brand,” Batyko said. “It meant a new logo, new colors, new look -- a new everything. I’m from a marketing background, a Fortune 50 company, so I’m really sensitive that anything we do externally supports what we’re trying to communicate through the brand. I was able to do all of that with this site.”

All of that was done at a savings, compared to what the organization was spending. Batyko estimated that the organization has been able to hold on to “tens of thousands of dollars” due to the switch. He had budgeted for a Webmaster and now that salary has been saved. All of the updates and changes can be done internally, so the need for a third party to provide those services is gone.

The Cleveland Foundation pays a fee through CFA that costs approximately $6,000 a year. It also chose to place $10,000 per year for three years into a product development fund. That’s part of being a larger community foundation that would like to assist smaller foundations, Batyko said.

The savings is also apparent if you consider all the functionality. It’s not only a financial savings. It’s tapping into an incredibly rich resource that makes it easier to have really good online content, The Venice Foundation’s Hansen added.

Additional content comes by way of the CFA, which creates articles and stories and disseminates them nationally to member foundations. Those are features that the members do not have to expend time or resources on, and it gives each site an updated, fresh feeling to it, Dearing said.

The content that each community foundation chooses to include on its Web site has the advantage of eliminating the middle man. In the absence of a Webmaster, the person who understands or owns the content can directly author and publish on the Web without an intermediary, thereby making it a direct, moderated communication, explained David Brownstein, president of Neulogic, the platform’s creator.

“We have a very good understanding of the local community foundation space right now,” Brownstein said. “Our typical deployment plan is an eight-week cycle. Most of that time is taken up by the foundation creating the content that’s going to go on the site. If the content is ready, it could be up in a matter of days.”

For local community foundations, it’s more akin to a subscription service. A typical term is three years and the approximate annual cost is $6,500, which is a significant difference compared to the salary for a Webmaster or technologist. The price includes Web hosting, all upgrades and training.

CFA is currently working to leverage the platform to produce further benefits for foundations. “We’ve worked with Neulogic to ensure that they can offer this same underlying platform to other parts of the nonprofit world to create leverage,” Dearing explained.

“What that does for us,” she said, “is when they bring in new clients for things we haven’t thought of or things we don’t have the money to pay for ... when they add it, our clients automatically get it.”