A review of "The Website Owners Manual"

My review of The Website Owners Manual:

This isn't a manual for web designers, it's for those people who are responsible for a website in any way. It covers pretty much everything non-technical you need to know - setting up a project, overseeing direction and design, testing, launching and monitoring. From comments I've heard Paul Boag make, as a web designer he wrote this for his clients, so he wouldn't have to keep on answering the same questions over and over!

Each chapter has a helpful introduction, and at the end some actions points as to what to do next. This is useful as there's so much information in each chapter that it can seem a bit overwhelming, especially if you've been landed with the job of managing a website without much previous experience. I really can't find much to criticise in this book - it has a really wide coverage of most of the things you need to know about.

CauseWired review

CauseWired, subtitled "Plugging in, getting involved, changing the world", is a book about online fundraising by Tom Watson. Here's a two minute review, not because I think you don't want to spend more than two minutes reading it, but because I don't want to spend more than two minutes writing it.

(If the name is familiar Tom Watson is the name of a blogging UK MP, but the book is by another Tom Watson.)

Lots of stories and examples. Well researched. Nothing startling in there if you've been following the stories about fundraising organisations through blogs. Lots of people, say, signing up to a Cause on Facebook doesn't mean lots of giving. In my opinion the whole thing is too young to draw any conclusions that will stand the test of time.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors

This is a book accompanying "Good to Great", which I haven't read, applying it to non-profit organisations. At £6.99 its quite expensive for a slim volume, but it has some wise words.

As the title applies it takes the principles of the main book and tweaks them. The "pivot point" of the main book is the Hedgehog Concept, the essence of which "is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercise relentless discpline to say, "no thank you" to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test". So its an antidote to violent swings of direction in the organisation.

There's a good quote about what makes non-profits different:
"In business, money is both an input (a resource for achieving greatness) and an output (a measure of greatness). In the social sectors, money is only an input, and not a measure of greatness."

It's a handy book for when strategic thinking is needed, or needs evaluating, and I'd recommend it.

tags: non-profit
nonprofit
charity
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