Geographical scope

Organizations with local, provincial, regional and national geographic scopes are all well represented in our pool of respondents.

What is the geographical scope of your organization?

Operating budget

Non-profits of all sizes took part in the survey.

What is your organization's annual operating budget?

Time online

The majority of websites represented in the survey are mature (88% online for more than 2 years, 60% for more than 5 years).

How long has your website been online?

Future feature priorities

If a website didn't have certain functionality, we asked administrators to tell us if it was a priority or not. # Content management systems, news updates/press releases and newsletter sign-up capabilities are the priorities for those sites lacking these features. While not priorities, popular Wish-list items include photo galleries, FAQs and publicly generated content.

Future functionality wish-list

Reliability

Most sites report being happy or very happy with their hosting. However, the highest levels of satisfaction come from in-house hosted solutions.

How RELIABLE is your hosting set-up?

These figures exclude the respondents who did not know how their hosting was set up.
CAUTION: the sample sizes for in-house hosting (9) and piggy-backed sites (6) are small and should be viewed with discretion

Responsiveness

While the satisfaction levels are still good overall, it is clear that the people responsible for hosting non-profits' websites have more work to do in the area of responsiveness. It seems to make sense that organizations with in-house solutions report the highest level of responsiveness - after all, they are co-workers and not contracted help.

How QUICK TO RESPOND are the people responsible for your hosting set-up?

Easy to deal with?

The trend of in-house hosted sites outperforming other options continues...though the percentage of 'very good' or 'excellent' scores is impressive.

How EASY TO DEAL WITH are the people responsible for your hosting set-up?

These figures exclude the respondents who did not know how their hosting was set up.
CAUTION: the sample sizes for in-house hosting (9) and piggy-backed sites (6) are small and should be viewed with discretion

Cost effectiveness

Since most piggy-backed sites are hosted for free, it's no surprise that they had the highest levels of satisfaction for cost-effectiveness. In-house solutions, even with larger start-up costs, outperform professionally hosted sites when it comes to overall cost effectiveness.

How COST-EFFECTIVE is your hosting set-up?

Overall value

Very, very few organizations give poor marks to the overall value of their hosting solution. Yet it's clear that in-house solutions seem to provide the most value, even though there are costs involved. The comparatively lower 'excellent' ratings for piggy-backed sites seems to support the old saying, 'You get what you pay for'.

How would you rate the OVERALL VALUE of your hosting set-up?

These figures exclude the respondents who did not know how their hosting was set up.
CAUTION: the sample sizes for in-house hosting (9) and piggy-backed sites (6) are small and should be viewed with discretion

Overall upgrade ratings

 When it came to an overall rating of the person or team responsible for the last major upgrade of their website, most respondents gave solid scores. But it was outside professionals that really delivered the goods. (If an organization hadn't performed an upgrade, they were asked to rate the original website team).

Ratings for the person or team responsible for the last major upgrade. 

Discounts

When it was time to upgrade, 1/4 were done by professionals at a discounted rate - and almost 1/3 were done at no cost.

Did you receive a discount due to your non-profit/charity status?

Upgraded by?

While upgrades were mostly carried out by outside professionals, 1 in 10 upgrades were carried out by generous members of the public!

Who did your last major upgrade?

Understanding needs

The majority of people performing upgrades for the survey respondents were outside professionals and even though it wasn't their website, they did a good (or very good or excellent) job of understanding the organization's needs.

During the last redesign, how well were your needs understood by the redesign person/team?

Managing expectations

 The redesign person/team didn't do quite as well at handling the non-profit's expectations compared with understanding the needs of the non-profit.

During the last redesign, how well were your expectations managed by the redesign person/team?

Delivering on promises

 While very few teams broke their promises on the last major upgrade, only 1/4 scored 'excellent'.

During the last redesign, how well did the redesign person/team deliver on what was promised?

Delivering on timelines

The success rate for delivering on timelines were even more widely spread out from 'adequate' to 'excellent'.

During the last redesign, how well did the design team/person deliver on timelines?

Delivering on budgets

 A much higher percentage of upgrade teams scored 'excellent' marks when it came to meeting budgets, but almost 2/3 got less than excellent results.

During the last redesign, how well did the design team/person deliver with regard to budgets?

Easy to deal with?

 When it came to dealing with the design teams, less than half the respondents gave out 'very good' or 'excellent' scores.

During the last redesign, how easy to deal with was the design team/person?

Responsiveness

 A real mixed-bag of responses when it came to responsiveness of design teams.

During the last redesign, how quick to respond was the design team/person?

Rating the process

Getting new content on the website is not an issue for almost 1/2 the respondents, though 1/3 have some occasional frustrations, regardless of who is doing the posting.

How happy are you with the updating process?

Building credibility

How good is your web presence at building your credibility?

Positive first impressions

How good is your web presence at creating a positive first impression?

Showcasing recent efforts

How good is your web presence at showcasing your recent efforts?

Educating the public

How good is your web presence at educating your target audience(s) and answering their questions?

Increased awareness

How good is your web presence at increasing awareness of your cause(s)?

Marketing integration

How good is your web presence at integrating with your other marketing efforts?

Increased revenue

How good is your web presence at increasing revenues?

Building contacts

How good is your web presence at adding to your contact list?

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Costs

The vast majority of non-profits spend less on their websites than they do on pretty much anything else from what I can tell. Much of my professional career was spent creating, running and expanding the Toronto Star's website. We spent a LOT of money doing that. And we brought in a WHOLE LOT of money. I would love to crunch some subsets of numbers with this survey to explore the question of whether spending money on a non-profit's website leads to positive returns - I just don't have a large enough pool of respondents to do that. Regardless, we know that 1 out 10 non-profit websites contribute significantly to their revenues, so the answers are out there.

What percentage of your annual budget is allocated to your web presence?

Financial results by budget

I would love to find out if all the online revenues are going to the big players or if tiny non-profits are using the Web to add to their bottom line. We didn't get a large enough pool of respondents to produce quality data on this topic. But we'll include it in subsequent survey results if we can increase the pool of respondents. We'll do the same for locally-focused organizations versus provincial, regional, national and international if we have the numbers to support the findings.

Breakdown of financial results by budget category

What would users miss most?

We asked each respondent "If your website disappeared for a week, what one feature would users miss most?" and gave them a blank slate to provide their answers. What follows is an unedited list of their responses, though we have removed any responses that would identify a specific organization (we promised no identifiable information would be released). We have taken the liberty of grouping similar responses. Please let us know if this type of information is of use to you, and if so, what you find interesting about it in the comments at the bottom of this page.

If your website disappeared for a week, what one feature would users miss most?

• job listings or schedule of activities.
• We offer an on-line job board that drives a lot of traffic to our site. As well, our home page consists of the content of our weekly e-newsletter, so that would also be missed.
• jobs for nonprofits
• Job postings
• Job Board
• General information on our employment programs and services.
• Access to our primary services and employment opportunities.
• Our online volunteer matching service.
• volunteer information
• Volunteer sign up, blog
• Access to volunteer scheduling
• Probably the blogs and the news & events pages.
• Blog
• blog
• In the news
• News
• News updates
• News and Events
• information about events and services
• Event schedule.
• current events
• Ability to communicate our event information to our stakeholders
• event management - pledge pages etc.
• projects and events
• Photos and updates
• Updates on lectures at our organization.Reports published by our organization.
• Updates; online applications (during a specific time of the year)
• Our schedule
• Contact info
• contact information
• Contact Information
• Contact info for clubs
• Contact details, events calendar
• access to contact information
• contact information
• Hours, location, and contact info
• Our organization's programs, contact information, and location.
• email link
• Specific content - we would have to respond to questions by telephone
• access to online tools/resources
• ability to reserve parking online
• informational resources on youth voting and how to
• the ability to donate to the charity
• clients would not have access to information for our crisis line- donors would not be able to find out how to make in-kind and financial donations
• information
• Access to information
• Content... health information.
• Support programs info.
• our programs
• the list of member groups
• General information about the organization
• The information resources.
• Information and Referral Line
• information on various topics related to the organization
• The information
• Course information
• I can't think of one thing.
• not sure
• nothing
• I'm not sure anyone would notice
• not sure
• The listing of other similar organizations.
• Shopping cart
• the videos
• the front page
• The stories of the youth who have used our services.
• Access to helpful materials
• depends on the week, registration online is the most important feature.
• The link to our directory of services.
• Searchable database on university programs
• The listings of our people in need.
• We regard our website as our key communications medium, so if it disappeared we would miss the  ability to communicate with our members.
• Us!  Our website is our primary communications tool.
   

Advice for Web Developers

We asked each respondent, "What advice would you give to Website Development Companies to best meet the needs of non-profits across the country?" and gave them a blank slate to offer their $.02 of personal advice. WoW! In my opinion, if you're part of a webdev company and can't find anything to embrace in this litany of outpouring, you should reconsider your career! And if you are part of a non-profit, I guarantee your neck will be in need of some attention from all the up-and-down nodding you'll be doing while reading this list.

Please use the comment option at the bottom of this list to offer your $.02 - opinions from both sides of the equation are welcome!

What advice would you give to Website Development Companies to best meet the needs of non-profits across the country?

• cheaper
• Work them through a process of understanding the difference between what they can have, and what they need and what will drive the accomplishment of their mission. Simple is good!
• Offer services that support small nonprofits in creating an interactive, easily maintained on-line presence.
• Clear pricing, up front.  All the sales pitches of what you can do and what we need is a waste of time.  I am pretty sure I know what I need.  I just want to be able to afford it.  CMS and all the additional modules through professional companies are TOO expensive ($10K to start ... my webmaster's salary is $70/wk and that is my entire budget).
• We don's use companies. Our site is hosted & managed completely by volunteers. In 9 years of searching we have not been able to find a website development company who can meet our needs. We would require ownership of our URL and content as well as having the site on our own server.
• You need to understand our climate and the ability/skills of staff to update and maintain the website.  It needs to be simple.  And, often you'll need to train staff on best communications practice in small to medium sized non-profits.
• Free is good:-) Consider partnerships with the non-profit.  If each company had one charity of choice there would be substantial monies saved for organizational mission.Most non-profits lack sufficient resources to update websites, Facebook, etc.  Whatever you can do to make the process easier (ex. if you update Facebook you are automatically updating twitter, or other sites)is key.
• Reasonable Cost.
• Make it cheap. Make it easy. Make it stand out from the competitors. Make it reflect the branding, values and mission of the organization and its supporters.
• require flexibility, technical integration options with existing software e.g. databases, donation processing, wide range of customer relationship management options, security assurances
• communicate ideas and manage expectations- build websites donors can have meaningful interaction with but still fit the organization
• Many charities are afraid of technology, the internet and social media. If you want to do good and help a charity - great.  If, however, you want to make a living, target corporate.
• Make an effort to understand the organization's needs. Usability is more important than cutting-edge design.
• To realize that non-profits have big dreams and high hopes for their web presence and to manage those expectations in a professional and realistic manner -- don't promise the moon if you can't deliver it.
• Understand the specific social and enterprise needs and build to suit not mirror business
• Understand our position.
• Be cause and change oriented. In consolation be impact oriented.
• use content management systems, provide optimal in=house training for this system, be available for problem-solving
• Keep the costs low and provide lots of follow-up and tech support
• Make an easier on-line collaborative editing tool. Editme.com is good, but there are bugs in the editor and some features are overly complex. Make it easy to upload and insert photos, auto-resizing the photos to screen resolution.
• The website architecture and interface should allow for easy content update, long-term growth and the flexibility to add visuals or graphic elements without cluttering pages. Be very specific about language capabilities of the system: mockups and beta versions should be provided in all required languages to avoid issues at the development stage.
• Use open source platforms and ensure that you retain passwords and other access requisites.
• Assist non-profits with web site designs that allow easy, inexpensive updating and upgrading of their web sites and regular education (not neccessarily free) on networking with other "new" technologies.
• Make it easier for us! Simple, effective, reliable websites are a priority.
• Let non-profits know you are a large-enough company to provide stability and leading-edge technology, but small enough to care about a relatively-small project that fits the budget of a non-profit.
• non-profit to allocate one individual who is not on the board of directors to have continued long term project management of website
• Train someone in house to edit/manage website and make sure that website is set up to enable changes to be made (ie not in code)
• Pro-bono work!
• Connect as many groups together
• An organization of our size relies on the generosity of volunteers. we sepnt $2500 two years agao to completely re do our website from a plug & play ayysached to **(obscured by survey admin)** to our stand alone. All we got was the website and no training or follow up for that price.I would suggest: 1. Training  2. Webinars on benefits of social media 3. Menu and array of products and prices.
• **(obscured by survey admin)**  is a small non-profit organization with very limited resources. Presenting exhibitions is only half of what we do- the other half consists of sharing information about what we do. To this end a robust, dynamic web presence would be very helpful though unattainable with our current resources. Website Development Companies should develop a resource fund that non-profits could apply to for web development.
• Provide ongoing services for little cost so that the website can be updated regularly, as non-profits may not have a tech person on staff or may not have the time to update themselves. If possible, provide quick and easy methods for non-tech staff to update their sites themselves (without dealing with any code or programming).
• Deliver what you promise Focus on what the website is meant to accomplish- understand it's a means to an end (whether that end is to educate, inspire, connect, raise money, influence policy, etc.) Measure results meaningfully and make evidence-based decisions Understand the NGO sector is fundametally different from other sectors It will sound self-serving, but explain to clients (and offer case studies) that show NGOs need to invest and plan long term to get web success.Offer to giver a one-on-one web walk-through/tutorial with the CEO/ head decision-makers, in a non-judgemental atmosphere of ""there are no dumb questions"". Many NGO CEOs are not at all web-savvy but are also not willing to admit what they don't know. Web staff and consituents/donors will be better served if the CEO can get up to speed without losing face.
• Provide tools to help non profits identify and prioritize the goals of their websites AND provide some guidance on the associated costs of designing/redesigning specific elements.
• Design the website so that it can easily be maintained without professional help. Keep the design simple, uncluttered and focussed on the organization's mandate and avoid the glitzy stuff.
• Help NGO's understand the most important features, best ways to generate revenue, and the pitfalls of a content-heavy site without a management plan
• Learn the organization's mission, values, goals, and culture, and reflect those in the site design.Provide an easy-to-use Content Management System for frequent updating by the organization's staff. Give priority to useful content that will build a loyal audience that visits frequently. Build in social media features.
• Generally these groups have only necessary staff, so without someone to take care of technical matters, and without someone knowing anything about layout/marketing/etc., non-profits really need a lot of good suggestions in making their webpages user-friendly, visually pleasing, clear and concise.  Also, there often isn't a lot of time for these organizations to dedicate to website overhauls or major updates every few years, so a site that is designed for easy minor updates or minor layout changes is helpful.
• I think that websites need to be more modern looking and easy to use. Should be easy and fast to find the basic information.
• user-friendly so that an employee from the non-profit can be taught how to do minor updates. 
• focus on sustainability - how will the website be sustainable if funding changes? if there is no in-house techie? if it grows? if management changes over frequently?
• Offer fair service packs (on monthly or yearly basis). Offer to trade a service for the organizations service. Expect to train staff members to do part of the maintanance or updates. Deliver manuals for all CMSs, blog-based systems or any other way of handling maintanance. Make an effort to really understand what the organizations needs are rather than offering the latest apps.
• Be more accessible and put more face time (if possible) in as part of your strategy to make sure clients remain satisfied. Regular face-to-face meetings perhaps quarterly will help non-profits who don't necessarily have web developers in house. This will help ensure everyone stays on the same page.  
• Content management systems need to be simple to use and provide for all anticipated updates by volunteers with nominal technical skills.
• Offer low-cost options because we can't afford to invest to make it better. Offer easy to use solutions because we can't afford to hire IT staff.
• have a price structure that's flexible and inclusive.
• Make updating easy for non-web savvy users.
• When discussing technical matters, don't talk above the heads of the Information and Referral people.  Have a little patience if you have to explain something twice. 
• Non-profit organizations not only have varying causes/focuses, but also different funding/revenue streams. Not all NPO's rely solely on donations (if at all), so there needs to be a re-thinking of how to market these organizations online depending on how they are funded.
• Quote reasonable per diems.  Gear solutions to volunteer staff who will have to run them.
• to create websites that are easily updated and changed by not technical people
• Cost is a huge factor.  There are a lot of functions we would like to add to our site but the cost limits what we can do.
• Have a little empathy

Revenue generators

Here we focus in on those sites that report that their websites generate either minor or significant revenues and compare them against those sites that report losses. Let's see if there's anything to be learned...