I Smell a Non-Profit Web Design Disaster…

Posted by Laura Bergells

January 21, 2008

“I’m going to design a website for our club,” happily announced a crazed friend of mine. “I just bought Microsoft FrontPage, and I’m learning HTML. This is easy!”

Not so fast, cowboy.

Turns out he skipped defining the web goals before he started flailing around, making things look quasi-pretty in FrontPage.
Turns out that 9 different club members will be continually adding fresh content to the site: none of whom have any web skills. Or FrontPage.
Turns out my friend never heard of site architecture.
Or understand how to design a site with search engines or social media in mind…

And that’s just for starters!

Oi! I smell a disaster! My hapless friend doesn’t realize the nightmare he’s creating! He doesn’t know:

Design comes (almost) last. The part where you “make it look pretty” with design (and dear God, not FrontPage!) comes toward the end of web development. Never, ever start with it. Instead, start with stuff like defining your goals, your audience, your contributors, your calls to action, your desired keywords, and your architecture.
CMS can make managing content WAY easier. An open source Content Management System (Joomla, Drupal, WordPress anyone?) might make way more sense for a church or non-profit group with multiple contributors — who have little to no web or coding experience. It also frees the organization from relying on my friend for every site update.
HTML is less important than ever. Content can get trapped in design-heavy HTML code. This tragedy can prevent ideas from spreading — which is awfully important for an ideas-based organization! My friend has yet to learn the importance of XML: which frees content from restrictive HTML design constraints.
Members will want to kill him in a few months. My friend never polled members about how they are currently using the web. By creating a difficult-to-use site that doesn’t easily spread ideas or meet club goals, my friend is poised to make more enemies than friends.

Don’t pooh-pooh this! My friend pooh-poohed my cautionary bullet points above, explaining that he didn’t have to worry about goals or audience. After all, the sole goal of the website is keep members and prospects informed of meetings, events, and new ideas. And he’s on really good terms with the board, and knows many of the most influential members. So it’s all clear to him. Self-explanatory. No big deal, right? Easy!

Um, it’s actually a HUGE deal. When the sole purpose of your organizational existence is developing a community around ideas, yeah, it’s kind of a big deal! Many non-profits might jump at the chance to have a volunteer noodle around with developing and implementing a potentially inept design. When they do, they risk damaging the very reason for their existence!

And the kicker? Turns out my friend never heard of a thing called “Facebook.” A quick search revealed that quite a few club members were active FaceBook members! Now, I asked, why not start by creating a group in FaceBook, instead of jumping right into design?

My stubborn friend tells me that he wants to go ahead and design stuff in FrontPage.

So it’s an ego thing for him. It’s not a function-thing for the club. Got it.

I’ll probably be going to his funeral in a few months!