Client Description
Founded in 1990, the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that serves as a statewide network for nonprofit board and staff members, an information center on effective organizational practices, and an advocate for the nonprofit sector as a whole. They offer services directly to all sizes and types of 501(c)(3) nonprofits and work closely with other local, state, and national groups that assist nonprofits.
The Challenge
The NC Center for Nonprofits identified obstacles related to advocacy, member services, communication efforts and capacity. In pursuing its mission to support North Carolina’s nonprofit community, the Center relied on an antiquated website including a very complicated, largely custom, and undocumented Salesforce integration which no longer functioned correctly. With limited staff and resources, the Center struggled to manage client interactions, often due to confusing or broken website features. The site couldn’t just be repaired as it was built using Drupal 6, an obsolete version of the CMS that was no longer supported. This combination of factors threatened to compromise the Center’s fundraising efforts and ability to secure donations from companies and other foundations.
The Solution
The project began with a comprehensive discovery and planning phase, including strategic consulting and business process analysis. Usability and user testing methodologies were employed to improve overall user experience and website usability including site architecture and navigation structure. Business processes were simplified and customer self-service functionality was extended to decrease the need for staff to perform customer service related tasks. The Drupal 6 website’s Salesforce integration was one of the most complex integrations we had ever encountered and far more complicated than necessary to support the Center’s staff, members, and overall mission. The integration was simplified with much of the previous custom code replaced or removed in favor of community-supported Drupal modules. A new Drupal 7 site was built featuring a mobile-optimized, responsive theme. As part of the rebuild, some features were removed to provide better-defined workflows. Finally, content was migrated from the Drupal 6 website, and data was synchronized from Salesforce.
The Results
In the four months since deployment of the new website, the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits has tracked a 21% increase in the use of Job Boards, as well as a 7% increase in organizational membership.
Most importantly, with the new website working as an resource multiplier rather than an overhead liability staff members are now better able to allocate their time helping member organizations and supporting the Center’s mission as opposed to being inundated with website-related customer support emails and phone calls.
