Web Development for Nonprofits

We at Agaric consider nonprofit organizations to be one of our core constituencies, although a majority of our work is probably for groups without official 501c3 nonprofit status, for businesses, and for individuals. We try to stay in tune with the needs of organizations for good, whatever their tax filing status.

To the ISF list, from Patrick Shaw... some useful approaches but we think he missed the part of the question (below his response) for advice for a small nonprofit organization. For those without the overhead for a multistep strategic communications plan (although you should have some plan and write something down) and the resources to follow all these steps, which does as described require more time than most nonprofits have. A lot of the overhead can be reduced with a collaborative relationship with your web development and design workers. Using this model, at least in outline, is still recommended:

A fair bit of my work here at NPower Seattle is to help nonprofits be savvy about their web development - even if we're not doing it!. I have a handful of tips on my blog that might help:

1. Stuff about color - which is different on the web than in print: http://community.npowerseattle.org/patricks/2007/01/30/what-color-is-red-or-what-do-i-need-to-know-about-colors-... and http://community.npowerseattle.org/patricks/2007/02/16/more-about-color/

2. Stuff about DNS - which they'll need to launch: http://community.npowerseattle.org/patricks/2007/01/11/help-please-explain-dns-domain-names-hosts-and-all-of-tho...

3. Stuff about a final sign off process: http://community.npowerseattle.org/patricks/2007/01/04/signing-off-on-your-new-website/

4. And some tips about providing feedback about design compositions: http://community.npowerseattle.org/patricks/2006/12/09/how-do-i-provide-feeback-about-my-new-web-design-comps/

I think the other items I'd mention (which may or may or may not help a lot) is that we try to implement in a series of stages:

I. Information architecture (and we hope that this stems from a tech savvy communications plan!)

II. Visual design (which meets the needs of the audience described in the communications plan!)

III. Coding and production

IV. Testing and publishing

V. Documentation and training

I think that helps nonprofits set milestones, estimate their own work effort (which can be a lot!) and gives them great check in points with their develpor.

Hope that helps!

Patrick Shaw

http://www.npowerseattle.org

-----original message-----
>>A small nonprofit has selected a web consultant, and is looking for
tipsheets, checklists, and contract boilerplate. It's safe to assume
that the prospective clients have no experience with web development
or the usual cycle of a web development project. If you have any materials that would be useful to the small nonprofits (and that you are legally entitled to share), please feel free to post links to the list or to email me the documents off list. If possible, I prefer materials from nonprofits that have successfully managed negotiation and implementation of web projects, rather than materials from web consultants who work with nonprofits. It's all a matter of point of view. :-) >>