Making the site

I’m starting to track, in a very low-tech way, how well Helpalot.org shows up when you search for some keywords.

Goede doelen

• Dec 27th 2007: page 21, item 3
• March 30th 2008: page 10, item 2

Goed doel

• Dec 27th 2007: page 28, item 5
• March 30th 2008: page 7, item 10

Charity project

• Dec 27th 2007: I didn’t track it..
• March 30th 2008: page 10, item 3

The growth of the site on these dates
December 27, 2007: 190 users, 81 projects

March 30, 2008: 210 users, 210 users, 97 projects

These figures show Helpalot is still rather small, but it also shows that there is growth.

In theory there is a feedback loop that should help us. The more people find and use Helpalot, the more content we have for Google to index and this increases the chances of people finding relevant information on Helpalot and clicking the search links. This increases the ranking for us on Google, making us more findable. And that’s without making use of external databases or seeking media attention.

The problem is that at the moment we only have a piece of the long tail of charities, and that will be somewhat relevant to some people. It would be better to have a cluster of projects around a theme or location, to make the site highly relevant for some people. That would kick off the feedback loop a bit stronger I suspect. So while all are welcome, we try to focus on getting more projects based in the Netherlands and perhaps it’s also a good idea to focus on projects in a certain category. Any suggestions?

On the Fundraising Technology blog, there is an article pointing out the problems for small charities; Cost, Resources and Time.

The article really underscores the need for a platform for the Long Tail of Charities. I’ve written about this subject in The river of good intentions and buckets of promotion.

As I signed up for a profile on Charitiy Navigator (America’s largest charity evaluator). The first thing I wanted to do is add a charity. This is what I got back:

“Please Note: Charity Navigator recently achieved a five year goal when we published our 5,000th rating, solidifying our place as America’s premier charity evaluator. At the present time, we are reviewing our current offering and examining the feasibility of programmatic expansion. We will continue to track requests for new charity ratings, but will not be adding a significant number of new charities while we’re engaged in this review. We appreciate your understanding during this time.”

While Charity Navigator has achieved it’s five year goal with 5000 charities, five year old Wikipedia just had it’s 1 millionth article written. I think Charity Navigator is a great site, but it’s obvious that there must be a different approach if you want to include The Long Tail of Charities.

As you know there are a lot of music bands. You have the huge bands like Coldplay and then there are the smaller bands like Solitus, who only have local appeal (at the moment). The nice thing is, if you set the record sales of all the big bands against the rest, the small bands win easily. There are a lot of small bands.

Chris Anderson is writing a book about this subject called The Long Tail:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

This implicates that there is a huge amount of niche markets. It is now possible to go to mySpace and find just about any band you might like. The site is huge and growing. Key to the success is the decentralization and the social network factor. It is exactly those elements I like to use for the charity website. I’ll write about the social networking in a later post, first; what does this mean for our charities?

(more…)