Making Links is a nonprofit technology conference that took place in Melbourne in mid November 2009. They held an additional Intensive Web Developers Day and I ran one of the sessions, on the topic of getting your nonprofit’s website noticed. Here’s the presentation to accompany the workshop.
The draft programme for the Making Links conference in Melbourne, November 2009 is now available from their website at www.makinglinks.org.au.
Featuring its usual successful mix of practical workshops, panels, oral presentations and networking opportunities, this year’s conference addresses the twin challenges of the global economic crisis and environmental sustainability.
The ICT infrastructure stream includes sessions on installing services remotely, free and cheap tools, rolling out IT infrastructure to inexperienced staff and clients, cloud computing, IT security, saving money by working collaboratively and more.
The Community Building and Social Media stream features a wide range of case-studies on how organisations are using web 2.0 to engage, connect and empower their clients and communities.
Practical and interactive workshops provide great opportunities to learn new skills such as pod-casting, writing for the web, and managing e-newsletters, or to focus on how we can work together to minimise the risks of climate change.
I’m particularly looking forward to Gian Wild’s web accessibility workshop. Web accessibliity is not something that most nonprofits have got to grips with and Gian’s got good form: she worked on the very first Australian accessible web site and was the accessibility consultant for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
In mid-May 2009 an Australian web team took on the CodeBlacks from New Zealand to build a complete website in 24 hours. Two non-profit organisations, one from Australia and one from New Zealand, were selected to receive a complete website at the end of the 24 hours.
Both websites look good, but the New Zealand team won the compo. Read more on the Full Code Press competition website. Looking at their website design for Rainbow Youth there’s only one aspect that I think spoils the look of the site and that iss the charity’s logo, but I don’t suppose there was much the team could do about that! Everything else – the menu, the background images, the social networking section – looks great.
Considering the deadline was so tight it’s impressive to note all the little details – love the rainbow favicon and the appealing donation button – are in place.
Recently I visited Grampians disAbility Advocacy Association and learnt about how the GDAA website was designed for them in last year’s competition.
Today I visited Grampians disAbility Advocacy Association who won their website in a competition. I’m driving round Victoria surveying small nonprofits’ IT needs and capabilities; I always ask who designed their website but don’t tend to get so unusual an answer.
The competition was called Full Code Press and pitted an Australian team against a New Zealand team. Team members were thrown together to design a nonprofit’s website and had only a day to plan and design it. Someone involved described it as a geek Olympics! >> Read more…
Kathy Reid has written about how she designed a new website for the Bonnie Babes Foundation, a nonprofit organisation. It’s interesting because, as she points out, each of the software tools is completely and absolutely free. Read kathy’s article about finding an open source email and web solution.
Kathy’s blog is the only one I know where you can read about both web design and knitting!
On my last day as Baptcare’s website and Intranet editor, my final task was to create a landing page for their charity golf event.
Here’s the result, designed and coded with valid HTML within only a few hours. The design has simple, attractive typography using Baptcare’s corporate colours. However, this landing page looks nothing like the usual template used elsewhere on the Baptcare website, it’s a complete one-off. Baptcare’s usual template is too restrictive, not eye-catching enough to use as a landing page.
What is a landing page? Usually it’s defined as a page that visitors will arrive at directly via an advert or link on another website. A landing pages might not be linked to from an organisation’s own site at all, only from banners or adverts on external sites or from ads on postcards or other printed media. >> Read more…
Geographical domain names - for example http://www.bundanoon.nsw.au/ - are being offered to Australian nonprofit and community organisations. The domains are issued solely for the purpose of operating a community-run website that’s developed for the benefit of the entire local community.
Leonie Dunbar gave a presentation about geographical domain names at the Making Links 2008 conference. Apparently they are a world first and I think it’s an interesting, potentially very valuable idea. >> Read more…
Baptcare was recently awarded a Google Grant, free publicity that has doubled our website traffic. Using that Grant we’ve created adverts to promote our nonprofit organisation’s vacancies and seen a big rise in the number of job applications we’ve received. Maybe you could do the same for your website’s job ads.
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