The NetRaising Advantage
1. One-on-one software training and web-publishing coaching for primary webmasters
NetRaising trains, coaches and is the go-to web-publishing resource for over 100 webmasters, and we train at least one new person in dynamic web publishing every week.
Email or call your assigned NetRaising Associate with your questions, curiosities and concerns. We’re here to support and empower you, and we believe that you’ll be more successful on the web when you keep in touch with us.
2. Webmaster coverage when your webmaster is away or in transition
Webmasters lead dynamic lives. They get promoted to other roles within your organization, they take time off to climb mountains, finish college, have a child, participate in rescue missions, and sometimes they even leave your organization. NetRaising understands this and we support your organization during these transitions.
- We provide website updates and publishing support during webmaster transitions
- We’ll train other staff/volunteers to become a temporary or permanent webmaster
- We’ll provide security lock-out services when your webmaster’s employment is terminated
- We’ll get you through the transition and then train your newly-appointed webmaster in all the web software systems supported by NetRaising
3. We provide a foundation of Free, Open Source, Open Architecture and fully supported, licensed Commercial software
Choosing the right software can save an organization hundreds of human hours over the lifespan of a website, that’s why we carefully consider the long-term, total cost of ownership when selecting software, not just the immediate upfront costs.
Learn more about the software we use in our websites »
4. Regular and security-related time-sensitive software updates
The rules and practices of online security are constantly changing. Today’s best practices may become tomorrow’s vulnerabilities. NetRaising performs regular and time-sensitive software and configuration updates to your supported website software helping you prevent most potential security-related issues before they cause disruptions to your site.
5. Telephone and online support with your assigned NetRaising Web Associate, and backup support when that person is not available
The Web Associate who built your site will most likely be the same person who trains you, coaches you, works with you on site improvements and is your first point of contact for all things having to do with your website. Your Web Associate is your primary web consultant and first resource when questions arise about your site.
When your Web Associate is not available, you have an assigned secondary contact who may also assist you and who will keep your Associate in the loop about any changes made to your site. All support is provided directly by members of the NetRaising team.
6. Transparent project bidding and easy-to-budget fixed monthly payment amounts that may be paid by credit card, debit card, eCheck, or electronic funds transfer (EFT)
This is part of our sustainable business practices at NetRaising. It’s a win-win for our clients and the future of our business.
Transparent project bidding is the only equitable way of assessing the value of our services to an organization, and it’s also the most cost-effective, resulting in cost savings that help to lower our fees while keeping us sustainable.
Traditional paper-and-check invoicing costs a small business between 10%-15% of its fees per client, per month. Involved hourly invoices with project details can cost even more to produce and manage until successful payment is fully tendered.
By taking advantage of automatic electronic funds transfer systems and using a fixed and predictable monthly retainer for services, we can lower our cost to about 4%, per invoice. We build these savings into our Advantage Program pricing.
7. Client Empowerment is incentivized through our retainer-based business model; the more we empower our clients, the more our business grows
Ninety-nine percent of our clients publish all of their websites’ content (text and images) themselves, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We feel that you should own your content, and have as much control over it as possible while presenting it in the most web-savvy way possible. Our graphic designer and web development Associates complement your skill-set as the website’s content publisher and webmaster.
Training and coaching our clients to become successful web publishers is the single most cost-effective way of providing consulting-based web services. The better we prepare our clients to succeed on the web, the less often they need us, and the more clients we can support. Then when our clients do need us, it’s typically for the highly specialized coding that we do best. This creates the perfect balance between the content publisher and web developer and keeps everyone on your web team working within the area of his or her greatest strengths, which creates an efficiency that saves you money.
The alternative to NetRaising’s retainer-based business model is one based on hourly work. With hourly-based work, the consultant creates profit by increasing the number of hours of work he or she can invoice the client for; with our model, we create profit by decreasing the number of hours we spend on a client’s site by increasing the knowledge and skill set of our clients. Neither revenue model is perfect, but we much prefer client empowerment as our profit incentive.
8. Our focus is on long-term relationships with our clients
Over one-third of the new websites we designed and/or developed in 2010 were for existing clients. These were either additional websites for clients with expanding program offerings, renewed websites with freshened images and content, or complete replacement websites for clients taking full advantage of changes in web technology and design, giving them brand new websites that more accurately promotes the current needs and accomplishments of their organizations.
9. We have an exit strategy that includes planning for your organization
We acknowledge that change happens, in fact, we anticipate it. At some point in time, either NetRaising or your organization will need to make a major organizational or technology transition and the relationship between us will need to change. We want that experience to be as smooth as possible for everyone involved. Our carefully chosen business and technology practices help ensure that major transitions protect everyone’s investments and peace of mind.
- Each website is hosted in an individual hosting account and has its own databases and files. Should the need arise, a backup of the entire site can be transmitted electronically to another hosting provider.
- We choose software that runs on the most common and best supported open source foundation of PHP and MySQL, so that no one is ever “stuck” with something that is unsupportable.
- When we use licensed software, we ensure that all licenses are fully paid for upfront, and should the need arise, are transferable to our clients.
- We won’t register your domain name. You maintain full control of your domain and DNS, so we can never hold your site or your domain “hostage.”
- Clients have full SFTP access to all their hosted files, images and software at all times.
10. Sustainable Business Plan
NetRaising is a social purpose enterprise that embraces the concept of the triple bottom line. We have a progressive business model that takes full advantage of innovative ideas, technology and strategic resource management to bring our clients a service that is both on par with industry leaders and at a healthy fraction below the cost of our competitors.