Case Studies: Web Site Outsourcing

When a nonprofit wants to increase its outreach efforts, it may discover that it needs a Web site to do this effectively and efficiently. However, not all nonprofits have the skills on staff or the time necessary to develop an effective site. That's when outsourcing Web projects can be an effective solution (see "Web Site Outsourcing" for more information).

Here's how two organizations made the most out of outsourcing:

Take the Field

Take the Field is a nonprofit organization dedicated to rebuilding the athletic fields and facilities of New York City public schools. In its first 18 months of operation, the organization completed 14 projects, working with schools in all five boroughs, with a full-time staff of three. Since its work filled a tremendous need in New York City, there was much press coverage and, subsequently, increased visibility in the community. The organization contacted the Fund for the City of New York ( FCNY) in order to outsource the development of a Web site.

Given the small number of full-time staff, as well as the tremendous amount of work the organization was already committed to, it made more sense to outsource this project than to try to develop it in-house. Take the Field worked with FCNY consultants to design the site, arrange for hosting, and maintain the content.

The question of whether it is most effective to develop skills in-house or to hire an outside consultant for specific tasks is essential when considering outsourcing. There are clearly certain tasks, such as visual design, initial coding, and programming that have a relatively high learning curve and are generally done once in the course of a project. These sorts of tasks lend themselves more readily to outsourcing. In situations where the learning curve of the task is not so high -- such as maintaining site content -- it depends on whether it's worth it to develop the skills in-house, or whether it’s a better use of resources to use the skills of a consultant on an as-needed basis.

The team considered the possibility of having a staff member learn Dreamweaver or a similar program in order to maintain the site. However, they decided that learning a new software application and doing Web site maintenance would not be an efficient or effective use of staff time.

In fact, this question of what skills staff do and do not need to have directly relates not only to their own resources but also to the contractor who provides the outsourcing services. During the course of development on the Take the Field project, the organization was scheduled for a feature segment by a local news show. This obviously added urgency to the Web development process. Within a matter of days, the design mock-up had to be completed, and the site built, tested, and published. Because FCNY, the contractor on this project, was immediately available and experienced in working with nonprofits, it understood the necessity of turning around the work quickly.

The major lesson learned for Take the Field was that outsourcing could not only provide it with the skills it did not have, but it could also improve on its ability to promote its work. If that isn’t mission-driven, what is?

Public Conversations Project (PCP)

As a small nonprofit on a limited budget, we didn't think we minded having a Web site that looked "homegrown." We also thought that our primary work was done face-to-face, making a Web site less crucial. For years, we had designed and updated our own Web site.

However, a few things happened that changed the way we thought about our site. A key staff person who understood the Web site left and no one else understood the acrobatics that had to happen to make edits or -- even worse -- to add pages. We also became more interested in maintaining contact with our geographically-diverse network, and thought the Internet might be the medium for building our community. But we didn't know much about technology, and we could not envision what we wanted.

We decided to look for a consultant. We searched high and low and decided to hire The Organization (now Mindshare ), based on its nonprofit expertise and its approach of strategy first, designing and building second.

We hired a consultant for guidance and to help us to envision what was possible. We explored many ideas for making our information easy to update, for online community building, and for measuring the impact of our online efforts.

Once we identified what we wanted, we signed on for phase two: development and implementation of the ideas.

We are happy with our decision. Because we spent the extra money on a knowledgeable consultant, we were able to save money by finding the most appropriate (and often less expensive) solutions to our needs. We also saved staff time and agony trying to figure it out ourselves.

The biggest challenge working with a consultant was fitting our consultant into our organizational decision-making process. It was important that our consultant be skilled in asking questions and be able to guide us through the decision-making process when we got lost. It was also important to have one staff point-person who considered which meetings would be helpful for our consultant to attend, and made sure our consultant was up-to-date on what we wanted the technology to do for us.