Your website doesn’t exist to just have a few pages of information and links to help people volunteer or give money to your nonprofit.

Adding functionality through surveys and forms is a great way to use your website more effectively and save money for your organization.

By strategically expanding the use of your website, you can potentially save money by paying less for outside tools, increase your website traffic by driving people to your site instead of other websites, and demonstrate that you are committed to serving your audience well.

How to use your nonprofit website for surveys

• Almost every nonprofit has an event at least once per year. A great way to use your website in conjunction with an event is to offer a pre or post-event survey on your website. Trying to decide on a venue? Post a survey to get feedback. Wondering if your donors would rather attend a thank-you event or have you spend the money on a program? Ask them. People love to give opinions :)

• Surveys are great tools for volunteer recruitment and retention, as well. Create a survey and ask current volunteers how you can improve the training process. Did you lose a volunteer? Have a survey ready to send that asks for feedback on how you can improve the volunteer experience.

• If you struggle with board member engagement or a lack of participation during board meetings, offering a board member survey is an excellent way to get feedback in a private setting.

  • Conduct board member self-assessments through your survey tool and have them rank their own performance as a board member.

  • Move your Executive Director evaluation online and use a survey tool (on your website) to gather feedback electronically.

  • Ask board members to submit potential referrals for new board members through the website, too!

Practically speaking, this looks like having a page on your website dedicated to the survey. If you’re using a Squarespace website, the forms tool is perfect for this. (See a video here on how to best use the forms tool in Squarespace).

If you’re using WordPress or another website platform, explore the use of Google Forms set up in a survey format. When you can cut out using other paid tools like Survey Monkey, you’ll save money and drive the traffic to your own website instead of someone else’s.

How to enhance your website with online forms

Take a few minutes and think about how many times you ask someone to complete a paper form. Can you bring that form online to save them time and save paper? Plus, did you know people are 54% more likely to offer feedback if they can type it instead of writing it out on paper?

• The most obvious form to consider is online giving. If you’re still requiring someone to complete a paper pledge form, it’s time to give them a better option. There are so many great tools out there (many of them are even free) and online giving is something that is just expected right now. Do your research and test everything before you launch it but if you’re not offering this option yet, it’s time to make it happen. (Hint: I DO NOT recommend using Facebook for fundraising.)

  Tip: If you need a low-cost, quick way to launch online giving, visit this post about how to enhance your PayPal donation form!

• Expecting volunteers to register using an old-fashioned paper form? Bring it online. Create a page on your website just for volunteers that offers them a handbook for download or at least best practices for volunteering with you. Offer them a chance to tell you about what they hope to get out of volunteering and be sure to ask them how they found you on the form, too.

• Are you often searching for testimonials to use in your marketing materials? Offer a form online for people to tell you their stories and how your nonprofit has impacted them. This can be created for a wide variety of audiences, including volunteers, clients, employees, donors, and beyond. Just keep the fields broad in scope. Be sure to ask for permission to share the information online (and include a field for how they’d like their name to be shared).

• Need to offer your team training opportunities for continuing education? Compile a list of training options (MedTrainer is a great option for healthcare-related organizations) and create a form to employees to rank their top choices.

If your website platform does not offer a forms tool, I recommend using Google Forms which is completely free, pretty robust and integrates well with just about any website.

Pro Tip: Create a form in Google Forms and then embed the form on your website to keep visitors on your own website. To do this, click Send when your form is done and then choose the last option that looks like < > to get the embed code. Then, you can copy the HTML code (even changing the form dimensions) and paste it onto your website!

Bonus: How to use your website to make board meeting communications more efficient

If you’re still emailing all of your board meeting materials, it’s time to consider a better way! Sending attachments is risky for several reasons and depending on your board member’s email provider, you may even be making it difficult for members to receive the information. Plus, if documents are sent over the course of several days, members are probably losing track of them or not reading them at all.

Practical application: Create a board member page/portal on your website where you link the needed documents for each meeting. Whenever possible, use PDFs (never upload a Word or Excel document that can be easily altered). And don’t stop there. On that same page, be sure to include a testimonial (board members need ongoing inspiration, too) and maybe even a link to give online. Now, send just ONE email to your board with the link to view and download the documents. (Hint, you can track how many people click that links and see who is really reading your emails, too!)

You can also use a survey (of sorts) on this page, offering board members the chance to vote online, if needed. Scheduling a special meeting? Host that survey on your website! The more you work to bring your board into the website, the more likely they are to check back when you post an event, share other news, or ask them to give online.

If your website platform allows, password-protect this board-specific page, or at the very least, set it to be hidden from Google indexing and use a longer slug (the text that comes after the slash at the end of your URL) so that it’s more difficult for non-board members to find. Additionally, I recommend password-protecting the individual documents as well.

When you think outside the box and begin to use your website as the incredible tool it is, the benefits become really obvious. Beyond driving even more traffic to your website (which Google is tracking), you offer value to your audience and demonstrate your commitment to increasing the reach and impact of the important work you’re doing. The days of doing everything on paper are gone and it’s time to jump into the tech space with both feet, even if it’s scary!

Until next time,

Andrea

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