Link: http://www.ovoocreative.com/landtrust

How many times have you asked for a company’s Web address or looked it up online? Maybe you want to find out more about a product or service they offer before committing to a purchase, or possibly look into their legitimacy before deciding to do business. You likely have a number of reasons for visiting a company’s Web site. It’s also likely that the visit helped in your decision making process or confirmed your reason for wanting to visit their Web site in the first place. The Web is hot and almost everyone is using it… including you.

So, how does this relate to land trusts?

Today, a land trust simply cannot go without having a credible online presence. Your supporters are selective about where to vest their discretionary time, money, and other resources. Other non-profit causes are competing for their attention and employing a deluge of sales and marketing efforts to make your supporters, theirs. The more effort and focus that organizations place on staying in front of and keeping their supporters in the know, the more likely they are to retain friends and gain new ones. Having a Web site is a relatively inexpensive way to increase your land trust’s visibility and draw your valued supporters deeper into your trust’s overall mission.

Lay Out Your Welcome Mat

Land trusts vary in size, resources, and personnel, but many of their daily needs remain the same. It’s frankly a matter of scale.

Most land trust’s are without the visitor centers found at our national and state parks, much less a brick and mortar base from which they conduct business. Shoestring budgets just don’t allow for such luxuries, and that goes for staff, too. For those fortunate enough to afford some of the fore mentioned “luxuries”, what they have is without a doubt, not enough to really skyrocket their mission to its greatest potential.

Though a Web site cannot amend some of these common challenges, a Web site can serve as a portal where your supporters can get the answers to some of their questions without being mailed a brochure or having to call into your office. Acting as an information repository, your staff and volunteers will also be able to put their fingers on your organization’s info easily and on point.

Your Reach is Huge

Anyone in the world with an Internet connection and computer or mobile device will be able to learn about and give to your land trust. Better yet, your local supporters can too.

Web site usage is growing every day and it crosses age, education, income, and geographic divides. To land trusts and other nonprofit organizations, this is important because it’s not always possible to target all of your potential supporters through traditional marketing means like media relations, direct mail, and events.

Convenience

The usefulness of a Web site cannot be overstated for your land trust and supporters.

For supporters, keeping abreast of events and news, learning about land trust properties, and having the ability to conveniently give or renew their membership online allows them to develop meaningful connections with your organization. Moreover, the occasions that they spend on your Web site can be done at anytime from the comfort of their home or at the office.

Land trusts can utilize a Web site in a variety of ways to enhance their offerings, disperse information, and measure performance. Details for events can be altered on the fly and once an event has happened, photographs and a follow up can be posted. News items can be added when a press release is sent and details about your ongoing efforts can easily be included with projects and campaigns in progress. Gauge return on investment for marketing and fundraising efforts or post surveys to find out what your supporters think.

A Web site also has great potential for trying out new methods to amplify fundraising efforts or running event ideas up the flagpole to see if you have any takers. Another plausible convenience for your organization benefits the media as well. Reporters can get some of the boilerplate information and photographs they need to write news stories.

Advance Your Giving and Fundraising Efforts

Land trusts are generally involved in a number of activities to raise money and bring land under protection. Your Web site can bring these activities to your supporters’ attention and let them know how their entrusted funds will and have been used. Demonstrating your land trust’s care in honoring their gift is a key component in encouraging new and repeat giving.

Keeping supporters informed about capital campaign efforts will elicit their interest, while traditional fundraisers like raffles and events can benefit from a Web site’s scalability and capacity for updating information as it becomes available. Other less apparent modes of donation like the transfer of appreciated securities, planned giving, or land related gifts including bargain sales, conservation easements, and remainder interest can be described in detail to your supporters. Creating a shelf, from which supporter’s have a number of options for backing your organization, will shed light upon giving opportunities that your friends may not have known existed.

Adding the ability to accept donations online can grow customary annual fund, membership, and stewardship appeals. To pass over the opportunity to welcome gifts through your Web site, is failing to pay attention to some of your supporters’ giving preferences. Reasons for giving online vary, but some of the more apparent include: the ability to use credit cards, convenience, immediate confirmation and receipts, impulse gifts, recurring donations, security, and requiring fewer steps than mailing in a pledge card or remittance envelope. While the median age for online giving is 38 according to Network for Good, remember that in the coming years, donors in their late thirties will be your seasoned supporters. In a study by the e-Philanthropy Foundation, now Network for Good, online giving grew exponentially from $250 million in 2000 to more than $4.5 billion in 2005.

People Visit Web sites

Your land trust’s supporters use the Web for everything—purchasing music, social networking, getting the news, and planning their weekend—so having a Web site allows you to play a bigger role in their lives. Today, having a Web address is as expected as having a phone number or mailing address. It allows your supporters to get to know you on their own terms and does a lot to establish a level of validity because your information is out there for the world to see.

How do you start using the Web to advance land trust’s mission?

Start brainstorming to determine what your supporters need to know to become more deeply involved in your land trust. If you think about it, you will realize that most of the information is already there, and for material that isn’t, developing a Web site is a great excuse for pulling it together. An even smarter idea would be to utilize your supporters in creating content that appeals to them. Supporter submitted photo galleries, a children section, trail logs, and events are all ways that they can become involved in your Web site.

So, get to it, and take advantage of what the Web has to offer your land trust.