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FEBRUARY 2011
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THIS MONTH'S TOPICS
1. TIP: Planning, creating and managing a website with the help of online volunteers
2. EXPERIENCE: Developing a website for the Association of African Entrepreneurs
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1. TIP: Planning, creating and managing a website with the help of online volunteers
Many organizations recognize the increasing importance of a well-designed, user-friendly Internet presence and seek the support of online volunteers in designing or redesigning their website.
Online volunteers not only share their expertise to build an organization’s website, but also to develop its capacity in managing it. In this regard, it has also proven helpful to ask volunteers to document their work, draft guidelines and provide training.
Here is some further advice on how online volunteers can support your organizations with website-related tasks:
Requirements and project plan: An online volunteer with experience in IT project management can support you in defining the objectives, target audience and requirements for your website, and in drafting a detailed project plan that includes the most appropriate software solutions, tasks for online volunteer programmers, etc.
Design and development: While a simple website can be developed by a single online volunteer, for larger and more complex websites it is more effective to assemble a team of volunteers with specialized expertise in web design, web development, information architecture and so on. The team of online volunteers can work under the guidance of the organization or of an online volunteer with experience in IT project management.
Content: Online volunteers with a background in communications, strong editing skills and experience in writing for websites can review existing content and create new content for the website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): In close collaboration with the design and development team and the content developers, volunteers specialized in SEO can help increase visibility and traffic to your website.
Website security: To detect security gaps and ensure a safe user experience, online volunteers with knowledge of website security issues can probe your site.
Hosting: Online volunteers can provide you with information and advice on hosting solutions that meet your needs and budget.
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2. EXPERIENCE: Developing a website for the Association of African Entrepreneurs
The Association of African Entrepreneurs (AAE) provides information, tools and resources aimed at developing the capacities of small entrepreneurs and supporting economic development in Africa. The organization’s website is the main channel for communicating its services and reaching out to their beneficiaries as well as partners and donors.
AAE assembled a team of 11 online volunteers to support its staff in redesigning the website. Each of the volunteers brought specific expertise to the project: web design, web development and programming, Search Engine Optimization, copywriting and graphic design. “AAE is a fairly new organization. We had extremely limited resources and did not know how to go about it. Then we discovered onlinevolunteering.org. For us it is a blessing to work with these volunteers, and we were truly amazed at their enthusiasm. It has been a profound source of encouragement to keep on doing our work”, says Cornelius Nartey from AAE.
AAE organized the collaboration around smaller tasks and assigned one volunteer the role of coordinating the team’s work. The volunteers prepared discussion papers on technical requirements, system architecture and hosting options, which served as the basis for the organization’s decision making. They also developed an online feedback system and a discussion paper with recommendations for the future positioning of the AAE website. “Thanks to the volunteers’ contributions we have now a number of high quality reference materials and excellent resources for direct implementation on our website”, says Cornelius Nartey.
The close collaboration between AAE and the volunteers fostered learning on both sides. Bruce Fietz, an entrepreneur from Australia who in 1990 created his own information technology company, acted as team leader for the early stages of the project. “The work was challenging in as much as the team consisted of volunteers from all over the world, all with different skills and availability. I had to bring all my team management skills to the job while keeping a hands-on approach to the technical tasks. The process helped me to better understand how to utilise the skills of a diverse group of people to complete various tasks.”
Online volunteer Diana Achieng Orwa from Kenya has an MBA in Entrepreneurship with a level 1 certificate from the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS), and has been a tour operator since 2005 in a small business that she hopes ”will grow and be a source of employment in various tourist attraction sites in Kenya”. She appreciated the opportunity to share her business knowledge “to help those who may not have had the opportunity to undertake forms of formal education. The African Association of Entrepreneurs seeks to target semi-literate and literate entrepreneurs, known as Focal Change Members, in order to reach rural enterprise owners. I was passionate about the cause. I immediately identified with the needs of this organization and recognized that my educational background and vision congruence would be able to make a positive contribution to the organization. It also allowed me to grow immensely as I was getting different viewpoints on entrepreneurship based on different backgrounds.”
