TIME MATTERS
Let me just put it out there, volunteering your time for someone or an organization is a good thing. Yes, sometimes the work may come with no incentives (money). This might be a dealbreaker, but as I have highlighted in a previous article, volunteering as a web developer is no different than building code and contributing to open-source projects.
Here are three stories I’d like to share with you in regard to nonprofit site support.
NONPROFIT SITE SUPPORT #1
About a month ago I sat down with a team of volunteers from Educate Radiate Elevate to discuss hosting provider options and site maintenance plans for a nonprofit site. Our IT lead suggested we move from the current UK-based setup to a more reliable US-based company as a first step.
Support from the UK was lacking not just due to timezone differences and communication, but when malware was detected on their shared server, not only did they shut down the other sites, but our site was pulled as well. At times, our site was down for more than 24 hours. This was completely unacceptable.
We also discussed the idea of what happens when none of us are around. Since we’re all volunteers and we only dedicate about 5-10 hours a week to website tasks, who will be there to mitigate technical issues? Well, as I mentioned before, we moved the nonprofit’s website to a much more reliable hosting provider, A2 Hosting.
While in the midst of transferring the site DNS and other missing linkages, I’m tasked to make sure WordPress is up to date, a backup has been made, and the theme builder of the nonprofit’s choice is reliable.
It would seem that a lot of hosting providers these days have dedicated WordPress hosting services that come with site installs, site migrations, and even WordPress core updates and malware detections in some cases.
As of right now, the nonprofit runs on WordPress and Elementor as their primary theme builder. Which has a larger community support base. Making troubleshooting easy for any developer.
Sure enough, with this theme builder idea this got me thinking, theme builders for nonprofits, when you’re on a volunteering basis, are not a bad solution!
NONPROFIT SITE SUPPORT #2
With this in mind about theme builders, I started communicating with another one of my nonprofit organizations about how to move from pure WordPress development and utilize a theme builder called Astra.
My time has been limited lately and the organization is busy trying to get their message across. While developing an app that is the primary driving force of the organization’s purpose.
What if, not a fully custom site build, but a theme builder that provides most of the essential needs so that they can do more than the typical copywriting? What if they needed to add extra block components, new hero elements, or completely new form pages linking to critical events? This is what I conveyed to Disaster Accountability.
NONPROFIT SITE SUPPORT #3
What if the nonprofit organization already has WordPress and a theme builder? That’s great! But what if the theme they are using is no longer part of a yearly subscription renewal? Well, that’s easy, right? Just renew it! But no, the last developer who helped them out, dropped off the face of the earth and has the login to renew. Well, this is exactly what is happening with Touching Heart.
The new suggested theme builder that I recommend is Beaver Builder, I had to look at more than one option here, but their most critical element is donations options and calendar events which this theme builder can provide the tools.
SIMPLE WEBSITE PLAN
I have not played enough with theme builder plugins to know how effective they are, but have heard good reviews about them, at least the prominent ones such as Divi, Beaver Builder, Elementor, Astra these extensions will give nonprofit organizations ease of control of their site, without having to reach out a developer or development agency and run hours on end in creating something custom.
Granted, the nonprofit would have to shell out a premium license for the plugin, but the end goal here is to provide them with an expansive building block user interface that allows them visual queues in creating new pages, as much as I dislike the clićhe term, “no code.”
COMPLEX WEBSITE PLAN
However, some organizations require much heavier lifting, then of course you would need to reach out to a freelance developer or agency that specializes in the nonprofit space. This will cost more than the usual collection of plugins to run the site, but the benefit is a closer relationship with the developer and agency.
Nonprofits bootstrap most of their stuff together from volunteer work. It’s important that we help them out so that they can focus on what they do best for the community.