Non-Profit Chas

A website needs a place to live. When people go to your site, the site’s files are on a server somewhere. There’s a lot that goes with that – bandwidth, storage, FTP access, databases, security, and more. Basically, you can’t do this on your own.

Web Hosting Service

Hosting is cheap. There are plenty of companies that offer everything you want and more. They can take care of your email, provide space for backups, etc.

I’m going to write about one hosting company, Dreamhost. I’ve used several companies. Dreamhost isn’t perfect, but it’s what I use now for the vast majority of my projects, including nonprofitchas.com. Their one-click installs have made it so easy to set up a blog or get a website running that hosting has become one of those utilities I stop worrying about.

But the biggest reason I’m writing about them is that Dreamhost offers free web hosting for non-profits.

Disclosure: If you use this link and pay for service, I get a referral fee. It doesn’t cost you anything, but I get a referral bonus (which goes toward my own paid account). Sign up for Dreamhost

Learn more about web hosting and web servers at HowStuffWorks.

I’m a generalist. It has a lot to do with my professional ADHD: I can’t seem to focus on one thing. That means I’m not particularly great at any one thing. I am good at lots of stuff but rarely excellent.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll never find success. It just means that I won’t be astonishingly successful on my own. I’ll be mediocre on my own. But the lesson needn’t a negative one: I need to be a connector. I need to find and bring excellence to the same table and have the real talent create excellence.

I need to find specialists. Marty, who runs our board development committee, is helping me find and recruit experts.

• We got a finance guy to help rework and reevaluate our programs’ budgets.
• We have a marketer with a long history in PR and print to help us in those areas (of which I know practically nothing).
• I’m finding a project manager to take over marketing projects (it’s funny how my side projects always seem to move my career ahead faster than my day job).

• And I’m a fundraising novice, so I’m looking for a fundraising ninja.

  The best part about specialists is that they often need a generalist to help keep the other stuff off their plates. My job is to bring them together, give them a challenge, and then clear the way so they can do what they do best. And that’s something I can do quite well.

  So I’m a generalist. That’s ok.

Domain Names

A domain name is your address on the web. People type in (whateverorganizationname.org) and it points to your website. Domains are cheap – you can get one for $10 or less. Go to instantdomainsearch.com and start typing to find an available name.

Remember some guidelines for a good domain name:

• Leep it short, but don’t sacrifice readability
• To keep a domain name readable, use words and not just acronyms (riverbendcampfire.org is a better name than campfireusarbc.org)
• Stick to ONE domain name and use that everywhere. Multiple domain names just compete with each other for search engine rankings – which makes each one less effective. Redirect any extra domains to your main domain.
• A .com is preferable because that’s what people are most used to, but .org is ok as well. Get both if you can and redirect one to the other.

• You don’t want visitors to type in your domain wrong and end up at the wrong site. Make sure it’s easy to spell and relatively easy to give out on the phone.

  You can buy your domain name through Dreamhost (if you plan to host your website there, it’s very convenient) or Godaddy.com or any of thousands of other companies. I pay about $9/year for a domain name. Be careful not to “accidentally” buy a bunch of upsell offers like private registrations, search marketing packages, etc.

How can technology make non-profit life easier?

Technology brings the promise of efficiency, increased production, reduced time, better service, improved quality, and so on.

Does it deliver?

Not really. That’s because technology also carries costs: training, support, reworking your processes, and so on. Plus, technology changes at such a pace that you simply can’t keep up.

So it’s not worth the hassle?

Of course it is. The key is finding the right technologies and using them in the right ways. So I’m here to help point you in the right direction. Think of me as the caring father who runs alongside your bicycle before letting go and hoping you don’t crash into that mailbox.

I’ll cover the basics and I’ll show you some neat tricks. We’ll talk about free hosting offers for non-profits and how to start a blog. How to use Google Docs for a collaborative workspace. How feeds can arm you with the latest and greatest from the web. How cheap (or even free!) online services can help you with accounting, marketing, and fundraising.

So hang around – the first post (it’s on domain names) is going up Monday morning.

The business world has an astonishing talent for obfuscation, muddling, and general confusion. Language gets misused and buzzwords trump actual meaning. But that doesn’t mean words don’t have value – it simply means that we must be more careful in their choice and use.

From Lifehack:

So what’s the difference? As simply as I can say it, your mission is what you do best every day, and your vision is what the future looks like because you do that mission so exceedingly well. In fact, I like to compare them to another old debate: management versus leadership.

And that’s supposed to clear things up?!

Sorry, but that does little for me. In a planning meeting once I heard someone claim that “mission” and “vision” were basically just two words for the same dense two-page block of corporate mumbo-jumbo.

I laughed. It’s true. Organizations (corporate or otherwise) often launch into paragraph after paragraph of unreadable garbage. Mission statements and vision statements have lost their way.

Ommmmmm…

It’s worth holding onto words and their meanings. Here’s my contribution to clarity, found after a good cup of coffee and an excellent bit of coffee cake on a Sunday morning.

Mission: What you’re here to do. We’re here to have fun.

Vision: Where you see yourself. We’re going to spend a month on vacation.

Strategy: How you’re going to do it. We’ll quit our jobs, cash out our retirement accounts, and drive to Disney World.

The order here is important. How can you have a strategy if you don’t know your mission?