Sustainable Business Plan
Founded in April of 2004, NetRaising is a social purpose enterprise that embraces the concept of the triple bottom line. We are among the first Certified B Corporations® in our home state of Oregon. 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 fraction below the cost of our competitors.
Retainer-Based Income Model
At the heart of our sustainable business model is the Advantage Program; a flat monthly fee-for-service plan. Spreading out the cost of our services into equal predictable monthly amounts has some key benefits for our clients and for us.
Our clients can spread out some of the costs associated with the creation of a website, and the costs associated with training and technical support are predictable and easy to budget for. Also, since support is prepaid each month, staff and volunteers feel more comfortable taking advantage of our technical support, and consulting services. As a result, our client’s websites are better maintained and our clients receive better long-term results from their websites.
NetRaising benefits from a solid base of steady, predictable monthly income collected through some form of automatic electronic funds transfer. This means we don’t have many of the common cash-flow issues associated with most small businesses. With a base of reliable income, we make less use of credit, pay less in interest, and have a lower cost of operation. We can then pass those savings on to our clients without lowering our profit margin.
Strategic focus on longterm client relationships
We realize that many companies proclaim to focus on customer relationships, but with a client retention rate that exceeds 80% annually, NetRaising stands out.
In a typical year, over 80% of our design projects and website launches will be for existing clients. These are 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 their organizations brand-new websites that more accurately promote current needs and accomplishments.
Client Empowerment is incentivized through our retainer-based business model; the more we empower our clients, the more our business grows
Over ninety-five 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 our clients should own their content, and have as much control over it as possible while presenting it in the most web-savvy way possible. Our graphic designers and web consultants complement our client’s skill sets as the website’s content publishers and webmasters.
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 with a small, highly trained team. Then when our clients do need us, it’s typically for the highly specialized coding or technical coaching 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.
Comparison of Business Models
- Some businesses seek growth by providing websites to as many people as possible and selling visitor data.
- Other businesses seek growth through invoicing each client for as many billable hours as possible.
- NetRaising seeks growth through client empowerment and satisfaction. We’ve proven that when our clients have a high-quality experience working with us, they’ll not only tell others, they’ll retain our services for many years beyond the launch of their first site by NetRaising.