The Nonprofit Website Insider

The best of 2023 from around the web: From writing to content strategy, graphic design, fighting burnout, and more.

Happy New Year, dear reader! To celebrate, I've handpicked 2023's most helpful articles for nonprofit website staff, from across the web. 

These pieces cover a variety of topics, showing the diverse areas we navigate through in the nonprofit website world.  From writing to content strategy, graphics, technology and fighting burnout… there's a lot to think about. (Where’s metrics and measurement? Accessibility? They’re both coming up in their own special issues soon).

I’d love for you to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues in the nonprofit realm – you can spread the joy of website knowledge to ring in the new year!

Laura

How to do a content audit, in six steps (Laura S. Quinn Consulting)
One of my own most popular articles of 2023! It provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to review your website's content pages to make informed decisions about which you’ll keep, update, or remove. With a good plan for who will do the audit, what criteria you’ll use and the steps to follow, this doesn’t have to be a daunting process.

A two-minute burnout checkup (Harvard Business Review)
A number of HBR’s top articles of 2023 had to do with burnout, which certainly applies to us as nonprofit website professionals. This “checkup” is a straightforward way to check in with yourself about how you’re feeling about your job.

Why a web design looks good: Case studies (Norman Neilson Group)
If you're not a graphic designer, it can be hard to know what to even think about when reviewing a visual design. Norman Neilson Group has a great article breaking down three different website designs and the visual design principles that make them attractive (Okay, I’m cheating: Part 2 of this article hit their top 10 of 2023, but I like this one from 2021 better…)

How to create a Custom GPT to mimic your own writing style (Wired)
Have you been trying to get ChatGPT to write in a more natural style? What about a way to ask it to emulate your own personal style, or that of your website? In this article, a Wired writer walks through how he set up his own custom GPT to emulate his own writing... which he reports worked pretty darn well.

Where design thinking for social change goes wrong (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Design thinking methods, including things like hackathons and participatory design sessions, are hard to do well and inclusively. This article, the most popular on SSIR last year, is a long read but worth it. Towards the end, it presents some really interesting pointers to improve collaborative design processes.

Eco-friendly websites: 6 steps you can take (Constructive)
As you reduce your organization's carbon footprint, remember your website plays a part too. Digital technologies account for around 4% of global greenhouse gases. This article from Constructive walks through choosing greener hosting options and reducing your site’s processing needs. (By the way, the Constructive site is a goldmine of information, offering not just articles but detailed case studies, like Child Mind Institute that give a ton of detail about what large web projects look like).

Content strategy for nonprofits: tips and advice (Lauren Pope)
This fabulous resource starts with why every nonprofit needs a website content strategy, and then walks through what it should include and how to think about it. 

Hiding website emails from spammers: what works in 2023? (Spencer Mortensen)
Want to list your team's email addresses on your website without attracting spammers? There are a number of technical solutions. This coder-focused article offers a range of options, from straightforward to very complex, to help.

Traditional RFPs: inefficient and inequitable (Laura S. Quinn Consulting)
By far my most popular article of the year. Putting an open RFP out into the world is less likely to result in proposals from exactly the types of consulting firms you should want to work with: high quality, busy firms, with lean sales overhead, who perhaps are women or BIPOC led. Find out why, and how a Request for Information can help. (Or if you’re already convinced, just skip to the RFI template I created in partnership with Prosal; free registration required) .