The New NPO Connect: What's Different?

So, we’ve been talking for months about all the exciting changes at the new NPO Connect. Now that those changes are live and you can experience them for yourself, let’s look at what you can expect from the new NPO Connect experience.

NPO Connect was founded in 2009 with one aim – to help strengthen the nonprofit sector by facilitating mentor-mentee relationships. The bulk of user activity on the original site took place offsite, in the context of a coaching relationship. 

image: photos8.org

The new NPO Connect has kept, and builds on, this basic service, while adding a completely new component: on-site learning, discussion and knowledge sharing – all headed up by Content Experts in various aspects of nonprofit management. And it’s now designed to appeal to a national audience!

Now, when you sign up at NPO Connect, you’ll start as a Basic Member, which still offers access to our no-cost skills matching service, though the terminology has changed: Mentors and Mentees have become Skill Coaches and Skill Builders. (Remember: you don’t have to be the greatest expert in your field in order to have helpful knowledge to share!) New features for Basic Members include the ability to purchase webinars and blocks of consulting time with our Content Experts (at non-discounted prices).

Our Premium Memberships are the most exciting part of the new NPO Connect experience. Sign up for an Individual Membership, or get all of your organization’s staff and/or volunteers connected with an Organization Membership. For an affordable yearly fee, these offer:

• Membership in our Expert-led Affinity Group forums, with engaging and insightful discussion
• Access to our library of downloadable articles from our Content Experts
• Considerable discounts on educational webinars and blocks of consulting time
• Organizations: sliding-scale membership fee is based on the number of staff/volunteers you would like to enroll

We’re starting with our three most-requested Professional Development tracks:  Fundraising, Marketing/Communications, and Program Planning & Development. More tracks will be added as we head into 2013. Also in the works: in-person networking events in select cities!

Right now, we’re offering a FREE 30-day trial of our Premium Individual Memberships. Visit npoconnect.org today, create a free account, and sign up for a trial!  Enjoy exclusive content, discussion and networking opportunities, at no cost to you for 30 days. Please email us at info [at] npoconnect.org with any questions or comments.

Our New Homepage - Sneak Peek!

As we dash headlong into the final month before launch (or it dashes into us, I can't really tell), there's a frenzy of activity at NPOC's virtual offices. 

We've completed initial testing of the new site, and Kevin and Gavin are busy working on the various issues we've submitted using Sifter (a great free tool for issue tracking)*. Various legal and procedural decisions are being ironed out. Our first Content Experts, whom you'll be meeting soon, are getting oriented. Matteo has set us up with Ace (another handy free tool) to manage our ongoing site-related tasks. Kenny and I are handling various Outreach and Communications tasks and logistics. Our meetings are filled with discussions, updates and ideas.

Last week we showed you the initial new homepage concepts delivered by Ben and Amelia at Digital Loom. After more discussion and decision making, they went away and did their magic and came back with a final design that we all love. Check it out!

(click to enlarge)

 This image shows some of the hover-over menus in action, and includes a sample Content Expert bio in the footer. We decided to use the vertical tabs to tell the visitor about the different resources and services available to NPO Connect members. Login/Signup links were added to the top, and the previous login area below the image has been changed to talk about our free skills-matching option. Social media and contact links are prominent but unobtrusive. Finally, our logo has been retooled slightly to sit better within the new site design. What do you think?

In other news: Next week we're launching a very cool Facebook promotion. Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about it! Sign up using the top link in the right hand menu -> or text keyword NPOCONNECT to 42828.

* Note: we have no incentive to mention this or any product or service on this blog, unless specifically stated otherwise. We'll just pass on our experiences.

Visuals!

Look what we just got from Digital Loom - shiny new homepage concepts:

Our new homepage is based off a fantastic Drupal theme from ThemeForest that allows our Digital Loom designers, and our Dev guys, a wide range of customizations to meet the needs of our new website. 

It's been a high priority to make sure that the new NPO Connect homepage will be visually spacious, informative, and easy to navigate. Busy new visitors need to be able to see quickly and clearly what we’re about, and members need convenient access to resources and content. And of course, it needs to look great on mobile devices.

These initial concepts use the visual focus, a content slider, to give information about NPO Connect 2.0’s Professional Development tracks. Another possible use of the slider could be to tell new users about the different services and resources 2.0 offers. 

We’ll be doing lots of brainstorming and discussing, as we continue to work with the designers to cement these sorts of options and integrate them with the rest of the site. Stay tuned as we forge ahead – and as always, we’d love to hear what you think!

We’ll be doing lots of brainstorming and discussing as we cement these sorts of options and integrate them with the rest of the site. Stay tuned as we forge ahead!

Meet the Team: Matteo Ramos-Mucci

Name: Matteo Ramos-Mucci

Title: Dev Assistant

Hometown: Amherst, MA

Primary Responsibilities: Operations and Drupal Development

Specialty: Thinking outside of the box and asking tough questions

Usual Habitat: Anywhere

Favorite Volunteer Experience: MLK Day of Service at college

Favorite Way to Network: Coffee and storytelling

Random: I'm a triplet!

T-minus 7 weeks: Sandbox Time

Image: Photos8.org

We got to do something exciting this week: begin testing the migrated site and some of the new features!

Playing as test users in the development area, we're getting to see some of our Dev team's hard work. The Drupal migration went beautifully, and there were no problems when testing the "old" portions of the site. The foundation has been established for the Affinity Groups for our Individual and Organizational memberships, and we can't wait to see them lit up with engaging discussion and useful content

The Affinity Groups will be a major component of  NPO Connect 2.0. Version 1.0 has been focused entirely on facilitating individual, off-site connections for nonprofit professionals. Individuals seeking to mentor or be mentored in a variety of areas - like Fundraising, Program Development, and Marketing/Communications - can search for skills and initiate a request with another user. We are keeping this central component of skills-based connections, while adding a community-based learning and discussion environment.

Our goal at NPO Connect is to become a "one-stop shop" for nonprofit networking and learning, with discussions, content, webinars and meetups. Our overarching priority is capacity-building for the nonprofit sector; we all work or have worked extensively within the sector and are personally dedicated to supporting social good organizations. We want to make it easy and affordable for both individuals and organizations to access vital networks, opportunities and knowledge, and to connect with each other to build a stronger future for us all. Bringing a social, community focus to 2.0 is a huge step towards accomplishing our goal. We can't wait to get going!

In other news, Kenny and I are reaching out to some of our favorite nonprofits and networks, and he and Gavin are working to get our Content Experts set up (more on that soon!). I'm working with a wonderful volunteer, Sarah, and searching for an intern to take on some of the many pre-launch duties. The folks at Digital Loom are hard at work on the new homepage, which we'll screenshot for you as soon as it's ready.

Stay tuned - more updates next week! As always, you can reach us at info[at]npoconnect[dot]org with any questions, or leave a comment below.

Meet the Team: Gavin Murphy

Name: Gavin Murphy

Title: Co-Founder, NPO Connect (also Co-Founder, Annkissam)

Hometown: Canton, MA

Primary Responsibilities: Organizational and technology design and strategy

Specialty: Proposing ways that we can build a sustainable organization using the best and most appropriate technology so we can strengthen the social sector

Usual Habitat: Office is in Cambridge, but try to be out and about

Favorite Volunteer Experience: Co-organizer of the 501 Tech Club, great group of people

Favorite Way to Network: Ran a speed networking event (think speed dating with a twist) a few years ago and found it surprisingly enjoyable and effective

Random: Five year old business and a one year old daughter--both are a lot more fun and also a lot more work than I had expected!

T-minus 9 Weeks: Development, Design, Digital Loom

Time is flying, as always, as we hurtle headlong towards Launch Day. This week, the team - Kenny, Gavin, Kristen, Kevin and Matteo - met with Ben and Amelia at Digital Loom to discuss the NPO Connect homepage redesign. Ben has worked with Kenny before, on Kenny's K. Weill Consulting Group site - interestingly, while they've known each other for years, this was their first time meeting face-to-face. It's marvelous, the capacity we all have for remote collaboration.

At Digital Loom's Cambridge office building, a long maze of nondescript white-walled corridors led to a wonderfully warm and inviting space where we were kindly offered coffee by co-director Victoria, then all gathered in a tiny room with the biggest Mac monitor I've ever seen. It was glorious - I kind of wanted to hug it. But I digress.

This is a critical point, design-wise, for the homepage. We have a lot of ideas we need to get across for the new site: we're for nonprofit organizations, professionals, and volunteers; we have a free service, but also great paid services; we're an easy way for cash-strapped nonprofits to offer some professional development to their staff and volunteers, or for individuals to advance their own development; we offer a bunch of opportunities for seasoned professionals to mentor and network with nonprofit newbies. We all dislike cluttered-looking websites, and thankfully Ben is on the same page (no pun intended), so there will be some careful consideration given to the layout. We've all joined Basecamp so that we can stay in touch and firm up our choices. Of course, you'll be the first to see our choices right here on the blog.

On the development front, Kevin, Gavin and Matteo have been madly at work migrating the current site to Drupal 7, hammering out the new features, and designing the new site workflow. There are a lot of features and processes that need to be automated, and we're really excited about testing next month. I'll be frank: as a communications person, I don't understand half of what they do. They could be doing some Harry Potter stuff over there for all I know. But I'll do my best to explain things, and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.

(I tried to suggest - to IT people who are completely in the weeds - that they do some blogging themselves. You could say I'm an optimistic person, ha ha. Amazingly, I still have both my arms!)

- Kristen

Meet the Team: Kenny Weill

Name: Kenny Weill

Title: Co-Founder, NPO Connect (also Principal, K. Weill Consulting Group, LLC)

Hometown: Westfield, NJ 

Primary Responsibilities: Relationship development, strategy, communications, operations

Specialty: Generating ideas - often not grounded in reality - on how to make NPO Connect the go-to networking and skill-building site for nonprofit professionals and volunteers

Usual Habitat: In his office with mutts Brody and Lucy

Favorite Volunteer Experience: Big Brother to Boston teenager for 6 years

Favorite Way to Network: Over coffee and a decadent chocolate croissant

Random: Father of two, wastes lots of brainspace on Sunday Boston Globe crosswords and Seinfeld quotes, converted to Boston sports teams fandom when moved to the area in 1989 (though was never a Yankees fan)

Off We Go! T-Minus 10 Weeks

Hi! I'm Kristen, the Community Manager for NPO Connect 2.0. If you follow us on Twitter, we've already met.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing our re-launch with you here at this blog: the learning experiences, the late nights, and all of the other exciting and frustrating things about conducting a major redesign and overhaul. Our goal with this blog is to do some skill-sharing of our own, and to allow you to learn along with us. We'll also be introducing the team, and sharing some of our own processes. And, we'll give you some exciting sneak peeks at the new site before anyone else.

Our goal at NPO Connect is to do just what the name says: connect nonprofit professionals and organizations, helping them to develop their skills and increase their capacity. So please share your comments, opinions, questions, and ideas with us - and with each other - as we progress. We're looking forward to connecting with you!