How to … Begin Branding Your Nonprofit Online
Love it or hate it, the Internet isn’t going anywhere, and for nonprofits, it’s a terrific and inexpensive way to talk about mission and engage people with what they’re trying to do. Even now, though, too many of the sector’s organizations flounder around online without a clue as to the medium’s vast possibilities. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Pew Charitable Trusts’ headquarters for a seminar, "The Nonprofit’s Guide to Web 2.0," sponsored by the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University, and while the panelists discussed social media and similar topics, it was their counsel on setting up websites that I’d like to address first.
- Understand that different viewers want to get different things out of your website. Make sure, then, that the site can speak to the various audiences it has.
- Make sure the name of your website is the name of your organization.
- Don’t use a URL consisting of your nonprofit’s initials, unless that’s how your organization is known. Instead, your name and URL should be the same.
- Register .com and .net addresses as well as .org.
- If your name can be easily misspelled, go ahead and register this misspelled domain names.
- Allocate the resources to have a credible, professional-looking online presence. This will make donors more apt to open their wallets for you.
- Have your differentiation points — the storyline that makes your organization different from all the others — up front, on the home page, in ways that are easily discernible and digestible. | 501(c)
