Supporting Your Programs with Your Website
Beyond the Brochure
Hopefully your nonprofit’s website has gone beyond the old “brochure” site – just listing your programs and services with no real interactivity – and has become a repository for all the information, expertise and activities related to your nonprofit.
I’m always on my soapbox telling nonprofits to put everything on their website necessary to help the donor make a “buying decision;” but let’s not overlook the power of program information – REAL information and interactivity that can support your program activities.
Why focus on program information?
1. The more program materials you have on your website, the more staff time you save. Materials should include program applications, intake forms, referral forms – whatever process you use to enroll a person into your program. Forms can be downloadable pdf forms or both downloadable and online forms.
2. The website is a less expensive option to print materials when it comes to your “educational” component. Many nonprofits have “educate” as part of their mission statement, and your website is the best tool to provide that education, in lieu of distributing expensive printed materials. And if you have “educate” in your mission and you aren’t doing ANYTHING specific to educate the general public about a specific issue, then there are no more excuses not to start now.
3. The more program-specific information and activities on your website, the more website expenses you can count as program expenses. What’s not to love about that?
4. Your program participants will love being able to have all the information they need without having to call you, email you or bug you to get the latest class schedule, sign up for a program, etc.
5. It’s another area you can keep fresh, fresh, fresh by adding current program photos – so people can really SEE what you do and the more fresh content you have, the higher you will rank in search engines.
Some Great Examples
This site has an entire section dedicated to helping doctors and other agencies refer consumers to them including a hotline, travel and directions, service phone directories, and forms for ordering specific tests.
This site has lots of great information to help educate the public about various topics important to the nonprofit like Healthy Air - they have created a series of articles directly on their site about the importance of healthy air and how to protect yourself from unhealthy air.
This site doesn't just plunk down some boring program description for each of their current programs; they make it sound interesting AND update it regularly with photos of various program activities so the page isn't just a static page that never changes. Your overall program may not change but the people and activities within that program change all the time and your site should reflect that!
This site has great resources for website visitors who want to know more about breast cancer; instead of just linking out to other resources (there is plenty of info out there about breast cancer) - they created their own webinars and a guide that make it easier for people to quickly find the best of the best information and positions the nonprofit as experts in their field.
This site actually has separate microsites for each major program, allowing them to treat each program as a separate campaign with a lot more visual impact. Each program has facts, stories, videos, resources and a separate donation area. This setup really gives each program a lot of attention and allows for a lot of information to be displayed for each one - all designed to help donors make a "buying" decision.
This site not only gives great program information, including statistics and stories, they allow a website visitor to sign up for the program online - through your local office after you've submitted your zip code! You can't ask for better customer service that that - it's all about convenience for your constituents!
