Improving Marketing and Communications via the Web

In 2005, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta shifted their marketing focus to recruiting more volunteers and donors. "Our primary focus is always on the 'Littles'; however, we needed to develop our volunteer and sponsor base to best meet the needs of the Little Brothers and Sisters," said DePreist Waddy, EVP/COO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta. To communicate more effectively with the community, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta decided to launch a more professional looking and informative web site.

The web site is Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta's primary marketing tool and as such they needed it to build brand awareness, drive participation, and create emotional connectivity. It was important to leverage their existing web traffic to promote their sponsors as well as effectively inform their audience about recent news and events. "As an active Atlanta nonprofit, we want to ensure that we are keeping the community up to date with what's going on with the Bigs and Littles," said Waddy.

As the 2005 TechBridge Technology Innovation Award Winner, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta used the incentive grant to fund the web site project and solicited the TechBridge team to manage, develop and deploy the new site. "The Technology Innovation Award encouraged us to continue improving our use of technology to serve the community better," said Waddy.

At the initiation of the project, they identified the following as primary objectives for the new site: easy to navigate, easy to update, clean look, feature sponsors, bilingual (Spanish and English).

TechBridge worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta to craft the information architecture, site flow, and wire frames to meet the goals and objectives for the relaunch of www.bbbsatl.org. Throughout the web development process the ongoing communication ensured the success of the new site. "We found the TechBridge team to be very consultative and innovative in their approach," said Waddy, "They worked with us to accomplish our goals and were very cost conscious to stay within our budget."
"Our phased approach to web development allowed us to systematically work with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta to develop a website that was more user friendly and content rich," said Michael Nachman, COO, TechBridge. The development phase of the project lent itself to using a platform that makes it easy to solicit donations and participation on the new interactive web site.

Integral to the new site was the ability to easily update it. "Since we use the web as our primary communication tool, we have to be able to update it as we have new information and events," said Waddy. The site is supported by the TechBridge content management tool - EasyEdit. With EasyEdit virtually anyone with the password can make changes to the website using an interface that resembles the popular, easy-to-use Microsoft Word. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta put a process in place to keep the website fresh with new content. "

Since going live in the summer of 2006, the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta web site has so far over 200,000 hits and 75,000 unique visitors. TechBridge offers Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta free web analytic software through the use of AWStats. By tracking various site data like number of visitors, session length, and demographics, a nonprofit can know how their website is being used and make adjustments to improve the users' web experience.

"The site allows us to communicate news faster with our families, volunteers and sponsors," said DePreist Waddy. "We can share the success stories of children's lives being changed through the help of our volunteers."
The site also allows Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta to offer more information to potential volunteers so that they are fully informed about the program options. This saves the organization time in explaining programs in detail over the phone and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta staff can use the website as a reference tool when talking to potential Bigs.