We need to develop a website for the work we do. How do we do that?

Communication & Outreach
1

WeLive Foundation is an NGO that offers a Bridge Program for young people who step out of childcare institutions (orphanages/shelter homes) at the age of 18.

The program helps these young people, called care leavers, transition to independent living as they lack the social and family support to do this.

It’s important for us to get the word about our program to reach out to care leavers, childcare institutions, NGO partners, individual donors and volunteers who wish to be associated with our cause, philanthropies and CSR organisations who wish to fund this cause.

A website becomes essential as that’s the first step for people to know about us. People wish to know more about the cause as it’s still a nascent space. They seek to understand more about care leavers and their needs. They want to figure out who the people running this program are.

For all this and more, we need a website that will showcase the problem we are trying to address, the manner in which we do it, the impact that the work will create.

The work on the ground with the beneficiaries takes up our time, and showcasing it always takes a back seat. We don’t where to start, who to approach and how to sustain once started.

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How do we allot time, resources and excite this so that it’s consistent and systematic?

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Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your challenge.

Yes, discoverability and visibility are very important for impactful organisation like WeLive to reach more stakeholders (funders, mentors, volunteers, care leavers, team members, etc)
it also establishes Trust, legitimacy and transparency. nowadays, the first thing everyone does when looking for a donation online or job is to check out the orgs website.
And as you mentioned, it also enables WeLive to raise awareness about the important needs in society of the vulnerable communities that you work with.

A website is 90% content, 9% sharing and 1% tech.

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So you need to start by putting together a content plan.
Content could be

  1. one time content like Why do you exist, What do you do, How you do it, Who are you, etc.
  2. recurring content like blogs, videos etc

Sharing - one could write all the wonderful content but without sharing, its as good as not writing it at all. You could share your content (esp recurring content) through

  1. Email Newsletters
  2. Social media like Facebook
  3. Whatsapp, Telegram, etc

Tech for Website - Is the simplest of the challenges. We recommend using

  1. ERPNext for NGOs. Its an Open Source and low cost (around 750 per month) to install (using FrappeCloud). Apart from Website it also offers other tools liek Newsletters, CRM, integration with Donations, etc. So you can start from a basic and simple, clean website (like https://www.tinkerhub.org/) and then slowly add features.
  2. The other option which is totally FREE but will need some basic coding skills is Github Pages

Hope this is helpful

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