A few weeks ago, I launched my first site from the client side.   I’m really pleased with the site: we worked with 5Q Communications to do the strategy & architecture, then they brought in our friend Michael to work on the design side.  Then, back over to 5Q to build a custom CMS on Django and build out the site.  We came up against a deadline to be off of the Kintera site, so we’re continuing to build out features, but here’s a quick highlight of what the site has (or will have).

• Around 50 mini-sites for ministries, service opportunities, and supported missionaries
• New & improved services player incorporating flash with sermon chapters & better usability (coming soon)
• Church blog and mini-blogs for each of the mini-sites to let people hone in on content that’s specific to them
• Classifieds section (coming soon!)
• Promotion of facebook & twitter, which we’re going to start using (or start using more effectively?)  something.
• Multiple admin levels to restrict access, but allow staff to have responsibility for maintaining content (I’m ambitious!)
• fantastic design & much improved usability

The process has definitely been different being a client versus being the one responsible for the site.  The hardest part has been having someone else in charge of the timeline. It’s a relief in some ways (it was nice not having to manage the dozens of to-do lists and keep things on track and hours under control), but difficult to step back & let the team do their jobs without asking to know all of the details. We actually helped migrate some of the content, so we had access to the site as it was being built (because of the tight timeframe), which was also different (I can’t imagine giving a client that level of access!).  There was no grand “reveal” of the site when it was all done.  Instead we watched it come together piece by piece across several weeks.

Check it out when you have a chance: www.parksidechurch.com.

I am convinced that agility will be the hallmark of future successful nonprofits.

In five years, successful ministries will look like the Dutch soccer teams of the 1970’s, playing Total Football to the delight of their constituents and the benefit of human-kind.

A programming note, from here on out when you see football, I’m talking about the sport the rest of the world calls football, what we American’s call soccer.

Total Football is a concept created by Rinus Michels and first really put into practice by the Dutch Ajax team in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Generally in football you have a particular formation, such as the 4-4-2 the U.S.  team often plays. That is four defenders, four midfielders and two attackers (football formations always start at the back).

The goal is to keep this “shape” throughout the game. Teams often get into trouble when they loose their shape and holes open up.

In Total Football there is a starting formation (4-2-4), but players swap roles on the fly as the game progresses.


It’s easier to understand if you watch the first 20 seconds or so of this video (excuse the cheesy music).

Right about 18 seconds you can count all ten Dutch players in the frame. This is a big no-no in general, but was part of the Total Football philosophy.

This system requires each player to constantly access the current state of the game and the space around them to flow to where the team needs him. It creates huge match-up problems for defenders and leads to an improvisational type of play that is hard to coach against.

As you would expect people who are better attackers than defenders play that role more often. And of course the goalie stayed in goal, that role never got swapped around. To be sure this took a special group of players and when Ajax traded their star player away they had trouble replicating their early success.

A nonprofit will always have folks who are stronger in some aspects than others.

And will always have team members who’s role shouldn’t be shared (CFO comes to mind).

The more a nonprofit’s employees look up from their particular task and take a larger view to understand what is needed right now to be successful the more successful you will be.

By itself this is nothing but blue-sky solutioneering, I have a few specific ideas I’ll be publishing here over the next few days, so stay tuned.

Some of you may have seen this on Twitter and Facebook, but I figured I could make the “official” announcement here.

The always helpful Agitator strikes again.

In the post linked above, Tom talks about two studies. One showed people who touched a product were more likely to buy it and the other that a positive first time experience is strongly correlated to long term brand loyalty.

Tom, then goes on to ask what can nonprofits do to replicate the experience of touching a product.

One of the rescue mission’s we work with is already doing this.

Orlando Union Rescue Mission (OURM) hosts One Homeless Night where people are invited to sleep under an overpass for one night. I know that OURM isn’t the only one doing this, and if you know of others, feel free to link it up in the comments.

World Vision has World Vision Experience: AIDS which is a touring exhibit you walk through and get a better understanding of what its like to be a child in Africa.

I bring up these two examples because at first glance you might say, “We can’t make what we do something you can touch, its too personal/intense/complicated/unsafe” and you would be right.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t distill one piece of that experience into something that can be physically shared with others.

Just think about the experience of walking into a cathedral style church. A few weeks ago, my wife’s college roomate came to stay with us and when we sat down in church, she said to me, “It [the church] makes me feel small, but I guess that’s what it’s supposed to do.”

I think many would agree that God’s greatness is not something that can be neatly packaged, but church architecture has been providing an experience of that greatness for hundreds of years.

Does carrying two five gallon buckets of muddy water across a 1/2 mile course give you an understanding of what it’s like to live in a village where you have to walk ten times that far for water twice a day? Perhaps not, but I guarantee it helps you understand the importance of drilling clean water wells.

Does eating on a Food Stamps budget give you an understanding of what it’s like to live in poverty in the United States? Perhaps not, but I guarantee it gives you insight as to why many underprivileged people struggle with weight related health issues (hint: fat calories are cheap calories).

The key in both cases is letting go of a notion that we are somehow diminishing the people we serve by providing a small, imperfect window into their world.

When we choose not to take this risk we trade a small, imperfect window for no window at all; denying people the opportunity to expand their understanding and to be moved to action.

Comment on Masterworks’ Blog

When I posted that I was about to read/finished Outliers, I got a number of questions, so I thought I would post my thoughts.

After my first post an old friend, Andre mentioned something he called the “standard Gladwell caveat” when I asked what that was he replied:

Gladwell is a reporter, not a visionary. His books are starting points, not end points.

That had the unfortunate effect of framing my entire reading of the book. I say unfortunate, because I generally like to not put a frame around books I’m reading. However, after finishing this book and thinking about Blink, I have to agree with Andre.

Gladwell finds things that are out there and puts a story to them. Now to be sure the things he finds are things many of the rest of us, in some cases everybody else, has overlooked and that is the mark of a great reporter.

This book does a great job of dispelling the common wisdom of outliers. Specifically, that exceptional people are exceptional for some intrinsic reason that is special to just them. Instead, Gladwell argues that circumstance and consistent (not hard) work have much more to do with success than our mythologies would have us believe.

What the book is light on is prescription for how to maximize these favorable circumstances. With the one exception of Junior League Hockey in Canada. Since Joe is the only Canadian I know, this bit of advice is for him: have kids as close to January 1st as possible.

After I finished the book, Katharine asked if the book, “was worth reading.” From a content perspective, if you take the following on authority:

• When you are born has a lot to do with how successsful you are
• Where you are born has a lot to do with how sucessful you are
• You have to spend 10,000 hours at something in order to master it
• You only have to be “smart enough” past that point there are other skills that will determine success, even in very academic fields

That’s the short, short version of the book. The rest is evidence. However, I find Gladwell a very good writer. As someone who has to express myself for a living I find reading good and great writing is worth it regardless of the content.

That’s my longish answer to two shortish questions.

Excerpts from Pixellated Pragmatism by Michael Johnson

(click for more example sites on his blog, including modernista.com’s navigation only “website”)

So now it’s become less important for a website to say HEY YOU LOOK AT ME, and much more important to say ‘what can I help you find?’ We use the web to find or read stuff, quickly. It hasn’t stopped us going to movies, watching TV, or reading books. It’s just added to these things. My tweenage son uploads movies of his guitar playing onto Facebook. My other half plays Tetris on her iPhone whilst we catch two month-old dramas recorded on a TVR, fast forwarding through old Xmas ads. Am I surprised? Not really.

In the short term, at least, things will keep simplifying. If web design has become semi-skimmed, it becomes skinnier still when you consider designing for mobile devices.

Many now argue for the polar opposite of the immersive animated approach. Partly driven by accessibility issues (ie ‘what does it look like with pictures and flash turned off?’), blogging (which needs page URL’s in order to link to something) and good old fashioned speed, sites get simpler and simpler. If you’re wondering why so many look like weblogs, it’s because they’re often adapted from blog software.

Think twitter is just for the kids? It can be a powerful way to deliver great donor experience.

Comment on Masterworks’ Blog

If you hang around here long enough you’ll see posts about Pew Internet and American Life studies. The project does some of the best primary research on internet use in the United States.

A recent study looked at how people in different generations use the different parts of the internet.

A few observations. Things that aren’t surprising:

• Younger people are over-represented on the internet
• Older people do less on the internet than younger people
• Email is still the killer app, but it is increasingly becoming something for “old people”

Things that were surprising:

• Less than 50 percent of every generation read blogs
• More than 70 percent of every generation makes travel reservations online
• 30-39 percent of every generation gets religious information online
• Less than 0-9 percent of every generation visits virtual worlds

So for those churches who built virtual buildings in Second Life, right ballpark, wrong bench.

Comment on Masterworks’ blog

via SSIR: Click to listen to Premal Shah, Kiva’s president, discuss the creation of online giving markets and how the power of online communities can strengthen the world of microcredit.

The whole talk is less than an hour I believe, and maybe a fourth is Q&A. Premal Shah makes three points to creating online markets: 1) Make it an addictive user experience, 2) Be radically transparent 3) Crowdsourcing 4) Building increasing returns on data 5) Finding value in the long tail

Interesting strategies from Kiva:

• Under his point to be “radically transparent”, he cites Kiva’s “Help Pay the Rent” option that will give 10% of your donation to Kiva’s operating costs. One year, this option funded 60-75% of their admin costs. Also, using the CEO blog to talk about the “highs and lows.”
• They couldn’t do a full-scale social network functionality, but they realized by simply adding a profile photo upload, it provided the “fun” that users wanted.
• To help them scale, they implement “crowdsourcing” through a full-fledged recruiting program to send people overseas (not working remotely but on site) for 10 weeks.

Other interesting points:

• 10% action rate (10 people will give out of every 100?)
• Most online giving markets do not have huge marketing budgets
• “Kiva’s a really bad investment but a really great donation.”
• Plan for organic growth, not press-driven growth
• Oh, and for some of you, in the Q&A portion, listen for a familiar voice (not mine).

More here: http://www.ssireview.org/onlinegivingpics

Today is Rebekah’s last day of work. She’s taking a little bit of time off, and with her having more time we’re hoping to be able to have friends over more often. It might be tough to pull off, but I was thinking it might be fun to try to get some people from the Silas team together. We probably have a critical mass of people still in the DC area, and then the out-of-towners can travel if they want to, but totally understandable if you’d rather use your travel budget to visit your family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But just because we may not be able to get everyone to come doesn’t mean we could get some people together. I was thinking maybe sometime in the spring. Any enthusiasm for this idea, and if so any ideas for dates?