Developing a non-profit website

Weaving together a community of believers

The website of Puget Sound Chrysalis was developed to alleviate a communications breakdown which threatened to short-circuit the organization's ability to conduct three-day spiritual retreats for 15- to 24-year-old youth.

The following description of the Chrysalis website project was submitted for accreditation as a business communicator through the International Assocation of Business Communicators. Overall organization and criteria for this page were developed by the IABC accreditation staff.

[NOTE: Since my term on the board of Puget Sound Chrysalis ended in June 2003, development of the website has been assigned to other board members. The site has been modified, as it should, to meet the current board's perception of the organizational needs. Therefore, you will not find my version at the official website. Instead, I present my last archived version for review.]

Statement of Objectives and Results

1. Describe your organization and the communications function
   
2. Identify the problem or opportunity
   
3. Develop the solution or plan
   
4. Sell the plan to management or the client
   
5. Implement the plan
   
6. Evaluate the plan

1. Describe your organization and the communications function

Chrysalis is an international, ecumenical, non-profit, volunteer organization with the mission to develop, challenge, inspire, and equip Christian youth as leaders, through Christian action in their homes, churches, schools, communities, and the Chrysalis experience. The center of the Chrysalis experience is sharing love of and for Jesus Christ, and for one another as commanded in the Bible.

The structure and content of the Chrysalis experience is an adaptation for youth of the Protestant Walk to Emmaus program for adults. It is three-day spiritual retreat, centered around 15 talks by laity and clergy, filled with music, celebration, plenty of good food, and relationship-building with other Christian teens and adults.

Chrysalis, and Walk to Emmaus, were developed in the 1970s by The Upper Room which is a ministry for the development of increased spiritual life, affiliated with the United Methodist Church and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. These programs are based upon the Cursillo de Cristanidad (short course in Christianity) started by the Roman Catholic and Anglican/Episcopalian churches in the early 1950s.

The local organizational unit in Western Washington is known as Puget Sound Chrysalis and is directed by a board of youth and adult laypersons and clergy.

Each year, Puget Sound Chrysalis conducts two pairs of Flight weekends for youth 15-21 (girls first, followed a week later by boys), and one pair of Journey weekends for young adults. The newsletter mails three weeks before the start of each pair of weekends.

2. Identify the problem or opportunity

In June 1998, I was asked to serve as interim editor of the three-times-per-year Puget Sound Chrysalis newsletter, The Chrysalis Connection. The first six months of the two-year term had been filled by the previous editor as there were no volunteers for the position starting the year. Initially, I turned down the request but after prayer and reflection, accepted this call to ministry.

Almost as soon as I began attending board meetings in mid-1998, it became obvious that three mailings per year were inadequate to communicate the breadth of the community's activities and interests, Flight and Journey details, and joys and concerns. Under my leadership, the board studied alternatives, including additional newsletters, other types of direct mailing, telephone "trees," fax and email, and a website.

Because of explosive growth over the past five years, the Puget Sound Chrysalis community was "falling apart." Duplication of effort, lack of coordination, and member complaints about not knowing "what's happening," missed opportunities for ministry in our niche calling, and name-calling all slowed the community-building processes.

Not all of these could be addressed by the newsletter, no matter how inclusive and broad-spectrum the content, especially when elements of diversity or conflict appeared suddenly in the between-weekend interims. The board was not sure adding additional newsletters would help.

At the August 1998 board meeting, the Puget Sound Chrysalis board requested that I determine if the Internet might be a usable tool. I examined websites of The Upper Room, the Chrysalis national parent organization, other Chrysalis and Walk to Emmaus local organizations, and our own Puget Sound Walk to Emmaus community. All were deficient in some ways.

3. Develop the solution or plan

The website's objective is to supplement the newsletter as a source of community information and serve as the primary information source during between-newsletter interims.

The goals of the website are:

• Adhere to Biblical and scriptural standards
  
  
• Present up-to-date Flight and Journey information and driving directions
  
  
• Make information easily available to the widely-varied audience
  
  
• Bind the Puget Sound Chrysalis community together and enhance communication
  
  
• Become a community forum and open lines of contact to other Chrysalis organizations
  
  
• Decrease lag time between community inquiries and board response
  
  
• Institute Internet security to protect our members and further secure the community database
  
  
• Keep better track of our college population
  
  
• Reduce the need for additional newsletters and the cost of printing and mailing them

The target audience is our community of member youth and their parents, and parents of candidates, as well as our parent Puget Sound Walk to Emmaus community, and the staff and volunteers at The Upper Room in Nashville. Some concerns were immediately obvious:

• The audience ranges from 15 years old to mid-80s, especially between teens attending Chrysalis weekends and parents who had not yet attended Walk to Emmaus weekends
  
  
• A variety of denominational constituencies are served
  
  
• Some parents felt only "a computer" was needed to do term papers and email home, the old 486 was sent to college while the fast, new Pentium stayed at home (or the reverse, where parents felt college deserved a new computer and kept the "clunker" at home)

4. Sell the plan to management or the client

I developed a test web. After uploading the test to the host server containing my own personal website, I asked several knowledgeable community members to evaluate it.

Armed with their comments and observations, at the September 1998 board meeting, I recommended Puget Sound Chrysalis should:

1. Apply to use the host server of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) of the United Methodist Church
   
   
2. Set January 1, 1999, as the target implementation date
   
   
3. Set up an email structure using one of the then proliferating "free" email services
   
   
4. "Dumb down" any fancy stuff so everyone in our community could use the website
   
   
5. Include the Letter of Agreement, our mission and organization statements, and Puget Sound Chrysalis bylaws
   
   
6. Pay careful attention to security and privacy issues of our community
   
   
7. Implement accessibility features and navigation
   
   
8. Actively seek youth input to the website and its growth

The board unanimously agreed a website was the optimal solution and the best use of Puget Sound Chrysalis time and resources.

Although no formal action was taken by the board to initiate the web-site project, judging by the board's collective sigh of relief, there was no question in my mind of a mandate to "make it happen" by the target date.

5. Implement the plan

• I applied to the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) of the United Methodist Church to use their host web server. GBGM offers itself as a worldwide ministry and mission resource for United Methodist churches and other Protestant organizations.
  
  
  In late October, I received an email from the GBGM administrator requesting a letter from our regional bishop authenticating Puget Sound Chrysalis. It took another month but we provided the necessary credential and gained permission to use the GBGM web server.
  
  
• It is commonly accepted that websites will have an email address and be able to receive and send messages. Implementation entailed finding an email service, preferably a free service so we could demonstrate to our community that we were answerable to the voluntary nature of our annual budget.
  
  
  Although GBGM allowed us free use of their host server, at first there was a small charge ($5.00/month, since removed) for forwarding Puget Sound Chrysalis email to a server of our choice. Instead, I signed Puget Sound Chrysalis up to use the free Hotmail service.
  
  
• All pages were designed to by viewable by community members with 14-inch monitors (640-pixels by 480-pixels). Web experts say pages should NOT have horizontal scroll bars at even the smallest screen size.
  
  
• To prevent "breakage" on older, slower computers with older browsers, I deliberately avoided JavaScript, Java, CGI and Perl coding, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and frames. This way, I could assure the board that everyone could see our website at any time.
  
  
  To some younger members of the board, it felt bad to "dumb down" the fancy stuff. I initially included a page which used JavaScript. Within days, the Puget Sound Chrysalis Hotmail inbox fielded a complaint that a youth at college couldn't use the website. The board was happy to remove the offending JavaScript, and we have received no other complaints.
  
  
• Drawing on an earlier experience helping Puget Sound Walk to Emmaus develop their website, I had clear solutions to security concerns expressed by the Puget Sound Chrysalis board and members of the community. By show of hands, my written Internet security and privacy policy was approved for the board's official record.
  
  
• Because Chrysalis exists for youth, youth participation is encouraged. It made sense to actively seek youth input to the website and its growth. All work-in-progress was reviewed by the board and a number of excellent recommendations were given by the youth representatives. One high-school boy board member verified all my HTML code and links and I encouraged him to create several of the pages himself. Another college-age youth volunteered to create a "guest book," and when he graduates in 2002, has expressed interest in becoming the webmaster.
  
  
• The original text-based checkerboard table of contents proved a nightmare to update. I created a small purple and black butterfly graphic, sectioned it into a four-by-five grid, and developed a graphic navigation table that does not require monthly alteration.
  
  
• There was some concern, mainly from youth board members, that an over-eager candidate could look up the Puget Sound Chrysalis website and learn more than he or she should. know prior to attending. The board agreed to keep the information online if removing it conflicted with the website's goals and objectives.
  
  
• The website was activated on schedule January 1, 1999. It is updated two or three times each month as the web master's time permits. The text-based table of contents undergoes a significant change each time a newsletter is published, mirroring the newsletter's content for a wider audience.

6. Evaluate the plan

Email messages to our Hotmail account have increased steadily. A bulge was experienced during the team-building period preceding the year's first Flights. [NOTE: Statistics shown only for Year One, the term evaluated by the IABC accreditation board.]

• More than 200 responses were received from a flyer mailed in December 1999 requesting email addresses for our database. These will be used to provide a six-times-per-year email newsbrief adjunct to the website.
  
  
• The guest book was evaluated for 14 days. Although we "hid" it from general browsing, it still logged more than 50 entries.
  
  
• The online candidate application was initially conceived as an adjunct to the existing printed application, which was subsequently found to lack essential information. Changes were quickly incorporated into the online application. Eventually, the Puget Sound Chrysalis board decided too much work was necessary to update the print application and directed everyone to use the online version only. Those without access to the Internet may still request a printed version by mail but they will simply get the online form printed out by the registrars.
  
  
• Our Internet-savvy youth have applauded us -- by email, telephone, and in person -- for creating the website, and they are quick to offer their comments and suggestions for improvement.
  
  
• Community members have told us they are becoming accustomed to visiting the website when they needs Flight dates, directions to the next event, Chrysalis post office box or registrar addresses, the community email address, scholarship information, the latest updates, and other information.
  
  
• The incoming Puget Sound Chrysalis board for year 2000 requested that the website's uniform resource locator (URL) be printed on every letter, every hand-out, and every follow-up to each weekend, so candidates and team can stay in touch via the website.
  

See the Archived site

• The registrars include the URL in all letters to the community and the president specifically mentions the URL at every community event. Puget Sound Walk to Emmaus prints our URL in their bi-monthly newsletter.