Non-Profit Organizations’ Web Presence:
Attracting Donations, Volunteers, and Catering to Diverse Stakeholders

  • Washington D.C.: Monday, May 14

Janelle Estes
Full-Day Training Course

Non-profit and charity organizations rely on donations to succeed. In this full day tutorial, we’ll explore what non-profit and charity organizations can do to gain more supporters and website donors.

Potential donors are interested in very specific pieces of information. We’ll identify their top questions and show examples of sites that answered these questions well—and those that could improve. We’ll also provide guidelines on how to streamline the donation process. Additionally, we’ll cover how to integrate affiliate or chapter websites with the main organization website.

Course Outline

  • Study details
    • Study overviews
    • Methodologies and tasks
    • Measurements and ratings
    • Participants
    • Sites studied
  • What people want to know before they make a donation
    • Top questions
    • Most convincing information
    • Biggest turnoffs
  • Site content
    • Homepage
    • Mission and objectives
    • About Us section
    • Asking for donations
    • Leadership, sponsors, and endorsements
    • News & events
    • Social media
  • Chapters & affiliates
    • Integrating affiliates with the main site
    • Affiliate site structure, content, and visual design
    • Donation process on main site vs. affiliate sites
  • The donation process
    • Link name and placement
    • Collecting information from donors
    • Streamlining the donation process
    • Maintaining a relationship with donors
  • Attracting and motivating volunteers
  • Informing the general public, journalists, and other visitors about an organization’s cause and projects

Format

Full-day tutorial with lecture, discussion, video highlights from user testing, and exercises.

Course Materials

Copies of the presentation slides and a free copy of Nielsen Norman Group's research report Non-Profit and Charity Website Usability (a $188 value).

Who Should Attend?

This session is intended for anyone who is responsible for or contributes to a non-profit or charity website.

Instructor

photo of Janelle Estes Janelle Estes is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She works with clients in a variety of industries and presents regularly about usability methods, email newsletters, writing for the Web, and the user experience of nonprofit websites. She has been the primary researcher on and co-author of several NN/g reports, including email newsletters, transactional email messages, donation usability for non-profit and charity websites, and social media. Prior to joining NN/g, Estes was a research associate on the Customer Experience team at Forrester Research, where she was involved with many research efforts related to user experience and user centered design. Additionally, Estes has worked as a user experience consultant with companies across many industries, including retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Most recently, Estes worked at Chordiant Software as a Human Factors Engineer in an agile development environment. Estes holds a BS in Information Design and Corporate Communication, and an MS in Human Factors in Information Design, both from Bentley University.