Nonprofit Expressions

Every once in a while in the course of designing websites - a designer will have altruistic motives, defined vision, and a great direction when he or she conceptualizes a website that is yet to be developed.

These moments of clarity are when designing actually becomes not a a job, but a cause. This is when work gets to be fun.

The hardest moments are when these website designs start so well, and end so… well… bad.

Last year when designing Revive-NewOrleans.org our team started out with some fantastic ideas. Working on a project that we all felt would be “more meaningful than the average project” it is easy to get inspired. Our client is actually doing stunning work in the area and changing peoples lives. We as artists like the idea of contributing to this with design and development work.

The project started well, in fact the printed materials and advertising we worked on for the project was literally tear jerking. The website also started with a rush of inspiration. As time wore on… and as the days passed while the project came closer to completion something strange happened.

Even though every piece of the project seemed right, every design concept seemed brilliant, the finished project was just not as moving as I had hoped.

Don’t get me wrong - the finished product was an attractive website. But there is a difference between an attractive website and something that says “YES YES THAT WAS WHAT I WANTED TO EXPRESS!!!”

I came to the realization that I was not satisfied with the finished product. In fact, because it did not meet my expectations I began to like it less and less, until I didn’t even like the website at all.

This often happens to designers and developers. The more you look at a design, or an image the less you are going to like it. In fact in design school they teach you to go with your first impressions and let it go after that. Like any art, too much examination will lead an artist to hate their own work.

This was not the case with this project. I did like the design when it launched, it was a nice looking website.

The problem is my expectations were: “this has to be the best design I create for the entire year” and it just didn’t happen.

So this is a great time in design (occasionally time permitting) to re-design or re-engineer the project. It was time to make some alterations, and some content changes, and so in my free-time I decided to bring the project back on track.

I began with some simple ideas, some advise from the organizations director, and now roughly 10 hours later… I have something that I believe says, “Yes, I am an important organization doing important work in a devastated part of the world, but there is hope!”

So today in the spirit of the beginning of the year I introduce a new face to an existing project:

Revive-NewOrleans.org

In 2006, Compassion By Design was brought into existence to equip church leaders with the best tools to lead their congregations deeper into ministries of compassion. “As modern American Christians we tend to see the mission field as primarily international, while our unsaved neighbors are desperate for the love of Christ,” said David Mills, founder, Compassion by Design. 

To bridge that gap on a practical level Compassion By Design offers a Needs Assessment Kit which allows leaders to connect their community’s needs with their congregation’s gifts and abilities. Founder David Mills summed up the purpose of Compassion By Design: “Helping ministries find effective ways to serve their communities.”

Another Compassion By Design service began as a way to meet a need in the faith community. Mills saw a lack of government and grant aids being secured by churches and faith-based nonprofits. His response was to use his personal grant writing expertise to pass along the skills to others in conferences and training sessions.

How Nonprofit Expressions is Using Technology to Help

Nonprofit Expressions was able to take Mills’ ideas and vision and incorporate them into the Compassion By Design website. The site needed to have a crisp, attractive feel that quickly directs visitors to the right information. The initial marketing strategy of the site is opt-in email campaigns. Mills also blogs regularly which Nonprofit Expressions made available through Wordpress.

The next step in effectively marketing Compassion By Design was the addition of e-commerce, using the OS Commerce Solutions package (an open source application available online). Podcasting software is installed and are coming soon! The website design is easily read by search engine spiders because everything, down to the tabs at the top, is CSS based. The site is coded in XHTML 1.0 transitional and CSS 1.0. The site is also Secure Socket Layer capable for secure credit card transactions.

The New Concept

Currently, the entire website is in a state of transition as we are implementing AJAX type technologies to give the site a Web 2.0 interface and a highly user friendly information structure. When we re-envisioned website we wanted to take the process a church leader goes through in the Compassion by Design system and make it very easy to understand.

Our most important goal in the process was to make sure a new visitor and potential client can understand the grander scheme of why Compassion By Design’s system is a new, smart way to both plant churches and increase an existing churches impact in the community. We want the new site to have the “fresh” and “polished” look essential to the web 2.0 transition the web is making. Behind this new look is a new array of technologies that will make diverse information easier to connect and digest, while giving the visitor an experience that looks and feels very simple.

The site has many surprises in store for the new year on the site re-launch date of January 1, 2008. The new feature list will include a collaborative community network enabling teams to work in unison via file and document sharing, communication tools, and members only restricted areas all tying into the existing email marketing and ecommerce software. We are proud to be helping Compassion By Design bridge the web 2.0 gap and step into the forefront of the web revolution in information sharing and ownership.

Look for the new and improved Compassion by Design Website and Internet community on January 1st at: www.compassionbydesign.org