The web/tech community tends to be a helpful, compassionate bunch, who have great zeal for sharing knowledge and promoting various social and political ideals. Last week, my employer sent me to a grant-writing conference in Washington, D.C. (the other Washington, for those of you residing in the Pacific Northwest). It was by far the most intense week of my life, and along the way, I met some amazing people with huge goals.
If you think that it is hard to understand exactly what Google wants to see, try figuring out what a Federal Granter wants to see in a proposal.
Coming from a private firm with a different mindset, it was hard for me to understand why you would want to write a grant proposal, when private fund-raising seems like an easier way to gain recognition and get support for your initiative. Then I listened to each of their initiatives, and began to understand why private fundraising seemed insurmountable to them:
Very few, if any of them have a web presence.
Out of the people that attended the class, maybe 10% of them had a website. Out of that 10%, one had a “Donate via PayPal” button.
Most of their pages were not optimized for search, and I found some that were little more than mapped Photoshop images. I did find one with a top 20 rank, but it was fairly old, and looked like it had been “last updated” during the dot-com boom.
So, what am I trying to say? If you are not volunteering your resources and finances, START. We are a talented community with plenty of high-end, specialized services to give.
What can we do?
I have several ideas, and while they are standard practice in the SEO community, I have given them a twist for promoting non-profits.
- Establish your non-profit as the expert in a given field: Have the head of the organization type up an article that expertly details the problem(s) in their specific area of interest. Submit that to EzineArticles, WebProNews, etc. Then Digg, Reddit, Stumble, and Del.icio.us that article to death. Make sure you post it on your own site as well. (This also doesn’t hurt the link juice, as most of the article sites have a place where you can put 3 links to relevant material, your non-profit site being one of them.)
- Write a press release: Have your organization put out a press release through PRLog or similar sites. It could possible be picked up by a Google news feed, or just disseminated to interested parties. Again, more promotion for your website and your cause.
- Linkbait: Anybody remember that really odd Mike Gravel video where he just stares at the camera? And who can forget the “Obama Girl”? Do something strange, poignant, or unique that gets you noticed. I am particularly reminded of the XXX Church “Porn and Pancakes” promotion. Whether you agree with their mission or not, it certainly gets your attention by inviting censure, praise, or ridicule. At least it makes you think. Get your cause on the map.
- Link Building: Nobody has the link building power of a non-profit. You can gain access to every corner of the internet: The Librarians’ Internet Index, legitimate Wikipaedia entries, vast government and educational websites, for-profit sites–the list is endless.
Something in our class discussion triggered a thought last week: Government granters like to see collaboration between various agencies. Why wouldn’t Google think the same way? It is possible to get one way links to three parties, and it goes something like this: Site C link>Site A | Site A Link > Site B | Site B link > Site C. I like to think of it as collaborative linking. Several loosely related non-profits agree to share links, but in a fashion so that each gets the full value of the link, rather than the almost-zero advantage that a reciprocal would give them.
If you think this looks like a webring, I would say “sort of,” except webrings are dynamic, not static links (as far as I know); thus, they do not pass any form of “juice” (not to mention “So Cranberries, Nirvana, and Wayne’s World” | Ahem, dated|).
- Link Building Part 2: Go around the gatekeeper. Talk to the person in charge of the non-profit, or the PR head about giving you a link from their website. Then have them instruct the person in charge of the site to give you links. C’mon, you know how we web admins are. Ask us for a link, and we hit the “Report Spam” button in a Pavlovian manner. It is easier to send commands downstream than to send requests upstream.
Also, and this is a catch-22, write a winning grant. Foundation websites frequently put a link from their website (which is usually very valuable, high PR) to the Grantee’s site.
Hopefully, you hadn’t thought of these ideas yet. If you have, then I am sure that you have better ones. Please let me know what I am missing.
Please engage socially and politically. Make a difference.
And since these people are going to get upset because I did not mention his name, I am going to do it so you will not disregard what I have just said. Ron Paul. There, are you happy now?
Help your fellow Mozzers help others locally and around the world.
Signing off for now…
