When Action for Healthy Kids chose to move from Convio Luminate to Soapbox Engage and the Salesforce.com Nonprofit Starter Pack, the money saved in recurring monthly fees was enough fund a full website redesign with change to spare. The redesign was far more than a facelift or color refresh. It facilitated a fundamental shift in the online marketing presence of the organization and connects with their audience in entirely new, more mission-focused ways.

“We weren’t mobile-friendly. That was an obvious need that aligned with our goal of making a more modern website,” said Anthony Moss, Web and Database Manager for Action for Healthy Kids. “We really wanted to speak to a consumer audience and make it more visual. We were very copy-heavy and we wanted to communicate through images rather than text.”

The desire to speak more effectively to a consumer audience was rooted in both the traditional strengths and perceived opportunities of the organization:

Transformations that radically improve a nonprofit’s ability to meet its mission can often happen in unexpected ways. Just ask Anthony Moss, Web and Database Manager for Action for Healthy Kids:

“We didn’t have a desire to redesign our website. We just wanted to move over our existing site from Convio Luminate to a new platform,” said Moss. “You almost had to be an expert with Convio to do anything with our previous system. That was no good for us.”

With the current protests in Turkey and Brazil, focus is again being drawn to the role of social media in mass movements agitating for change.

Mobile-friendly channels such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are being leveraged by organic groups of individuals to speak out and mobilize.

News outlets are highlighting social media's ability to bridge national boundaries to inspire and inform groups thousands of miles away from one another - as well as confuse and muddle their messages and goals.

Not every organization looking to roll out a brand new web presence has the advantage Holy Trinity Church of Georgetown Pike (HTC) enjoyed: a volunteer leading the project who has been founder and CEO of several DC area technology startups.

Phillip Merrick knew the possibilities of a robust and integrated online presence and its importance to a startup, whether that be a business or a church:

"As a newly formed church preparing to launch our ministries and outreach, we needed more than just a website. We needed a platform to support a digital footprint spanning social media, web video and traditional email marketing, together with an integrated database on the back-end."

I recently logged into my account with a major financial services company for the first time in awhile. The next day, I received an email from the company saying “Hey! Thanks for stopping by our site yesterday! S'up?”

That wasn’t verbatim, mind you. But it was close. And it prompts the first in our blog series of simple ideas for successful online nonprofit membership management using Salesforce.

Are you rolling out the online welcome mat for your members? How can you tell and how can you improve so that welcome mat is more welcoming?