So you already know that non-profits in today's world need access to all the technology resources that for-profit organizations use. The technology is an essential communication tool. Your constituents expect to be able to reach you via email. Your volunteer coordinator needs to be able to dynamically post opportunities to your site and easily reach your established volunteer pool. Your events director needs to announce events. Members of your staff need to communicate with one another electronically, as well as in person.

Two questions immediately arise, though:

1. Are the costs for these services appropriate to the needs of our organization?
2. If these tools were designed to increase flexibility, why are we still depending on designers and hosting services to finalize our expressions? Isn't there a more direct way to reach the world?

If you are spending $1000 or more per year on web design, web hosting and email services, I believe the answer to question one is, "no." My experience has taught me ways to provide very low cost hosting services to organizations whose budgets are better spent directly on organization goals. This is accomplished by buying bulk hosting services and passing them on to my customers nearly at cost. Costs are further controlled by exclusively using freely-available open-source software solutions. There's no need to invest thousands in expensive platforms that don't really outperform their free counterparts.

Of course, good web design is still a necessary component of any successful web site. There's no reason for the problems expressed by question two to persist after your initial site design, though. That's why I exclusively build sites build on content-management engines. Content management enables me to turn control of a site over to the customer once initial design is complete. This can usually be accomplished with very little training necessary. The tools to administer a content-managed site are very simple, and are provided free with each installation.

If all this sounds too good to be true, I assure you it's not. While there are always complications with any initial design, the end result of the process will give you a site you can manage within your organization. If that aspect interests you, please use the links to the left to investigate the rest of this site, and contact me to discuss a quote.

Thanks for your interest!!