Tag Archives: CMS

Recap of Nten Webinar – Project Managing New Drupal Website at NYPL

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When I first heard Michelle Misner describe her success implementing a new Drupal website at the NY Public Library at the September Not-for-Profit Webmaster Roundtable Meeting, I thought it would be great to share her experience with others in our nonprofit community.  So Michelle and I presented a webinar yesterday for Nten where she reviewed the project management process, and I asked questions on how things went.

In addition to the tips I provided in my earlier blog post, here’s some additional takeaways from yesterday’s session:

  • Do a content audit before starting a website redesign;  you probably have more content than you think; allow plenty of time for migration into the new CMS
  • Picking the product is easy compared to instilling a culture within your organization so everyone assumes responsibility for online content – if only the communications department has updated web pages in the past, this will be a major shift
  • Training is a continual process – not just when you roll out the new system;  Drupal has a steep learning curve, so make sure you allow the time for internal staff to learn the software, especially the person(s) who will be managing the site
  • Make sure you coordinate what’s on your website with other communication channels, e.g. social media, and use an editorial calendar to plan content updates on all platforms
  • Plan who will be responsible for content updates and then trust your staff to post them; not every piece of content needs to be reviewed before going live, but some parts of your website may need to be more closely monitored than others.  (Drupal does not have a built-in way to notify approvers that content is awaiting review.)
For more details, please listen to the recording from yesterday’s Nten event.  Michelle’s experience offers much wisdom about how to roll out a new website using a content management system, whether or not you choose to use Drupal.

How to Run a Successful Webinar

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As many of my friends know, I’m a big fan of online learning, especially by attending  webinars offered by organizations such as Nten. Next Tuesday, I’ll be on the other side of the computer, joining Michelle Misner of the NY Public Library to present How the NYPL Successfully Project Managed a New Drupal Website.  We had our final prep session today – here’s some tips if you’re planning an online event:

  1. Find out in advance who will be attending so you can prepare the most relevant content.  (You can also learn about participants during the event by asking questions with a few short polls.)
  2. Allow plenty of opportunity for audience interaction, preferably throughout the session – not just at the end.
  3. Keep your slides short.  While it’s good to summarize major points, don’t offer so much information that it overwhelms your viewers.
  4. If possible, ask someone to monitor the back channel – it’s a bit difficult to present and to also handle incoming chat questions.  Provide a hash tag so those who couldn’t attend live can easily follow the live tweets.
  5. Be prepared to switch to a web browser to show something that isn’t available in your slides (and practice how to do this before you actually are in the webinar)
  6. Offer to respond after the event to questions you didn’t get to, or for which you want to provide more information for later –  but don’t promise what you can’t deliver
  7. Offer online resources to others in our nonprofit community for attendees who want to go deeper
Please join us live Tue, Nov. 29 at 2 PM EST (it’s free if you’re an Nten member). If you’re planning to roll out a new content management system (whether or not it’s Drupal), you’ll find Michelle’s story very helpful.  If you can’t attend, read my summary of the event in next week’s blog posting.  Meanwhile, I wish you and your loved ones a safe and joyous Thanksgiving.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Thanks to Charles Lenchner for today’s Organizing 2.0 Conference, where I presented a session on how to evaluate and implement a donor or membership database.  Thanks also to fellow speakers (among many others) Steve Dondley, Jason Lefkowitz & Colin Delaney who spoke about content management systems (particularly Drupal) and managing online consultants.

Last week’s Nten webinar on email list management strategy offered tips such as segment on constituent behavior not on interests so you can better target your communications.   According to the Agitator, email is still an important channel, but many readers may be reading them on their phones, making it even more important that your message is concise.  Big Duck also offers 7 tips for an effective e-newlsletter.

Facebook has (again) changed how pages are presented – The Social Path and Tech Cafeteria offer a look at the latest changes, and Beth’s Blog discusses a Facebook content strategy.

Using a slide show on your home page?  Future Fundraising Now suggests it may not be effective, even though many other sites are doing this.  Also see EchoDitto’s take.

I’ve noticed on the NYC subway lately that almost everyone is on their smart phones,  not a surprise since smart phone sales now exceed PC sales.  All the more reason to make your website mobile friendly.

Nten’s 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference next month will be the biggest and best ever.  Even if you can’t attend in person, you can now participate online.

What Nonprofit Webmasters Talk About

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This week I attended the quarterly get together of the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table, chaired by long time leader David Milner.  As usual, discussion was lively covering topics such as:

  • Google Analytics – use scheduled reports often to get colleagues to look at data but make sure they understand some of the basic terms – e.g. page views, visits etc.
  • Surviving a website redesign – David suggested an ‘outside in’ approach to consider what site visitors are looking for rather than ‘inside out’ – where you spend most of your time getting feedback from others in your organization.  Another interesting point – when selecting a developer, remember that the firm that creates the design doesn’t necessarily have to implement it.
  • Content management systems – While CMS products offer the potential of allowing staff through a nonprofit to update web content, many of us have had mixed success in actually achieving that goal.  Bill Swersey of the Asia Society (thanks for hosting the meeting) showed us a wiki which includes an internal style guide as well as tips on how to create online content.  Another idea mentioned was to revise job descriptions to include responsibility for website updates
  • Donate now – Is it really important to put a prominent button throughout your website?   My take – you want to make sure that those who are ready to contribute can do so easily – and can get through the process without having to fill out a lot of information – and are not distracted by extraneous links to other website pages
  • Facebook ads – Bill commented on the amazing targeting capability available within Facebook so your ad can display to a very selective audience

If you’re in New York, please join the conversation at the next meeting in December.  If not, consider joining our LinkedIn group.

Report from 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference

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Thanks to Holly Ross and the entire Nten staff for last week’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, held in New Orleans.  With so many worthwhile sessions taking place during the three days, the hardest part was choosing which sections to attend.  I was also fortunate to receive what was clearly the most valuable prize at the Sponsor Fair, a $1000 donation to any nonprofit of my choice, generously contributed by Jay Frank of Nice Touch Communications and Telecom for Charity.

Kudos also to Beth Kanter who organized the Day of Service to assist local nonprofits in New Orleans on the first day of the conference.  Working with Nancy Schwartz, (who writes Getting Attention to help nonprofits with marketing tips), I gave a quick ephilanthropy tutorial to Casa New Orleans.

I also participated in two conference sessions:

Tug of War or Pulling Together? Building Teamwork for Better Online Campaigns, David Hollender, Jed Cohen and I reviewed strategies for how an organization can work collaboratively instead of in silos.  Sharing information regularly can help, as well as a current intranet site and ‘lunch and learn’ where departments are invited to learn about each other’s projects.  While it is helpful to build relationships with those in other departments before you are assigned to work on a project with them, it’s also important to make sure that your own department’s goals are met.

The Joy of CMS: Implementing Sustainable Content Management Systems (The Painless Way to Keep Your Web Site Current): I moderated a panel of three CMS experts: Andrew Cohen, Nathan Gasser and Jeff Herron.  Instead of focusing on available products (of which there are many), we discussed how the idea of content management can be successfully deployed.  Having a current web site is easier when the responsibilities are shared throughout the organization, and when management accepts this as part of everyone’s job.  We also discussed work flow – how web pages are reviewed and released, and how to insure that web content is consistent with other communication vehicles.

I also want to commend Laura Quinn and Dahna Goldstein who moderated two sessions on data integration which I attended.  Since most of us have data in many locations, it is always challenging to share information between multiple products.  Memorable takeaways: when evaluating products, data integration must be on the list of requirements, and it may be best to consider vendors who have been ‘open’ from the start rather than those who have changed mostly due to market demands  Let’s keep this discussion going on Nten’s Data Standards & Integration affinity group!

It was also wonderful to return to New Orleans, which clearly is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.  My wife and I were serenaded one night by a couple who lost their home and were struggling to make ends meet.

Will You Be at Nonprofit Technology Conference?

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If you’re planning to attend, please consider participating in the two sessions I’ll be participating in:

  1. The Joy of CMS: Implementing Sustainable Content Management Systems (The Painless Way to Keep Your Web Site Current). I will ask three experts in building web sites how nonprofit organizations can build a culture which supports up to date online content.
  2. Tug of War or Pulling Together? Building Teamwork for Better Online Campaigns. We will discuss how departments can work together within a nonprofit organization to develop and implement online strategies.

Nten’s Annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, expected to attract over 1,000 nonprofit staff members, consultants and vendors from across the United States, will take place in New Orleans, LA from Wed, Mar. 19 – Fri, Mar. 21.  It is always a wonderful event.,  Hope to see you there.

In addition, here is a useful resource on creating online donation pages and forms

Making the Most of your Web Site

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This week, the Foundation Center’s column, The Sustainable Nonprofit featured this targeted article on Spending Your Web Site Dollars Wisely.  Major points:

  • Delegating responsibility to the lowest level staff member or volunteer is foolhardy.  In a world where many will visit your web site as the first step in learning more about your organization, the web site must be professional and kept current.  It should not be primarily maintained by Information Technology, except for the back end responsibility of keeping it online
  • When to use a content management system (CMS) – “the more content you have and the more you plan to change or update it, the more you’ll need (and want) such a system”
  • Use professionals to create copy and images.  Hire a professional designer (if you don’t already have one on staff) so that your site is more about marketing than about information technology
  • Design your site for the visitors’ perspective, not your organization’s
  • Take the time to examine other web sites and to create a site map.  Think about what your constituents are most likely to look for and how can find it easily.

At my current organization, I’ve recently been instructed to review all of our web sites, and fix what’s wrong and make sure the information is correct.  Yes of course, but this should be the responsibility of everyone, not any one individual or department. (sigh!)

Wishing everyone a healthy and peaceful holiday season.

Nonprofit Marketing Tips

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Attended an Nten Webinar this week on Marketing for Non-Profits, led by Robert Rose of CrownPeak Technology, providers of content management software.

Highlights from the presentation:

  • While it is not a good idea to have a lot of ‘private content’ available only to members or subscribers, it is wise to provide premium content in exchange for site visitors providing their email address and other personal information.  Many constituents will ‘register’ in exchange for a useful study or informative enewsletter
  • If you’re going to use web 2.0 tools such as blogs and podcasts, you have to commit to a regular update schedule.  Building an audience requires quality content and takes time to build.
  • Use a variety of tactics to engage constituents;  I find, for example, that while it’s convenient to get RSS updates, I open my email daily but don’t open my RSS readers as frequently.  In addition, subscribers can signup for RSS feeds without providing any information while email newsletters require, at a minimum, email address.
  • It’s more important to analyze who is visiting your web site than how many.

I asked Robert whether it’s still a practical goal to create custom web content for segments of your audience, as I’ve heard many vendors preach.  The reality – it’s usually enough of a challenge for a nonprofit to keep its content up to date for everyone than to develop targeted content for specific groups.  There are some good reasons to integrate CMS with your CRM database (e.g. so subscribers can access their past donation history online and print receipts) but the ability to customize web content isn’t one of them.

Robert also suggested that it is rarely necessary to build custom software, no matter how ‘specific’ your requirements may seem.  I agree. With so many strong CMS packages available, I don’t think there’s any excuse for any nonprofit not to have an updated web site as the foundation of its communications strategy.

Report from NYC Joomla Day

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Sat, Oct. 13 I attended the NYC Joomla Day run by PICnet and sponsored by Google.  Joomla is currently the most popular open source CMS (Drupal and Plone are also widely used).

As a relatively new Joomla user, I found the ‘Joomla 101′ session helpful.  Louis Landry, a core Joomla developer, also reviewed the history of the development of upcoming 1.5 version and why it has taken a while to be released (it will be fully internationalized).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I am a big believer in data integration, and that applications should be able to share data with each other.  (I’m not alone in this effort – see the Integration Proclamation.)  Ryan Cozimek of PICnet led an afternoon session to explain why integration of CMS & CRM products is important.   Some benefits include allowing constituents to manage their profile on the web, providing a way to search data in inventory systems, making available help tickets to users and allowing for ACLs – access control lists, as a way to customize web site content.  PICnet is currently developing tools to integrate Joomla with SalesForce and Democracy in Action.  Recently announced integration initiatives by the big nonprofit vendors are Kintera Connect and Convio Open.

If your organization doesn’t have an current web site because it takes too much time to update content, using a content management system will help. With an active community and developer base, Joomla looks like the strongest option in the open source CMS market.

A New Day at Kintera

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Since my current organization has used Kintera since January 2005, I eagerly signed up for yesterday’s Nten conference call with Scott Crowder, who joined the firm as Chief Technology Officer earlier this year.  Although I’ve raised nearly $7 million in online fundraising revenues, working with Kintera has been a challenge, especially when trying to integrate with Raiser’s Edge, our offline fundraising software.

In addition to Scott’s arrival, Kintera also hired a new Chief Executive earlier this year, Richard LaBarbera, replacing the firm’s founder who had long held the position.  Recently, Kintera announced a new initiative - Kintera Connectwhich promised a new approach to integrating with other systems, a complete reversal from Kintera’s past strategy.  However, when few details of this program were available, I feared this was mostly talk with little substance.

By agreeing to do yesterday’s call, Scott made himself available for questions by the entire Nten community.  Although Kintera Connect was a main topic, he also addressed many other issues including one that Kintera has always sought to bury – the company’s financial viability.  After detailing many new technical initiatives currently in process, Scott described the firm’s goal of reaching profitability later this year and that they are “almost there now.”

Scott also described how Kintera no longer wants to do “everything for everybody,’ which has led to it having a product which tries to do too many things, not all which it does well.  By opening up to tie in with other systems, Kintera seems to now realize that it must focus on its strengths: e.g. CRM, CMS, advocacy, and leave the rest to others.

Other announcements included:

  1. implementation of Akamai technology to enhance performance
  2. data center migration
  3. sharp increase in capacity to send mass emails
  4. enhanced CMS, replacing current system

Although I’ve often been a critic of Kintera in the past, this conference call shows that the new management at Kintera is determined to set things right.  I’ll wait and see if the results equal the promise, but Scott’s willingness to talk openly is a promising sign.  A recording of the conference call is available at Nten’s site.