In at least one case [large, multi-state nonprof] there was a starvation environment. Once you walked in the door they would strip you, African plains-style, of your every scrap of energy without listening to the advice that would have mattered.

I realized soon that it was going to be impossible to even pick the LOW hanging fruit. I couldn’t get them to stop talking about animations, fancy design work and snazzy crap – and this was a BIG non-profit. They had a website with only 100 uniques per day, and 80% were short visits. It was a mess, and I had to run for my life. They still call me today with “email” and “computer” questions.

I live in the Washington DC area where we have a lot of non-profits and associations. From what I see, many of them have at best brochureware sites that they haven’t really updated since 1999. The management can be overly conservative and afraid of anything that’s technology based.

What’s often needed is bascially a Internet/Web 101 or maybe 201. It’s a shame because so much good can be done.

The firm I’m with, Abraham & Harrison reaches out to them and there have been some bites. But often the mentality is to have someone’s nephew create/update the site…and then it is horrible for SEO.

Hey Matt, thanks for the heads up on that. I’ll email you.

Thanks for the heads up on PTE James. An excellent example of SEM for a good cause.

I’ve recently gotten involved with PTE-China.org, and AIDS charity working in China, helping them out with some of their SEM activities. It’s not only nice to help, but it has given me a glimpse into another world of SEM. The experience has been a win-win for sure.

And if anyone wants to check out PTE (Prevention Through Education), please do…and any link love to their site would be more than appreciated.

I helped our local Traditional Archer’s society build a wordpress website. Someone had quoted thousands of dollars for a dynamic website that just wasn’t necessary. Now the board members can go in and put whatever they like in there. Granted, getting the info to put IN the blog has proven harder than actually getting the dang thing built -but it’s there and available for anyone who has an interest.

Sometimes it really can be that simple!

What’s overlooked is the amount of waste that non-profits have when it comes to web endeavors. In my experience, there were plenty of “volunteers” wanting to build sites who had zero talent and were just building it for their own portfolio. The results are unmaintainable and often discarded from neglect.

Such a situation recently happend to me, where a small organization was overwhelmed by a wannabe web marketer and his sledghammer-to-kill-an-ant approach. All they needed was a themed Wordpress blog and a couple of plug ins, with a few lessons on naming posts and building links. It is serving them well and everyone can use it. I’m doubting the volunteer had ever heard of CMS. The organization had wasted DOZENS of frustrating hours working on it and everyone had totally lost focus of their goals.

So in some ways, high level advice and a little hard love would have made things much easier for them. They just didn’t know any better.

I handle a lot of clients and it’s been quite a trend lately to give a part of the profits to a charity or to setup a foundation – at least amongst my European clients.

So this trend of SEO companies sharing their services for free with non-profit organisations is completely in line with the more general trend.

Great discovery though

-Dave

I wrote a post that came from my work with non-profits that others might find interesting. So many waste so much time and energy on their websites… so this was my effort to help on that.

Building nonprofit websites in 2007

I also couldn’t get the website in Anthony’s comment to work.

~Carrie

I suppose there’s an opportunity then….

Anthony