Earth Share Washington www.esw.org is a federation of 66 environmental organizations around the state. (See the group's profile in Net2 in Action.) ESW focuses on delivering work-place financial donations to its member organizations from supporters around Washington.  Their web site has been built using the Movable Type blogging system for the last two and a half years. The Movable Type system has proven very valuable for the organization, increasing their number of page views by a factor of 7 times that of their old site.  Because of the limitations of Movable Type, they are now looking into using a full service Content Management System and are inclined to implement the open source system Plone.

In talking to Dave Manelski, the group's Program Coordinator and Webmaster, I found out that Earth Save Washington has gained much valuable experience that other non-profits could benefit from.  Manelski was very gracious to spend his time with me on the phone.  This is what we discussed:

The group's original web site was static, without the regularly updated news, events  and volunteer opportunity listings that Movable Type has made easy for the Webmaster to add every 2 to 3 days.

These updates originate from a variety of sources.  Manelski prioritizes publishing original writing from member organizations.  Such original writing is sometimes in short supply, however, so news about environmental issues is often repurposed from online news sites and aggregated on Earth Share's site.

The amount of original content available is limited by a number of factors.  First, the Movable Type system does not have a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, like a word processor's bold and italic buttons.  That means that non-technical users must familiarize themselves with some basic HTML in order to post to the site - something that is not always viable or desirable for non-technical users.  A WYSIWYG editor will be a high-priority in the organization's next software decision.

The second limiting factor is that few, though an increasing number, of the member organizations are familiar with the value and how-to of writing for the web.  Very few of the member organizations have RSS feeds available to deliver their content to the federation.

Despite these limitations, the Movable Type blog system has proved to be a very valuable asset.  There was a lot of advice from other bloggers available in how to implement Movable Type, even two and a half years ago.  The system is well documented and easy to learn for those with basic technical skills.

By using XHTML and style sheets, instead of Dreamweaver, the Earth Share Washington site has become far more accessible for search engine discovery and now receives a large percentage of its visitors from search engines.    The increased search engine optimization and the regularly updated and useful content has lead to a huge increase in site traffic.

The new site design has greatly increased the organization's visibility online, from an estimated 2,500 page views per month up to between 15 and 18 thousand page views monthly.  While the original site drew primarily people who were already interested in Earth Save, the new site brings visitors who are interested in relevant topics and introduces them to the organization through valuable content.  Walenski is currently using Google Analytics to track visitors to the site and their behavior there.   

The group offers email subscription to its monthly news page (the Earth Page) and RSS feeds of that page as well as others.  News, events and volunteer opportunities are all subscribable by RSS.  This functionality is expected to improve further in flexibility and usefulness when the new CMS system is implemented.

Future Direction

Manelski has found that the current site's three sections needed to have three separate blogs published, which has greatly reduced its ability to cross reference related materials of different types and to deliver news, events and volunteering info on the same page at once.  Fortunately, the site uses the same categories or taxonomy across all sections.  This will be very useful when a more integrated CMS is implemented that better supports automatic cross referencing.

The group is leaning towards switching to the Plone system for several reasons.  While Movable Type has worked very well for them for more than 2 years, it now requires a greater degree of "shoe-horning" into their needs than they would like.  They need a system with greater support for database integration and analytics.  

Integrated databases would help Earth Share, for example, be able to demonstrate the specific number of visitors interested in volunteering who have clicked through to member organizations' sites.  Such a system would make it easier to gather incoming information in general.  Thus is would be easier to articulate the tangible benefits of membership to the member organizations.

Plone is a time-tested system that should greatly reduce their shoe-horn work load.  It also has a vibrant community of user/developers that ensure that it is always growing more stable, supported and versatile.  Finally, the group has a good working relationship with the non-profit technology consultants at ONE/Northwest and is moving toward implementing Plone with their support.

Learning

Malenski believes that some of the most valuable things that a conference like Net Squared could offer would be basic overviews of what new tools are available online.

He hopes that in the near future, more original content will be able to be created, posted and thus offer repeat visitors all the more reason to return.  Attempts to create a sense of interactivity have been slowed by the relative dependence on repurposed news from other sources.

Manelski says that their next site implementation will also include a landing page that will explain what RSS is and offer a menu of the several feeds available from the site.  He believes that it is a duty of any blog or non-profit group offering feeds to also offer some basic education about what this new technology is.

He recommends that organizations seeking to utilize new technological systems find a trusted non-profit partner organization that provides assistance for such processes.  Rather than having to learn all the steps yourself, working with such groups can save you from the need for expertise.

Dave Manelski is available to discuss Movable Type set up with anyone who would like to have a conversation with him about it.  He can also talk to organizations about work-place giving programs.

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