Daily Tips for Non Profit Website Promotion

AOL Innovation in the Community Award website award winners announced
Thirty community groups and charities across the UK have been chosen from hundreds of applicants to receive an AOL Innovation in the Community Award of £2,000 plus a year's free subscription to AOL. The awards scheme was set up by AOL and the charity Citizens Online to help communities make the most of the Internet. The winning organisations' proposals demonstrated innovation and a clear understanding of how the online medium can benefit the audiences they serve.

To view the winners & learn more...

Making your website accessible

If your site cannot be viewed by people with disabilities because of overuse of Flash, no ALT tags on images and other accessiblity no- no's not only are you cutting off a potential audience, you might also find that you're breaking the law.

If your organisation has a public website, it needs to be accessible - and that's the law. on September 4th The Guardian reported that: "The requirement for companies to have accessible websites has been enshrined in UK law since 1995, as part of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). But the law has received little attention - until now, as a number of individuals prepare to launch legal action against websites that they claim flout the law."

There are some web site building programmes with built in accessibility features. Macromedia's DreamWeaver program can automatically look at your site to see if it complies with accessiblity guidelines.

The Royal National Institute of the Blind recommends a free, online accessibility test - Bobby which offers a check on any web page simply by typing in its URL.
Usablenet runs a similar free testing service.

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MS Society Wins Charity Internet Site of the Year
You can learn a lot for your own site design by studying award winning sites and The MS Society's interactive and innovative site has received a top gong at the recent Charity Times Awards.

The judges said the site was: "by far the most interactive and innovative entry. A vast amount of its content is contributed by the charity's own beneficiaries and is a lively and extremely innovative use of an online presence."

Highly commended in the category was the Youthnet national online volunteering database. Also shortlisted were Mencap and Battersea Dogs Home.

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Online Payroll Giving to benefit smaller Groups
Justgiving has launched a new online solution that could help smaller charities take advantage of payroll giving.

Employees whose companies sign up for the service will be able to choose from more than 600 charities online and donate through their payroll through their company's website or internal intranet. According to Justgiving, by decreasing reliance on Professional Fundraising Organisations (PFOs) the service is also likely to benefit smaller charities.

The Sun newspaper of all things reported on this in their Cashflow section yesterday! "The website offers details of how employers cna used the service. It covers one off and regular doanations and chosen charities can be changed easily online. The service normally costs companies £12,500 to set up but is offerd free to firms who join before December."

Doantions through payroll are very tax efficient. The Government adds ten per cent to the amount you agree to have taken from your salary. It also means you do not pay income tax on the money you are donating. A donation of £10 becomes £11 after the Government top up and means a deduction from salary of £7.80 for a standard rate tax payer and £6 for a higher rate tax payer.

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RFV - What it is & Next Steps
RFV - Recency Frequency Value is a common technique used in direct marketing based on the premise of how often you should communicate with your supporters and how that communication gets the best return on investment. It's traditionally thought that you should spend the most time on the most recent people who've come on board, who communicate/shop/deal with you most frequently and who spend the most money doing this.

But is it outdated? Are there newer and better techniques?

On the September 23rd 2003 at 6pm in London there will be a seminar by the Institute of Fundraising to address this idea.

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Virtual Conference for non profits
Wired.org is a four-day international virtual conference (September 16-19) geared to nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, socially responsible companies and educational institutions. You can "meet" with practitioners, thought leaders and representatives from leading organizations, in an online learning community to share ideas about using the web.

Sign up before September 3, 2003 to receive an early-bird discount.
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