How do stakeholders see your organization?
How does your board see your organization?
We invite you to take advantage of this training developed as a quarter-long project for a graduate course in non-profit leadership at Northwestern. This training can help identify the gaps between how your stakeholders vs. board view your organization through web presence. Below you will find all of the materials you need to complete this training to ensure your board is aware of or fixing its vision-image gap.
1. Send out a survey to past donors
Send out this survey to all stakeholders who donated more than $50 in the last month. Send this survey approximately one month before the training with your board is due to take place. See if you can gather at least 25 responses.
Tip: Send follow-up communication to remind donors to fill it out if needed.
2. Understand the vision-image gap
Background materials
Read the background paper for a broad overview of what this training will be about. Then, Download our supporting background material to study and give it to the board to prep them for this training. Learn about the vision-image gap, the importance of web presence, and websites in particular in relation to your organization and the broader issue of visibility as a nonprofit.
Inside this package, you will find:
Click and mortar: Organizations on the web by Walter W. Powell, Aaron Horvath, Christof Brandtner
Are the Strategic Stars Aligned for Your Corporate Brand? by Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz
3. Meeting agenda
Prep all of your materials and follow the meeting agenda to keep everyone on track. This document breaks down the 4-hour training timeline so you can stay on track with everything from the lecture to group activities.
4. Present to the board
Use this PowerPoint presentation to lead your board through the training. You are the teacher of the material. It’s your turn to lead the charge of your board in creating the best web presence possible, and in turn, closing the vision-image gap.
5. Engage in activities
During the training, you will run two activities around the materials being learned. The first activity helps the trainees understand what effective representation is from an organization, especially a nonprofit, looks or doesn’t look like on their website. The second activity starts the trainees on a reflection process of their own image-vision gap within their organization in relation to their website.
6. give the board follow-up materials
If the board wants to continue learning about this subject, invite them to look at these follow-up materials to continue the conversation. Download the follow-up readings.
Here are materials for them to continue the research and conversation
Give them the full list of sample websites used in Activity 1 to review. Encourage them to follow up by locating the respective social media channels associated with each organization featured in that activity. Have them answer the question, how is their web presence?
Control mutuality, social media, and organization-public relationships: A study of local animal welfare organizations’ donors by Diana C. Sisson
Corporate Brand Management by Johannes G. Lorenz
Are You Out There? Internet Presence of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations by Campbell and Lambright
The relational determinants of nonprofit Web site fundraising effectiveness: An exploratory study by Sargeant et al.
Did this training display vision-image gaps on your website?
Get in touch with Plum Rabbit Design to improve your website communication and design.