Helping small charities kick ass online

Charlie is currently on sabbatical in South America. Over the next few months she’ll be blogging about her travel adventures in the age of digital.

My first action on deciding to head out into the world and work with international development charities was to sign up to the United Nations Volunteers programme, but I guess they had taken on their full complement of food journalists as I'm still waiting for their call.

Looking for volunteer posts gave me serious career-choice guilt. Places asked for teachers, doctors, lawyers, people with experience in microfinance and post-disaster clean-up management; seeing my skill set through the eyes of what the world's neediest really need I wondered if I hadn't wasted my life, taking the path of most personal interest but least use to society. So I was blown away by my first Skype with Nicole, volunteer co-ordinator for PEACE, in Mexico, my first project.

"We read your CV and we are so excited you're coming,"“
"Really?" I thought.
"We've got an editorial project with a very tight deadline so if you could help out with that straightaway it would be amazing."

And so it happened that before I'd even set foot on Mexican soil, I began editing copy and designing layouts for a leaflet to explain the charity's work and of course, encourage people to volunteer and donate. Emails to tighten copy and nail the charity's voice pinged back and forth as I travelled from Mexico City to Oaxaca, through Chiapas and Jalisco and we went to print as I arrived on the beach at Puerto Vallarta. I was useful. The sense of relief was huge.

But it was when I was properly installed with the charity, in the former fishing region of Punta de Mita, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, that I realised how valuable my experience launching and re-launching websites really was. The simple fact is, even if a charity wants teachers, doctors and lawyers, it needs a website to get them. And this is all the more true for small non-profits, who can't rely on their kudos or reputation to lure volunteers, the way VSO, or the UN Volunteers programme can. Small charities need kick-ass websites that can compete with the big boys, just like the ones that Zone's sister agency Public Zone specialise in delivering.

Nicole summed it up perfectly: "Take a charity that has been around for 30 years – they’ve had time to evolve and develop as an entity and then work on the 'modern state of mind' stuff like websites but we've only been around for five years; we're evolving as this technology evolves so the website and online communication have had to be an integral part of who we are. The website is a really big deal. It is the tool that brings people to us."

So it was perfect timing that my visit coincided with PEACE's pre-launch of their all new-and-improved site. A small-scale NGO's website has to work hard. It needs to get found, it has to convince potential volunteers that the organisation is credible, and it needs to make it easy for them to get involved. After two weeks of working with PEACE across a variety of programmes that included getting 12 tweens to eat pumpkin by cooking it into a chocolate cake (a low-fat ruse to tackle the community's obesity issue) and planting a community garden (complete with growing guides for families to take home and try to grow their own) I had a good grasp of how the charity worked, and what its needs were, on the ground and online.

With the aid of PowerPoint, I took Nicole and the charity's founder, an inspirational, tireless woman named Molly Fisher, through their new designs pointing out what was working for them (a strong logo, good, persuasive copy, a huge pool of unbelievably good imagery) and areas where they could improve. Some of these areas were major layout issues, some were about understanding how to tell their story online and some tackled how users interact with the page, experience I gained sitting through hours of user testing on the 4Food site.

I think it was a successful presentation. They didn't throw me out, or cry and we all agreed on a lot more links. When it was time to move on, I felt like I'd left something useful behind, which is more than I'd hoped for when the UN snubbed me. And thanks to WiFi I can continue to work with PEACE, consulting on the re-launch of their online store, while I'm on the road.