0 The Genesis of Voluntary Groups

Last time I discussed the nature of volunteering and today I’ll write about how voluntary groups evolve.

Most large professional voluntary sector organisations never plan to be successful.  They start as small groups, discover a successful formula and grow.  For some, their growth was so long ago, the public have long forgotten their roots.

Groups often start as small self-help groups in a neighbourhood or else people with a common interest collaborate across a city, region or country.  With the Internet, common interests across larger areas, maybe even continents, is a possibility.

Most groups have a short life-span.  They have an objective, meet it and dissolve.  Or else they get nowhere and their members move on to other things.

How Voluntary Groups Evolve

A common example is churches, either on their own or perhaps several churches within a neighbourhood, find an issue and set up a group to tackle it.  Church members will have a variety of aims for their work; to relieve the consequences of the issue, to tackle the issue through campaigning or as church’s mission.  In a secular group, you will find parallel mixed motives.

I’ll stay with churches to illustrate the conflict that plays out.  Some church members emphasise the interpersonal aspects of the work; they speak in terms of caring or sharing the love of God and for them the issue is less important than the opportunity to befriend and care for people in need.  Others might emphasise the professional aspects of the work; for them, they understand caring as doing things properly, so the standard of care can be guaranteed.

Professionalisation

The longer a project persists, the more likely it is the professional approach will prevail.  This can be a healthy development, but not because professional groups are better than amateur groups.  As a project grows into a voluntary organisation and eventually cuts away its roots, two things should happen:

It is easy to assume the organisations we see around us are somehow fixed.  The reality is most organisations have a relatively short life-span and are at some stage of a life-cycle because the environment they operate within is protean.

Community and Voluntary Groups

Whilst the third sector includes community and voluntary groups, there is an intersection between them where one evolves into the other.  People move between organisations; learning and sharing their experience and expertise.

I’m not sure there is that much understanding of how to represent the protean nature of the third sector online.

What might be the priorities whilst building web presence for evolving and transforming organisations?  How do websites evolve with their organisations?

0 Website Review 3: Faith Based Regeneration Network

This is my third website review, where I look at the sites of some community development related websites.  If you haven’t read the others, check out these previous posts to catch up:

The image on the right is the site’s home page.  The reason it’s there is in case the site owners change the site!  I shall comment mainly on the home page for this reason!  Click on the image to open it and click again for full size.

There is no information on the Faith based Regeneration Network‘s website about their platform or site designers.  If FbRN designed the site internally, the issues I wrote about when I reviewed the CLES website, about relationships with designers, may not apply.  One disadvantage of designing internally, is the lack of opportunity to bounce ideas off an independent online designer.  This site certainly has the feel of a site developed without professional advice.

The site has a domain authority of 14, which is poor.  It has no back-links and only 8 internal links.  This is a little odd as there has been at least one link from my site for several weeks, so it is possible Google is slow in picking up back-links.

Site Structure

Appearance

The site is overall well designed with few distractions.  The background is a solid green with the content on a pale grey background, subtle but not so dark as to make reading the site difficult.  Most blocks of text are in boxes with a white background, which further enhances readability.

The first item on the page is a slider.  I wrote about these abominations in my review of the CLES website.  This one is just the same, cycling too quickly and drawing attention from the purpose of the site.

The logo is a little dull and perhaps given the theme of the site something more in the header would be helpful.  However, it does the job as it is.

Navigation

It is largely straightforward.  There is an unnecessary link to the home page, given that the logo is also a link to the home page.  The “about us” link goes to the same destination as the first item in its submenu.

The menu would benefit from being a bit bigger.  The purple text turns green when you hover over it.  Usually the hover makes the text clearer but in this case it fades, which may be difficult for some users to read.  The active link is black and for some readers perhaps not distinct enough from the purple.  Some readers may have difficulty seeing what’s going on.

Clutter

The home page has nine boxes (it depends what you count) most of which contain several links and so lacks a focal point.  I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do on the site.  It may be OK if you know what you’re looking for but for the casual visitor there are a wealth of options.

The general advice is one message per page.  Whilst it does depend upon what the site owners want from their site, I would have thought this website would seek to interest its visitors in its topic.  Any new visitor will want to know what the site is about and how to start exploring it.  The home page is very unhelpful in this respect.

Site Content

Market

Presumably it is people who are interested in interfaith work and social action.  The tagline is “leading the way in faith-based social action”.  But it isn’t clear what this means or who might be interested in it.  Is the site for faith leaders, development workers, people who are interested in interfaith work or all of these?  The site shows no awareness of its potential audience or interest in their reason for visiting.

If you are aware of which group you want to sign up for your mailing list, you can adapt the site to inform that group it meets their interests.  There’s no need to worry about the home page being for new visitors.  The old hands will return because they have a particular interest and should be able to find the information they want.

Purpose

The h1 heading and home page title is “Find out about FbRN”.  So presumably this is the purpose of the home page.  Some copy explaining what the site offers and guiding the new visitor to pages that might be of interest, would be helpful.  Nothing on the home page offers the new visitor any help.  Presumably they’re supposed to follow whatever takes their fancy.

Call to Action

To the right of the menu bar on every page there is a purple button labelled “Join our mailing list”.  It took me ages to spot it.  If you follow the link there is a form and no copy.  I attempted to subscribe today and discovered I was already a subscriber!  I  vaguely recollected receiving emails and when I searched my inbox found newsletters, each containing a lot of links to detailed information.  This may be helpful to some subscribers but the subscriber is offered little help to work out what to follow-up.

The home page could contain copy about the work of FbRN leading to a brief sign-up form.  I don’t know what sort of response they’ve received but I suspect this would be more effective than the subscribe link on every page.  A short pdf guide to faith-based regeneration might be offered to those who sign up.

A more ambitious aim might be a short course about faith-based regeneration.  This might serve to introduce new visitors to the topic and could link to various resources on the site.  This could be delivered via an email sequence or perhaps video or audio files.

Neglect

The last blog post is 20 February, so the site seems to update occasionally.  I suspect volunteers run the site, who perhaps have no clear objectives.  A scheduled series of blog posts might help keep visitors up to date with developments or introduce them to key concepts and ideas.

Verdict: As a resource for members or subscribers, assuming they can find stuff, this site may be a valuable resource.  The site does not come across as campaigning or particularly  supportive of inquirers.  For example, how would a sixth former, writing an essay on interfaith social action relate to the site?

Tell me whether you think my verdict is a little harsh?  Perhaps I’m suggesting the site should do things FbRN has never intended.  I would love to see a site that took seriously education of the public about community development from a faiths perspective, sadly I don’t think this it.  FbRN has a lot of information and if they could find more accessible ways to present it, they might find they become a more popular site.

1 What to Put in Your Header

Once you’ve chosen your theme you can turn your attention to the site header.

There are two approaches to your header in WordPress.  A site title and tagline on a solid colour background, although it is possible to use a gradient if your designer understands CSS.

Or else you can install a Photoshop header image.  This goes over the header and so you can’t see the title and tagline, unless you add them to the image.

Remember the site theme will decide the size of the header image and so if you have an attractive idea you need to check it fits into the space the theme allows.

Choosing Your Title and Tagline

The site title will normally be the name of your organisation.  The tagline is useful because it is an opportunity to tell the visitor what the site is about.  To start with it reads “Just another WordPress site”.  To change it you go into Settings and General.  There you can change both the title and the tagline.

Normally you know the name of your organisation and so the title is straightforward.  It is worth giving some thought to a suitable tagline.

What can you say that will tell the right visitors they are in the right place?  Take a look at my tagline above.  What do you think?  What does it say to you?

4 What is a conversation?

What is a conversation?  It’s essential to understand conversation if you want to be clear about the purpose of your web presence.  In this new sequence I shall explore the meaning of conversation and how you can hold conversations online and integrate them with real life conversations.

Most people know a conversation if they see one.  Two people meet and talk and listen.  Talking and listening are both essential and the depth of their conversation is the degree to which they do both.

That’s fine as far as it goes but there is more to it.

Paying attention is essential to conversation; if one or both fail to listen, the conversation fails.

Conversation goes far beyond talking.  Face to face conversations are often helpful because it means subtle cues in facial expressions or body language can add to the meaning of the exchange.  So, paying attention involves more than listening.

Possibly closest to face to face conversations is Skype, where many visual cues can be picked up.  Next of course there is telephone, where tone of voice can be heard.

Conversations with the Dead!

It is possible to have conversations with the dead!  Jane Austen is very popular; many people engage with her, paying close attention to her text.  Is this real conversation?  It is if a conversation between a client and a consultant or psychiatrist is a conversation.  Professional listeners say very little during a conversation, so why not include reading books or listening to recordings as conversations?

If someone takes a recording of Duke Ellington and jams along with it, they are in conversation.  Ask what difference does it make if both musicians can respond to each other.  Perhaps live musicians jamming demonstrates the power of a two-way conversation.

Music performed in a jam session might be banal but from time to time, and more often as musicians gain experience, discovering something new and unexpected.

The challenge for web designers is, how can we encourage similar generation of new ideas online?

0 Managing your website: secondary concerns

Last time I looked at the primary concerns of site management.  Whilst content is always your primary concern, secondary concerns, the technical issues that cut across the purpose of your site, are also important.  They include:

I’m going to major on writing copy for the next few posts.  If you want more information about any of these let me know in the comments and I’ll bring them forward.

1 What is a Volunteer?

This is another post in the series about third sector organisations.  Today it’s voluntary organisations.

I’ve heard there was no such thing as the voluntary sector until the 1970s and I do have a slight recollection of the idea becoming current around the time I started as a community development worker.  Of course, there were any number of charities, mutuals and self-help groups going way back but these did not self-identify as voluntary sector organisations until the 70s.

I’m not convinced it was a positive move.  The idea of mutuals is people work together to benefit together, an idea that survives in an attenuated form within community organisations and some co-ops.

In voluntary organisations though, the volunteer works for someone; typically a wealthy professional voluntary sector organisation delivers services through the agency of volunteers recruited, trained and supported by paid staff.

The old Councils for Voluntary Service, now Voluntary Actions, tried to count community groups as voluntary sector.  But are they?  Community organisations whilst finding Voluntary Actions helpful, have been a little suspicious, they were not exactly in the same game.

A community organisation is typically a self-help group, they’re not volunteers but work for themselves.  Indeed some community organisations employ staff.  We can use the term volunteer loosely to cover self-help but I think we should attend to the nature of community organisations more carefully.

The way in which local authorities for example, expect local people to take part in their schemes can be particularly galling.  I’m sure this attitude depends on the idea members of community groups are volunteers.  It is little wonder from time to time members of community groups ask to be paid.

They may have a point but there is a place for self-help groups and if people always expect to be paid, most would never get off the ground and their members would not experience the benefits of community activism.

There may be a case for local people getting together and establishing mutuals where they pay themselves for their community work.  If groups can find ways to trade and benefit themselves and their neighbourhood, they should be encouraged and supported.  Where this works it is likely to build more stable structures than the grant aided fiefdoms that periodically collapse, depriving local people of valued services.

Volunteers supported by grants have never been a stable way of developing community.  A more entrepreneurial approach might be better all round.

Do you know of successful grant-free local enterprises, owned and run by local people?

0 Website Review 2: Centre for Local Economic Strategies

So, here is another website review.  If you didn’t read the last one, check out these previous posts to catch up:

The image on the right is the site’s home page.  The reason it’s there is in case the site owners change the site!  I shall comment mainly on the home page for this reason!  If you click on the image to open it and click again for full size.

The Centre for Local Economic Studies (CLES) uses a web design company, who provide their own content management systems.  Their home page raises issues about the strategy of professional web designers.  My comments raise questions about how designers and clients made decisions whilst constructing this page.  It is important to distinguish between design and content.  Ultimately the designer has the content  their clients provide and what the client requests is not always the best solution.  The designer will discuss options but their wisdom does not always prevail.  As a reviewer I will raise some of the issues they may have discussed.

The site has a domain authority of 49 which is not bad and over 6000 back-links from 165 domains.  Many of these seem to be links to specific content and so it illustrates how good content is the best way to approach search engine optimisation.

Site Structure

Appearance

The home page is well-designed with one obvious big mistake!  (See under Purpose below.)  It has minimal distractions from pointless graphics.  The background is blue at the top and then abruptly turns grey about two-thirds of the way down my screen.  I’m not sure this is a good idea; the site feels a bit constrained.  It might be better with grey all the way down.  The left hand column below the header is a slider.  If you’re using the image you won’t see this, five images circulate and you can click on the tabs below to move to them.  I find I’m mostly clicking on the tabs to return to the last one as it cycles away before I can read its contents.

Sliders are very popular and in my experience almost always a bad idea.  To be effective a page should focus on one message.  Sliders by definition contain several messages.  It may be useful to know all this is going on but I don’t know from the slider how I’m expected to respond to the site.  Also, they’re usually at the top of the page and so push more helpful content below the fold.

Navigation

This site contains a massive amount of information.  I find it fairly difficult to navigate but perhaps that is because I’m not looking for anything in particular.  The primary navigation is fine, although they don’t need the “Home” link as the logo already fulfills that function.  As you go deeper into the site, the amount of content is overwhelming.  I should think use of the search box at the top right is essential.

The three boxes towards the bottom of the page duplicate the corresponding links in the primary navigation.  Beneath that the three smaller boxes lead to either the CLES log-in page or in one case to a page that does not appear to be in the primary navigation.

Pages usually have breadcrumbs, so it is not too difficult to work out where you are even if you are unclear how you got there.

Clutter

The main problem I have with the home page is masses of information and no clarity about what the site is about other than in the first frame on the slider.  This includes a link to the about page (if you can catch it before the slider cycles on) but that is about CLES and not a really a clear statement of what the site is for and what it offers the visitor.

Instead I’m confronted with loads of links hither, thither and yon, and little to tell me what to expect from the site.  A tour of the main resources would be helpful.  Experienced visitors will know where to go and so a home page friendlier to the first timer might be worth considering.

 Site Content

Market

The first frame of the slider (so not always visible) reads:

Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) is the UK’s leading independent charitable research and member organisation, with a focus on economic development, regeneration and place-making. We think and do – promoting action and implementing new progressive economic activities which create positive environmental, health and social outcomes.

After that you need to click on the link to read more.  I don’t get who the members are and I’m not clear from these few words whether there is anything here for me.  If I find my way to the “Join Us”, I get an idea of what CLES does but I have to infer from the site who it is for!  For example, if I am chair of a small community group, working in a partnership for regeneration, is this site for me?  I may be borderline, so how do I find out what is best for me or what sort of membership package would be best for me?  This information may be on the site but it is hard work finding it.

Purpose

I had to search on the “About us” page to find out what CLES stands for!  There really is nothing on the page that tells the visitor what the site is about.  Remember, you have 3 seconds at the outside to communicate your purpose or else your visitor will leave.  Maybe this site is for people who know about CLES but is it really an advantage to be so obscure?  How many people bounce away who might benefit from the site content but have no idea what it is?  As well as expanding the abbreviation , this site needs a tagline in the header that clearly states what the site offers its visitors.  This sort of willful obscurity is not clever, it makes the site irrelevant.

The overall purpose of the site appears to be consulting, training and research, going by the three boxes towards the bottom of the home page.  They could have more prominence and the home page could spell out the potential benefits of these three activities for visitors to the site.  I don’t doubt a motivated visitor could battle through the information on the site but there can’t be any harm in helping them work it out.  How many people who would benefit from the site, navigate away in frustration?

Call to Action

You can join CLES on the “Join Us” page but this does not appear to be the main call to action.  Every page apart from the home page has a couple of notices pinned to the upper left of the page, inviting visitors to “Join NewStart” (a magazine) and to subscribe to a “Newsletter”.  Both links seem to go off the site and are not explained anywhere.  These could be on the home page with a clear explanation of the various membership and subscription options.  Someone might pay for a subscription to NewStart without realising it is included in the membership fee for CLES.

Neglect

The most recent what’s new is 15 January (I’m writing this on 5 March) so it is very new.  The blog posts on the right are better, most recent 4 March.  Although this could be better it is clearly an active site.

Verdict:  A professional site that has some issues about usability.  I would come here to find specific information but would not browse and don’t see any reason to sign up for anything, even if I were a target visitor.

Do you agree?  Leave your comments about this site here.  Do you find these reviews helpful?  Do they help you look critically at your own site?

3 Choose Your Site’s Theme

So, you’ve set up your content management system (cms).  I’m going to assume you’ve chosen WordPress but this post applies to any cms.  For WordPress you can view your site on  “www.domainname.com” (OK maybe not .com but you get the idea).  To log in to the site and visit behind the scenes, go to “www.domainname.com/wp-login.php” or click on the link on the page you see with the first url.

The real headache starts here.  Choosing a theme.  Why do you need a theme?  It determines the look of the site.  You can do anything with a basic theme if you understand html, css and php.  Your website designer will and if you pay them a small fortune they might be able to come up with something that exactly matches your requirements.

The chances are you can spend your money on better things and so you and your designer need to choose a theme.  Most people’s experience is they have a website with massive functionality and once they lay a theme on top, whilst the functionality is still there, it’s a bit like painting your entrance hall through the letter box.

Theme descriptions are often not brilliant and omit to tell you something really important which you discover only once you download the theme.  This is OK if it is a free theme but if you’ve paid for it, it can be frustrating.  Why pay for a premium theme?  Here are some reasons to consider it (they are usually not terrifically expensive):

If the look of the site is really important and funds are limited, you need a designer who knows something about themes.  If it’s not so crucial, choose one you like (or agree with your designer) and crack on with it.  Life is too short to mess about.

Can you recommend good WordPress themes?  Why do you like them?  What do you find most frustrating about theme descriptions?

0 Consultancy and Website Design

Over the last four weeks I introduced four approaches to non-directive consultancy and I’ve explored how they can be used by website consultants.  This post considers the relationship between consultancy and website design.

Good Website Design

Many people don’t appreciate design is not about artwork, a site that looks good is not necessarily well-designed.  Design is ultimately problem solving.  What is the best solution for this client?

We can abandon the idea that design is a creative art because it is so easy, using content management systems, to create sites with massive functionality.  The problem is choosing the functionality that best meets the purpose of your organisation and not implementing that functionality.  Implementing finctionality is not really all that challenging!

However, many clients are not consultors.  A good consultor understands consultancy and that their organisation’s needs are not necessarily immediately obvious.  They need help to work out the best fit between their organisation and its web presence.

Many clients cannot do this and their wants get in the way of discovering their organisation’s needs.  To implement wants and not needs, can be an expensive mistake, in terms of both up-front costs, ie paying for things you don’t need, and lost productive life of your web presence.

Some Examples

Whilst a web consultant may assemble a website using old-style creativity, they can do their job without going anywhere near a computer!  I know one consultant paid $20 000 a month to support a company that had a team of in-house designers!

I’m working on an assessment for a client who is planning a campaign for the next general election.  I shall write about this work in due course.  I’m helping them map out their online campaign over the next fifteen or so months and integrate their online and real life work.  It is unlikely I’ll do much website design for this client, because they have that covered.  But when you’re campaigning, especially with limited resources, you need someone to look after the long-term strategy, to work out the frameworks in which the campaign will operate.

The Consultant’s Role

Remember there are no clear boundaries between the four consultancy models.  A consultant asked to work on a project may find they have a situation which evolves into a project.  Projects and situations are likely to generate problems and cases.  Resolution of a case may mean there is a need to review the situation and so on.

Consultants do whatever is necessary to help clients meet their objectives, occasionally in the teeth of opposition from their clients.  How to do this with humility and not arrogance (I know better!) is a real challenge.

What do you think?  What is the role for old school designers in a world full of content management systems?

2 Managing your website: primary concerns

Here are some things to think about when managing your website.  Many people make continual changes to their sites and this theme will help you develop your site.  The days when a site launched and then stayed pretty much the same with occasional updates are over.  Most likely you develop your site in response to users’ needs but this can present new problems for organisations, particularly where volunteers manage the site.

Your primary concern is good content and this post will review options for the content you might produce.  The next post will be about important secondary issues.

What You Sell

Your aim is to produce content that builds trust, demonstrates command of your subject and furthers your organisation’s purpose.  Your organisation will be offering at least one of the following:

1. Services – activity tailored to your client’s needs.  This might be something to do with information, such as consultancy or training, or it might be a physical service such as hairdressing, car mechanics, etc.
2. Products – usually mass-produced and appeal to a range of customers.  If you sell things, products are easier than services because once created, it is easy to reproduce the product and deliver it to customers.  Customers can download information products or receive physical products through the post.  It is possible to sell local products through a shop with online promotion.  Don’t forget, if you give it away, it is still a product!
3. Causes – this is where you seek support from your site visitors for a campaign.  The support might be through signing petitions or writing letters, or it might be a request for donations.  Some campaigns involve visible protest, eg flash mobs.

How You Sell It

The good news is things have become much easier in recent years.  Media you would never have dreamed of using, even a couple of years ago are within reach.  So, here is a list of media you might use:

1. Web pages have many functions.  They can be particularly helpful for those who want to advertise a service and use their site as an online brochure.  This works where the site content does not need to be updated often .  I don’t necessarily recommend this approach but it seems to work for some organisations and free-lancers.
2. Blogs are a good way to publicise just about anything.  A steady and consistent blog can prove your knowledge and understanding of your subject area, draw search engines to your site and publicise developments online and off.  They are also a good way to organise information such as directories of local organisations or events.
3. Downloadable papers and ebooks are also effective, especially where people use the material on your site.  For example, an instruction manual in .pdf format may be more helpful than simply putting the content on pages, because it is easier to print and pass between devices.
4. Images are always helpful and with a digital camera or mobile phone, you can capture images very easily.  You can also have great fun mucking about with images on Photoshop.
5. Audio files that can be downloaded to listening devices are extremely popular.  So too are audio CDs.  The reason is people like to listen to things whilst in their car or out jogging.
6. Videos are extremely popular.   They are much easier to produce than they used to be.  Perfectionists may balk at using their mobile phone to film a short video but so long as you get the lighting about right and eliminate background noise, you can produce something good enough. Of course better quality videos are better but you have to start somewhere and the opportunity may be lost if you have to go home and fetch a better camera!

These are your basic building blocks.  The ways in  which you combine and build one upon the other can transform your website.

What do you think?  Have I missed anything important?  Have you any examples of great content at minimal costs?