My experience implementing GWO for a non profit, part 1

A few weeks ago, I went to the most recent BDNT and saw a number of non profits present.  It was very interesting to see the vast range of needs and technical experience across the twelve non profits who actually presented.  Everything from a small webapp project to any web presence at all to updating a custom php webapp.

Most did a good job of containing their request to something manageable, though one group did get asked “Do you need a super volunteer or an employee” by Andrew Hyde, I assume because their needs seemed so vast.  The answer: no employee would be hired :).

After pizza (thanks BDNT sponsors! ) I wandered up to the group that had piqued my interest the most.  The WILD Foundation had an employee (Emily) whose job responsiblities included social media, a blog, and actively engaging the online community.  This strategy had worked wonders for the foundation’s web traffic, but for online donations?  Not so much.  This was the challenge she asked us to attack.

The session was moderated by Derek Scruggs and there were lots of great ideas.  To paraphrase, you could see where someone sat by what actions they suggested.  I mentioned Google Website Optimizer (a tool I’ve been a fan of for a long time); marketing folks wanted to focus on the message; some people wanted to change button color.  There were about 10 suggestions at the end.  Derek and Emily and the group then ranked them by effort (mostly group input) and priority (mostly Emily input).  Then we assigned tasks to volunteers.

I volunteered to set up a GWO test for the donate button on the WILD.org homepage.  We’re going to vary images and text to see if we can drive greater click through to the donate page.  Eventually, it’d be nice to optimize the whole process, but the actual donation page and donation thank you page are hosted on a vendor’s server, so I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to.

It’s been a week or so, and I still haven’t gotten write access to the template so I can add the code.  There are a number of reasons, and I think they might be common to all technical volunteer efforts, so I thought I’d outline them.

• Exploration of technology takes some time.  I looked at the GWO for wordpress plugins, and found that they didn’t quite do what we wanted.  I also nosed around the existing site and found which file to change in the theme.  And I suggested what elements we might want to vary and ran those by Emily.
• Time was a big issue; both mine and Emily’s was generally lacking.  Since it was a volunteer effort, I squeezed it in around work that paid.  Emily had to do her job first too.
• Trust had to be established.  These folks didn’t know me from Adam, and yet were letting me edit one of their primary faces to the world?  Emily’s IT guy was rightly concerned about this, and insisted on a website backup.
• IT issues–I had trouble editing the theme files, and working through Emily (with this being neither of our highest priority) to resolve the IT issue (basically, getting me an FTP account) took some additional time.  As mentioned above, there’s still an issue of not being able to track the entire donation process (so as to optimize it) because the WILD foundation uses a third party donation acceptance service.  I think we can make it work but wanted to get a win and build trust without having to involve a third party like the donation acceptance vendor.

However, it’s all coming together.  Once I get GWO up and running, I’ll let you know.