Be Outdoors Arizona: First of several very exciting nonprofit sites from Z-Com Creative
Be Outdoors Arizona (www.beoutdoorsarizona.org) is an AZ-based nonprofit organization dedicated to getting kids outside, and educating those who care for and about kids to understand the benefits of getting outside. As an avid lifelong outdoors enthusiast myself, I was extremely excited to get involved with this group.
BOA has been struggling for a couple years to get itself on firm footing. The biggest struggle has been to get a website up. Lack of funds meant no site, but no site meant it was nearly impossible to raise money. Chicken, egg, I'm sure we've all seen this story before.
What I proposed very early on was a staged rollout. Stage one, online as of mid-October, is largely informational. I also set up some Paypal links so they could start taking money online. We had to do this in a very affordable way, squeezing as much functionality and good plumbing out of a non-existent budget as possible. The result is a nice template site filled with great images, good words, and a very strong first start for their group.
Phase two will be www.naturequestarizona.org, a very cool "branded" program presented by BOA. It's a treasure hunt! Kids follow maps and rhyming clues to learn something about a location's science and history. Very fun. It will be integrated ito BOA's underlying plumbing so that BOA members can benefit from the content we'll generate via NQA, while maintaining a distinct visual experience for NQA participants. Ultimately, the NQA's database of quests will serve as the database that will serve all of BOA -- everyone wins, and it cost them a fraction of what it would have if we'd had to develop parallel systems.
Phase three, once NQA is up and rolling, is to roll out the rest of BOA's program matchmaking service. Parents, educators and group leaders will be able to shuffle through hundreds (thousands?) of outdoors kids activities -- by location, price, difficulty, experience type, and so on. And since every program will have to live up to BOA's strict "best practices" standards, users can feel confident they're getting a good program.
All this time, we'll also be transforming BOA's site from its nice, but bland, template into a more branded experience.
Anyway, it's very exciting. We're learning a lot about the nonprofit world as well, and building the site toward a completely different set of metrics than our typical for-profit sites.
