Technology
Principles & Practices Citation
X. C. Principle – Web Site Design
A well designed website provides a charitable nonprofit several advantages such as producing income from an e-commerce section of the website and web advertisement, publishing its ideas and writings, providing a good multimedia experience, advertising its business with an online brochure, and most important, providing information to its customers and other visitors.
Practices
A charitable nonprofit should promote its website through optimizing search engine success by incorporating the best keyword phrases into the page content, determine what the major search engines are and their underlying feeds, monitoring its rankings, and list its web address (URL) anywhere and everywhere (business cards, advertisements, etc.).
Recommended book
Nonprofit Essentials: Managing Technology (2006), by Jeanette Woodward.
Suggested online source
Frequently Asked Questions about Technology
Can you recommend a good online technology resource?
Yes, it's called Tech Soup. The site is designed to assist nonprofits with their technology needs.
What is open source software?
Open source software is software available free of charge as an alternative to conventional commercial software. It can be used and shared at will. The source code is open and can be changed as required, however, the user must make such changes known and pass this information on to others. Open source software is the shared intellectual property of all developers and users and, because of this collaboration, it is of higher quality than software produced by conventional means.
What is the advantage to our nonprofit of having a computer system?
The Iowa Principles and Practices for Charitable Nonprofit Excellence states, "Information technology and computing assists the mission of charitable nonprofits by improving productivity and facilitating improved communication. Other benefits are the speedy creation of letters, reports, minutes, news releases, speeches, etc.; communication by email, instant messaging, and video conferencing; mailing list management, record keeping; discussion forums and Internet meetings; and financial record keeping and analysis." (X B)