Considering What a Website Can Do for Your Group
Not every group needs a website. Can this be true? Doesn’t a vibrant grassroots group need a website to steer volunteers to events and opportunities?
By Christine Brown
Not every group needs a website. If you really just want a calendar of events, there are other easier options: you could simply share your Mobilize home page, for example. But if you want a permanent place to motivate and strategize, a website could be for you. Before you invest the people power to create and maintain a website, you need to consider carefully what that website will do for your group.
In 2021, Indivisible Acton Area (MA) started a special elections website called www.TurnPurple2Blue.org, to serve our nearly 1500 farflung members better. The three volunteer editors are Christine Brown, Denise Gieseke and Barbara Head. Based on their experience, they have some easy to implement recommendations.
In our case, our members literally asked for a website—the newsletter was getting longer and longer and people were having trouble remembering where they originally saw the information they wanted to retrieve later.
We wanted our website to be more than just events; we wanted to add value by synthesizing a multitude of grassroots and news sources into an easily digestible go-to source. The intent was to go beyond sharing news articles or events, to offer context—how does this latest news inform our strategies?
Just like ours, your group members likely consume very fragmented and varied media depending on what sources they pay for, and what social media they participate in. Instead of each person chasing all these sources, you can provide a more complete or targeted picture. The ultimate goal is to motivate people to take action. But what action, where, when, and why? You can offer a lifeline to your readers who are drowning in news and actions and therefore are paralyzed into doing nothing.
Okay, you’ve decided a website would be of value to your group—how do you launch and maintain a site without having it consume all your energy?
Form your Team. Do you have someone with experience who can lend a hand? Ideally you will have at least three people to maintain the website and create content. Collaboration creates strength and numbers help with burnout.
Choose a Website Template: Wordpress, Wix, and Squarespace are some examples of inexpensive website templates that provide support and tutorials. Click by click, feature by feature, each will guide you through construction. Your first task will be to select a unique domain name, the URL address for your site. The web builder should help you find, register, and in most cases, set up payment for your domain. You want your URL to reflect your name and purpose. We use Wordpress, and although we started with just one volunteer doing all the IT, and two others writing all the content, all three of us now feel comfortable with either job.
Develop your content. The wonderful thing about digital creations is that they naturally grow and evolve. Generally we decide on the topline menus for each year based on the group’s goals. For example, last year we focussed on state level ideas and projects, this year we are focussing on winning 2024. Ask yourself: What content will your readers want to access and share more than once?
Identify your readers. Your target audience will help shape the content of your website. Generally a website is valuable for a geographically spread out audience and/or a large group that doesn’t attend all the same meetings.
Promote your website. You’ve spent all this time and energy to develop a website. You have informing and motivating content. But you still have one more job to do — get people to read it! In our case, we have four more volunteers that share the articles into different Indivisible closed Facebook groups. We have also presented the website at Indivisible Mass Coalition’s statewide call, tabled at different Huddles, and shared cards at in-person postcard writing parties. It’s easy to train a volunteer or two to promote your site on Instagram or other platforms.
Track your website metrics. Most website hosting platforms give you instant access to a variety of analytics. We can use the statistics Wordpress provides to see what articles are actually read, and how people find the website. The results will empower you.
Budget time to maintain and update the website. We update the Homepage about every 30 days, and we update action posts weekly. The amount of time we spend varies — more at the end of the month as we get ready for the turnover. Deadlines are helpful; we don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. We did create guidelines, but we aren’t slaves to rigid word counts or style guides. I love that we can let our personalities and voices show, which is often not the case when you write for someone else.
I invite you to explore https://TurnPurple2Blue.org for ideas to create your own website!!
Christine Brown serves on the Indivisible Acton Area Steering Committee and is an editor of www.TurnPurple2Blue.org. Indivisible Acton Area publishes a weekly newsletter and invites new subscribers.