Chapter websites and donors: Food for thought
When I started reading today's Alertbox column from Jakob Nielsen, I definitely wasn't expecting it to touch on component relations. (Nielsen, for those of you not familiar with his work, is a web usability expert and researcher; if you have any involvement with your organization's website or online presence, I highly recommend his columns.)
Today's Alertbox focuses on a study Nielsen's group did to discover how to design nonprofit websites to encourage donations ... pretty important for any organization that is partially or largely donor-supported. It didn't surprise me that Nielsen's research showed that many of the nonprofits studied had poor usability for donors--so many websites (not just nonprofits) have terrible usability issues. But I was fascinated by the study's implications for nonprofits and associations with chapters or components.
According to Nielsen, the subjects of this study indicated that, when making a decision to donate, the number 2 most important factor in their decision was the organization's presence in their own community. (Number 1 was the organization's mission, goals, objectives, and work, not surprisingly.)
However, the column says, "the worst user experience erosion in this study was caused by heinous integration of local chapters with the higher-level organization. As mentioned above, users wanted information about a non-profit's activities in their communities, but the experience of actually visiting local chapter websites was stunning. Typically, such sites looked completely different than the master sites ..."
In other words, the fact that the chapter websites looked nothing like the national website was causing visitors not to donate--because they weren't clear on whether the organization was really involved in their local community or not.
If you work for a chapter or component, does your website look like your national's website, or do they look different? Nationals, do your chapters have a continuity of look and feel among their websites and yours? How do you think such consistency or lack thereof impacts your donor or stakeholder community?
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Comments
Great and enlightening post Lisa - two key messages for associations: (1) brand at the local level is important and (2) the ROI for having strong chapters is tied to public perception for an organization. Feet on the ground is critical for many organizations in terms of the public and membership. As national organizations have to tighten budgets and consider where to put their resources, this study certainly asks us to at least look again at our component relations budgets.
Posted by: Peggy Hoffman | March 31, 2009 4:02 PM
Another issue is training. Many local chapter leaders do not understand the importance of keeping their website current - let alone branded with national.
I often review sites as a prospective member and/or volunteer and am amazed at the old and lacking information - such as an active chapter with the last meeting on their website taking place a year ago.
When I challenge chapter leaders about it, they often talk about how their members know what's going on because they use email, FB, evites, whatever.
They don't get the potential public impact - such as donors not giving money because the chapter does not appear active in their community as you talk about Lisa.
If members aren't PR folks or marketing savvy, they may not realize the importance of a branded, current web presence for the community. And how would they know - unless someone taught them?
Posted by: Cynthia D'Amour | April 1, 2009 9:03 AM
What a timely post this is! This is a subject that has been coming up for me repeatedly over the last couple of years and the study Lisa mentions here will help me in my efforts to bring our component websites up-to-standard. With so many technologies available to us at fairly inexpensive rates, it seems somewhat lacking to only provide templates while crossing our fingers and hoping our chapter leaders understand what to do with them.
Posted by: KiKi L'Italien | April 1, 2009 4:37 PM
Thank you all for your great comments! I thought Nielsen's column was really interesting.
One thing we haven't mentioned yet in this discussion yet is politics. At my last association, our components were affiliated with us but were separate organizations, so we had no real authority over what their websites looked like. The appearance of their sites was primarily determined by whether or not they had a web-savvy volunteer around; and, if that volunteer left the area or stopped volunteering, the timely website updates Cynthia talks about tended to stop happening.
Of course, as Cynthia mentions, outsiders had no way to know that these groups weren't directly affiliated with the national--so the pluses and minuses of their websites reflected back on the national organization, for better or for worse.
It's an interesting political conundrum. You don't want to make components that are separate organizations feel like national is trying to take over or be Big Brother breathing down their necks. But you also want their communications to provide the best possible impression. I wonder if other organizations whose chapters are not integrated with the national organization have found great solutions?
Posted by: Lisa Junker | April 3, 2009 4:26 PM
If you're reading these comments, you may also be interested in two blog posts responding to my original post: one from KiKi L'Italien and one from Peggy Hoffman.
Posted by: Lisa Junker | April 6, 2009 8:27 AM