The NetRaising Experience

Peter Bilotta

What’s your NetRaising experience?

What I appreciate most about working with NetRaising is working with NetRaising. NetRaising gets us. They understand the nonprofit operating model, not just the financial operating model that’s controlling us. “No, we don’t have any money to spend.” But also, they inherently get that we’re a 10-person organization and they kind of have this intuitive feel for this is what you can do with your website, what you’re capable of managing on your own, and not letting it get away from us. So they really have a keen feel for the small enterprise scale that we are.

It goes beyond just the functionality and how efficient they are or how helpful they are. It’s just a great company. It’s a great company, with great people, and a great model. And it’s the reason that I’ve referred probably 75 to 100 other organizations to it because we need more businesses like NetRaising that get what we do and do it in an excellent cost-effective and I think really investment visionary manner. So, day to day I feel great about working with NetRaising and supporting their mission and their business model, and that kind of just increases my loyalty beyond the quality of the product and the support that they provide.

Peter Bilotta
Executive Director
Chamber Music Northwest

Agnes Zach

What’s your NetRaising experience?

It’s kind of interesting. [Previous] web developers were consistently telling us that we could do everything that we wanted to do, and then it never worked after we did it. And I think Kurt was the first one that we worked with that said, “Well, we do our websites this way. And there’s a lot of flexibility in that, but there are limitations and there’s this, and it’s going to look like that and it’s going to work like this.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay.” And so I think that change is really what helped us. I think just having people tell us they could do anything never worked.

We would go to a database company that would say, “Well, we’ll do the front end of your website.” And it was like, yes, and you’re only doing a piece of it because you can’t do all of these other things, so you want to route them someplace else. In fact, we don’t want that. Kurt was the one that would say, “Well, if you’re using this database and you let me talk to this person, it’s this kind of an integration tool.” He did all of the API integrations. He talked to database team, he went and did some research for us on a couple of databases to see if their integrations made sense. And it was faster for him to call those companies or email them and get us out of the middle because we weren’t translating well.

We also appreciated the fact that he maintains the site on an ongoing retainer basis. So when we decide we want to change something, when we decide that we’re confused, when we kind of need something, it’s not like we have to go out and hire a consultant to fix that particular project. It’s that we have this ongoing relationship. Sometimes people think that a website is stationary, you pay once and you’re done. That ongoing connection was really helpful to us when we would suddenly decide to pivot to do something different, which as a small nonprofit we did probably more than we should have. It wasn’t like we had to go find somebody to come in and fix our website for us because we decided we wanted a new program. It was just, we reached out to Kurt and said, “Well, we decided to do it this way.” Then he’ll go, “Oh, okay.”

And we really do have new ideas every six months, once a year or something. I think we just had, oh, it was probably three or four months ago, but I think we just made a change to the job board that he created for us. And so then he was reaching out and saying, “Okay, I think we need to change this and that, this isn’t showing up.” And so the job board now looks different than it did last year. And it’s like, “Okay, let’s just do it.”

Usually, it’s us getting together at a staff meeting and saying, “I don’t like the way this looks,” or, “you know, we’ve been doing this for a while and I’m just not getting the responses that it needs to get,” or, “something’s not working on the backend and the operations person is having trouble figuring out how do we do this.” And then once we kind of get down to a couple of ideas, then we reach out to Kurt and his team and say, “Okay, so this is what we thought the problem was and so we were thinking about doing this.”

Then they usually talk about it and come back to us with a proposal. “I think what you’re thinking about is it’s probably going to be able to look like this, but not that.” And so then we sort of start that iterative process. But the programmers that they have are amazing. And so then they just plop us into their timeline. And then they give us a lot of room in the middle to say, “Okay, so that gives you lots of play area. What are you going to do?”

It’s the access to Megan. I would do anything for Megan that she ever asked for because she’s done so much for us. So she’s just incredible. So I appreciate his team, obviously, the people on his team a lot. I appreciate the speed that they respond. And then I appreciate the way they talk through with us what it is that we’re trying to get to, to see if it’s actually reasonable, portable, practical. They’re actually interested in making sure that it worked fully into the end, it’s not just, “Well yeah, of course, we can do that.” It’s like, “I see where you’re headed. Is that really where you’re headed?”

They have an innate understanding of what our limitations are. And that’s just handy. That just avoids a whole segment of explanation.

They don’t assume that we can afford absolutely everything we want to do all the time.

They don’t assume that we know exactly what we’re doing all the time.

They don’t assume that we’re going to be on the same trajectory for two or three years.

They’re not surprised when we pivot.

And I think they have a pretty good understanding of the fact that we just don’t really have time. And so having something that works, having somebody just taking care of it is huge to us. because we just really don’t have time to fiddle with it.

That retainer thing is really handy because you come to them with a project and they go, “Well, that’s a 15-hour project, but you haven’t had us do anything else this year. So it’s just part of your retainer.” You’re like, “Oh, okay. So that’s really cool. I appreciate that.” Whereas other times they can come back and say, “Yeah, we need to do a big upgrade to the backend, or we’ve got to move everything to the upgrade. But don’t worry, there’s no cost to that because that’s part of your retainer.” You’re just like, “Ah, okay.” So that retained piece I think is really the responsive side for us. Right, and you always hear about the benefits of retained contracts, but you don’t usually see them set up this way.

We know what we’re signing when we sign the contract, we know what those pieces are. I think actually the key to the transparency piece is, it’s pretty consistent. It’s not like they’re changing their contract every year or that when we go in for a renewal every two or three years, whatever we’re on with them, it’s not like there’s making changes. It’s pretty consistent. It’s pretty open. So we don’t have this fear that things are going to change dramatically.

I’ve got the Ask Agnes blog, which is part of why the story comes to mind every day. And so I reached out to Kurt and I reached out to Megan and said, “Okay, we’re redesigning the website. I need a spot for my blog.” And Kurt came back to me and said, “What do you mean blog?” And I said, “Well, you know I’m going to do these things, I’m going to do this thing.” And he was like, “How many have you written?” And I said, “I haven’t written any.” And then he said, “I will not turn on that feature until you have two months’ worth of blog posts written and submitted.” I’m like, “What do you mean won’t?” And he’s like, “Too many people start blogs and they do it for two or three weeks, and then they forget about it. If you’re not committed, and if you’re not ready to make that commitment and put it into place, I don’t think it’s a feature that looks good on your website.” And I managed to do it for a year and a half straight until this week, and now it’s dormant because I missed like four weeks, but I have a plan to get back. So anyway, I did that, I did not turn on the blog post until I sent him eight weeks of blog postings. I completely agree with him. I was just going, “Oh, they want me to do this thing and it will be fun, and it’ll be fine.” And he’s like, “Yeah, no.” And it was such a surprise because I knew nothing about blog posts except I needed to write. I had never thought about it from the context of what does it look like to have dead space on your website? And you’re actively creating dead space. And I was like, oh, you’re right. And I was saying that there is something that is active and live and searchable, and it does, and it’s going to be good. So it was really enlightening. I had just never thought about it that way before. It’s one of my favorite Kurt stories. I use it regularly.

Agnes Zach
Chief Executive Officer
Nonprofit Professionals

Amy Almond-Schmid

What’s your NetRaising experience?

Phenomenal. Firstly, our website looks professional and that [we look like] we’re a much bigger organization than we are in reality. That people all over the country think that we are a large-scale grouping of people behind that website, I think speaks volumes to its creation, its ease of use, and the ability to find the information you’re looking for. There’s a lot of information.

For me not having any web design background or knowing how to use HTML, that’s not a language I speak. Being able to jump in and have access to somebody to teach me how to do those things with NetRaising was awesome. I think one of the first people who reached out to me was Kurt to say, “I know you’re drinking from a firehose now, but when you’re ready to have a conversation with me, I’m here to help you learn your website,” which was really great. Very comforting.

They make my job interacting with them as easy as I think it could be. There’s no way you could make that relationship simpler, easier, or more trusted. From the very start, it’s been built-in simplicity.

Our initial tutorial was just getting into Expression Engine because I’d never looked at it before. I had no idea what to expect. And he just walked me through what the behind-the-scenes of our website looked like. He spoke in some HTML terms and said some things that I didn’t know what they meant. And so I asked him to slow down for a second, explain that to me. Tried to repeat back, “Okay, this is what I heard.” He would confirm or re-explain, go at it again.

And then he sort of set me loose. I thought I’m doing everything right, but it’s not showing up on the public-facing side. “What am I missing?” And of course, Kurt was like, “Oh, you just missed this one little button that you have to click to make it live on that specific page.” So yes, I have reached out for… “I’m flailing. I don’t know what to do.” And he’s been great.

Kurt is really responsive, extra helpful, and to the point. One time we were in a staff meeting, and another staff member reached out to him and said, “Can you help us with this thing?” And he wrote us back maybe 15 minutes later and he said, “So sorry for the delay. I’ve been… ” I don’t know, whatever his thing was. And we’re like, “It’s been 15 minutes. That’s not a delay.” Anyway, what I think he really meant was, “I can’t help you today, but I can talk to you tomorrow.” But with that 15-minute window, it seemed pretty funny at the time. By and large, our support from Kurt has been swift and exactly what we need.

And in my time we’ve hired two new employees and they’ve been able to sit down and have tutorials by Kurt and education provided by Kurt. And he is excellent at understanding each of our learning curves or where we’re coming from or what we do and do not know about behind-the-scenes web design, web use.

I have emailed Kurt thinking, “Oh, within 30 days he’ll be able to get us on his calendar,” and in minutes, usually, he’s completed that task and then sent me a message back going, “Check it out, tell me if it looks good.” So yes, he’s been very responsive in all the ways that I’ve ever reached out and asked for help.

So being a government employee for 24 years, anything related to IT and systems takes forever because you’re not talking to someone at the local level or within your own community. You’re talking to some ghost in a location, who-knows-where, in some hidden vault, and maybe it’s a contractor of those persons sitting in the vault. And so it could be a year and you never get a response or you never get the upgrade you need to the system that you’re trying to work in. So yes, I… My bar was set really low, but it doesn’t matter; Kurt is phenomenal. I really, truly… I think one of my first emails back to him was “I can’t believe that it’s already done. That there isn’t 10 more steps you need me to do, or that I didn’t have to fill out a form to request that this get done, that I just sent you an email and ta-da.”

We went through an [software] upgrade and Kurt reached out to us to say, “I’m going to pull the trigger on this upgrade, it’s going to do some things you’re probably not going to know or see or feel it from the front. But I want you to know that it’s happening and then as soon as it’s done, I want to have a meeting with anyone who’s going to be touching it so that we can review the new version of it.” And he called us all together and we got a first-hand what to expect and what the new thing looked like and answered all of our questions all at once, and that was awesome. We all really appreciated that, that tutorial on the new upgrade. And he initiated and he went out and sought us a good deal as a nonprofit, he did the work to get us a better rate, a better price, or maybe even a free upgrade to that new version.

I said I wanted to do this new thing and add a new feature on our website, and NetRaising already knew how to do it because they had some other nonprofits that had this functionality. And so I was able to explain or describe my view of it, and they were able to go out and get three other websites and said, “Hey, we did this and this was a version, and this is a version.” And then I was able to say, “I want this from this one, and I’ll take these two things from this version,” and they were then able to create it based on stuff they had already worked on. Yeah, and there being other nonprofits that are in our same caliber or tier of effort and energy, yes, it serves me well that they have other clients that are similar where they’re looking to do similar things.

The moment anybody on our team said, “Hey, can our website do this? Is this a capability?” We’d have no hesitation in calling Kurt or emailing Kurt and asking him, “Is this something we can do or not do?” And he would, I truly believe he would bend over backward to make it happen if it’s something that is doable.

Especially in the realm of DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] so that A in accessibility matters. Our clientele, we’re talking donors, we’re talking mental health providers and somatic care providers and veterans. You have no idea what those individuals come to your site with as far as their accessibility disabilities are concerned. So having something that’s checking as I’m building the page that’s telling me, “Hey, there’s a better way for this to read,” or, “Hey, you’re lessening accessibility by not adding text here.” That it’s just checking me as I work through, whatever project I’m on, is really helpful. And yes, recognizing organizations who are in that mode versus having to ask them to get in that mode is extremely beneficial.

We talked a little bit about making our footer, adding all these emblems to our footer, and he suggested not, because you don’t want to clutter it, but he gave us options. So even though he was advising against what our original thoughts were, he presented clear ways that we could get what we wanted and I appreciated that.

I really do appreciate the personal reach that Kurt specifically has created between RVP. My first initial conversation with him, it was really easy to jump into. He’s a veteran [and] I’m currently serving. And to take it a few levels deeper, he’s not afraid to share, and be a little bit vulnerable about who he is, and what he does. And that relationship-building matters to me in a business environment as well. It’s not just about the business that we… Who are you as a person? He genuinely seems to care about who we are here at RVP and shares with reciprocity who he is and what he’s up to.

Amy Almond-Schmid
Executive Director
Returning Veterans Project

Angela Jones

What’s your NetRaising experience?

The big thing was that [other vendors] would design out a website, but then they’re done. They have no more interaction really with you. And if you needed to do something and add something later or change up something, it would be additional costs. There was this feel that like you had to get it right the first time and if you didn’t get it right, you were going to be paying more down the road.

For me that was a big deal just because I would often get requests saying, “Hey, can we do this to the website? Can we add this to the website?” And my response was, “I’ll check with Kurt.” And I don’t know that I’ve ever been told no. And there was not an extra charge, it was just something, “Oh yeah, we did that for this site. Well, I’ll just add it to your website.” And so it was knowing that you didn’t have to try to and re-think of everything you wanted on the front end was a huge plus when we were comparing the different companies.

It was huge because we had a lot of things going on at one time, in the midst of beginning the web design. And we knew we wanted to redo it. But we were being careful with money and those kind of things as well. And what I appreciated was being able to have template options that were already created that were samples that they had designed for other schools that didn’t get used, so that there was a discount on the pricing. because it wasn’t starting from scratch. They’d already done the design piece of it and there were multiple options for us to look at for that, and be able to find one that we were like, “Oh yeah, we really like that.” So it gave a launching pad for the whole project without having to completely start from scratch.

I needed it to be something that we could move through quickly, so being able to just find something that we knew would work for us, and then begin just the tweaking at that point, was awesome. And even just the knowledge from working with other schools of being able to give suggestions and ideas. If I would bring up something, we really want to do this, but what’s the best way of doing that? And then just trusting that he’s going to give me the best scenarios to make that happen because he’s seen it happen and successfully elsewhere.

So there is a high, high, high trust level I have with Kurt. That takes away a lot of the pressure and anxiety of interacting with the website, especially with the redesign.

The way I see how we interact with Kurt and NetRaising, it feels very, very relational. If I’m having a really hard day and I need something done, I find myself able to say, “Hey, I’m just really struggling. I’m having a hard time can you… I’ve tried to figure this out on my own. I can’t.” But it’s more relational. It does not feel vendor. I know he is, but that’s not how I see the interaction. I appreciate it when he lets me know what’s going on with his team. He’s so good about communicating when they’re going to be gone or if they’re going to be in a meeting, especially if I had thrown an email out there asking a question. He’s so good and quick to respond, even if it’s to tell me, “I got your email, but I can’t take care of that right now. I’ll look at it in the afternoon.” It feels very relational. Almost like he’s just another staff person here at Salem Academy that I’m working with. Not like an outside vendor.

They are so easy to work with, accessible, and willing to help us make changes and updates to the site as things come up no matter what. And just being able to literally have no anxiety about emailing Kurt and saying, “Hey here, this is what they’ve sent me. Do you see any problem with us being able to implement in some way?” and him emailing back like, “Nope. Here are some examples of what we got.” This is a big thing that’s being asked like a new thing, a different thing. Not something that I’m just like, oh yeah, I can just make it on this page. 

The reality is our website is the best marketing for our school other than our own families. So, we could spend tons of money doing radio ads or billboards or try and do direct mail, there are all these ways. I have so many sales calls trying to get me to spend money on how to market to try and increase our enrollment at the school. And the reality was the majority of the inquiries we would get for the school when asked how did you hear about us? It was either a family or friend who was already associated with the school or it was an internet search on our website.

How important is our website? For most Christian schools “word of mouth” from current families will be the #1 recruitment by quite a bit. Website/internet search is our #2 and nothing else comes close (i.e. phone calls, billboards, mailers)
Since 2014:

• 65% of applicants heard about SA from current families
• 30% of applicants heard about SA from our website/internet search

And the reality is when current families share about SA, the new families are going to our website to move forward!

I have only ever really received positive feedback on our website. I’ve had other people, whether it’s from athletics or admissions, different people commenting how they really like the look and they were able to find what they needed.

I feel he’s very good about putting things in layman’s terms too and giving explanations. So there was a lot of back and forth and there has been, over the years. Kurt is very good about explaining why something I’ve asked for doesn’t make sense or can’t work the way I’m wanting it. And then providing, “But if you’re trying to accomplish this, we could do this.” And so I appreciate the explanations of why what I’m asking for is impossible so that I understand that instead of just saying, nope, we can’t do that. You know, and he’s always very clear. And the way he presents it is… I was kind of laughing about it being tough love. It’s like “I know what you’re saying, but this is really why that can’t happen. But here, let’s look at some other options to accomplish the same goal.”

They’ve been great to interact with to get our website to a point where if for some reason I end up not being in charge of the website in the future, I feel like somebody coming in would not need to have any kind of background in coding in order to be successful utilizing the website.

I love just having this relationship with Kurt where we can joke with each other. I can tell him I’m praying for him if there is something that maybe comes up. And like I said, it literally is just like another staff person and just for something that’s so important to the school, the public face of your school, your website, and then the internal pieces with the [online] forms. You have to have a good relationship with that person who is the one helping you make all those things happen. And I’m just very appreciative of how relational he is. And the whole team. I haven’t had to interact too much with the others, but I just really do appreciate that they are not just a vendor. The thing is, all the other stuff, you can probably find any company that can help you build out a good website. That you can maybe find anywhere. It’s these other things that make it, that’s what’s important to me when interacting with somebody.

Angela Jones
Communications Coordinator
Salem Academy

Bethany Walmsley

What’s your NetRaising experience?

Overnight, I swear we built so many followers and things because people noticed us. They started noticing what was happening and there was no more mystery. We were no longer embarrassed to say to all of our partners and to our board members, and to our supporters, please share this [website].

I have some very strong opinions about this because I’m a real stickler for… If you want to be taken seriously as a professional, worthy – “I want to give my money to this nonprofit and support your cause” – I personally think you have a responsibility to have a professional face, have… Look like you know what you’re doing for goodness sake and make it easy for people to do that. So, impact for me, number one was if I’m the layperson looking at your website for the first time, and you’re a nonprofit that is sort of building on the backs of fundraising and donors, would I want to give to this organization? And the impact is… you need to be able to make that impact that says, “Wow, look at this.” They seem like they have their act together. Oh, I found the information I needed.

One of the things that I remember about working with Kurt was… and NetRaising, was that they have, frankly, the group of them have an amazing talent, which is that Kurt individually, but also his team are able to communicate with you and not sound like an IT person. Not sound like that person that speaks a different language than you do. I always had the feeling working with them that they got it in terms of what it was like for you on the other side. And he has an amazing ability to sort of translate what’s happening IT, [into] what they need so that you can understand it and get it implemented on your end. He has a really incredible talent, he can just kind of meet you where you are and talk about it in your language versus you feeling like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

He was very good at reminding you that you need to structure this in a way so that you have the end goal in mind. You’re kind of reverse-engineering it if you will. What I remember about working with him was he would sort of pull out of you, well, what do you want this to look like when you’re… When a veteran comes to look for services at RVP, what are the things that are most important for them to see? He would start with that end goal in mind. And I think that that allowed us to be able to… Or me as the leader, be able to kind of distribute the work plan in a way that would work best for the people on the team. That was why I think it felt more achievable because you could see that even though you had this long trail to get there, you at least knew where you were going to land.

Number one, it is a different world, a different language, and he understands it. And number two, it’s affordable. He sets it up for you in a way that you can budget for it. You know that it gets maintained, you know that it’s going to be updated on a regular basis.

Most of all, you know that when you pick up the phone and say, or write an email and say, “We’re struggling with this, can you help us?” They will be there. That’s the other thing about Kurt and his team that I have to say is that you are never, ever left hanging out in the wind feeling like no one’s there. They’re there and they answer your questions. To me, that’s the amazing thing about NetRaising is that I never worry that he wouldn’t be there. I never worry that there wasn’t going to be somebody there. He was always, always there. And you can depend on that. And I think that he probably has as many clients as he does because of that as well.

All I ever heard from anybody on the team was, he’s always there. He answers the question, if not, gives me three different options. And I, yeah, I, they were just loaded with information. There was no mystery to the process. So it just, he was a great partner.

The other thing that I appreciated about Kurt was that he also was so well-versed in the… That’s taking it too far realm. He was able to put guardrails up for you and protect [the website] from me, from myself. When you’re in the nonprofit space, all you can really think about is, where… How do I get more donations? How do I communicate more effectively about our mission? How do I get more volunteers? How do I whatever… And sometimes you get kind of crazy on the… Crazy idea train about, “I think we should try this, or we should try that.” Kurt could protect you from yourself when you wanted to take that just a little bit too far. He wasn’t shy about saying, the reason you don’t want to do that is because this could happen, and that’s way more of a problem. You’re going to make more problems than solve more problems by going down that road.

He would always try to come up with a recommendation for, well, we can’t do it exactly like that, but we can do it this way. Would that be okay? Will it accomplish the same thing?

NetRaising will always stand out for me because they will always be on the other end of the phone. They will not leave you hanging. Kurt was incredible at getting back to you. We never went for long without figuring out what the issue was. He was willing to work tirelessly to be there for his clients. And, he had no idea how many of those he was going to get a day. So, I think the customer service with NetRaising really can’t be undersold. I mean, he, he’s at the top of the pile in terms of customer service in that way. The other thing I would say is, he speaks your language, not some weird [IT] language that you don’t understand.

I’ve worked with other vendors in the past. They were almost, they were almost disparaging. Like, “Why don’t you understand what I mean?” Kurt never, never, never made you feel like that. He always made you feel like the important person, and they were there to assist you. But if you can’t understand what the heck they’re talking about, you’re nothing but frustrated. We were never, ever frustrated that way. That’s why I didn’t hesitate when RVP needed a website. I’m like, I know who to go to. I know who I’m going to work with because they speak your language and they are always there for you.

He makes it affordable without you feeling like, Well, I had to give up this and then I had to give up that. And you don’t feel like you had to sell parts just to get what you wanted. This structure that he offers in terms of design work upfront, and then you basically work it out so that he’s dealing with you in terms of supporting the software on an ongoing basis. The fact that you as a nonprofit executive director can budget for that, know what to expect, all of that, and not have to get hit with, okay, at the end of this it’s going to be $15,000. He makes it affordable. It makes you feel like you have something that is going to be built to last, but you were able to afford to get there.

I think Kurt really has his heart… How do I say this? I think he does it because he wants these nonprofits to succeed. I don’t think he’s doing it because, well, I know he has talent, he’s an IT person, he has a team, all those things. But honestly, I think the reason it works is because the small to medium nonprofits are looking for someone who… they’re not big ships. They’re smaller ships that have to be able to be nimble and navigable and Kurt can just kind of get on that ship with you and sort of ride away and kind of help you along the way. I think Kurt is in this for the same reason that the nonprofit are, I think he just really wants to give back to this space and this is how he does it.

Kurt has really come up with something that I think is viable in the nonprofit space. NetRaising makes building a new website affordable without it being the cheap way out. And I think that’s so great that he just focuses on nonprofits.

Bethany Walmsley
Former Executive Director
Oregon Patient Safety Commission
+ Returning Veterans Project

Erika Mahoney Yen

What’s your NetRaising experience?

I feel so great. So great. It’s beautiful. We had launched another website with NetRaising, I want to say like five years ago… and this [new site] is totally in line with the branding of our current site. And the process was just really fabulous working with Megan on this.

Since then, they’ve made so many strides… Bigger strides with web development and what they can do. But what struck me from the beginning was just the thoroughness of Kurt. And his appreciation for the process.

Very long phone calls with Kurt… The Kurt phone call. The thoroughness in… He can really go into the history of each website and the process of getting it designed, the security aspects of it, and the reasoning for some of the decisions that they make. And also, having a great view of how to make sure that the websites are accessible, visually, and adding in features to increase accessibility to folks that need different ways to access web materials.

I can just say, as working with… If there’s a problem, if we have a question, if there’s any kind of initiation of communication, they are on it, and so responsive. Yeah, any questions, any ideas, Megan’s always… She’s super creative and intentional about creating materials for website, because she can see how that can help her other clients. If you’re asking for this, you know, let me create it in a sustainable way that I can transfer that code over to another client. So they definitely work smarter. Not harder. You can tell.

The responsiveness and openness that they have toward ideas that we might have. They’re always trying to find a way that implements those ideas without… Sometimes those ideas are like, a little too big. And it’s like, this slideshow that has a video is going to like slow things down. And helping us always weigh the cost benefits of some of those things, I think is really great. They’re able to bring us down to earth.

It’s like, “Remember what our core values are for this website. And we want to make sure that it’s nimble enough that people who have limited Wi-Fi access and those kinds of things that it’s not taking a long time for things to load and they get frustrated”, adding some bells and whistles may look cool, but they are always like, “Well, but what if we try it like this way instead?” Or kind of always doing like a “Yes, and…” in helping us think through those ideas very thoroughly. They’re not just like, “yes, yes, yes” to everything. It’s, “let’s think this through,” and that intentionality of what they do for us.

I will put together… just InDesign some static templates of some ideas that I have. And yeah, they’re able to just magically render it into a web, clickable, functional piece. You can see how they took my vision and made it a reality. We made some slight modifications to work around some of those pieces where it made sense in a static format but it didn’t translate as well to a web format and so we just made those little design shifts, but always stayed within the branding and the look and feel that we started off with.

With the amount of care and understanding that they have in thinking about all the different audiences and keeping websites nimble, I think it’s also extremely cost-efficient to have their services.

In the past, (it’s been a long time since I’ve worked with anyone else besides NetRaising), but in the past, it’s been like, [a vendor builds] the website, they hand it over to you and they are just like… Maybe there’s a little bit of back and forth, but once the project is finished, they move on.

With NetRaising you have this retainer where you can continue to use their services and work closely with them. If anything comes up, they’re there for us and they’re always thinking about the long term and making sure we’re updated to the most current platform and that we have all of those tools to continue to be successful. So I think it works especially well for nonprofits and people who have a smaller communications team to make an interface that’s easy for folks to update. They do a great job there but also provide pretty cost-effective, ongoing support, which I really appreciate.

Also, I wanted to point out, they can do incredible things when it comes to accessibility and offering websites in different languages. They do incredible work in that area.  We’ve created websites in the past for individual lease-ups that were like… We manually translated them into six languages, which was a feat to do. But yeah, they did incredible work there.

Erika Mahoney Yen
Fundraising and Marketing Specialist
Reach Community Development

Jackie Keogh

What’s your NetRaising experience?

The worst thing you can do as a nonprofit is have a terrible website because, whether the clients you’re serving or donors, they’re going to bounce off of that. It has been a pleasure working with Kurt because… I picked him because he had a background in nonprofits, he understood them and the functionality. And so I think sometimes Kurt thinks of things that I would never think of, and so it’s like working with another staff person sometimes, feels like that.

I’m from the East Coast, and I like consultants who can get to the point, solve all the problems and be quick and responsive and give the best product possible, and I think Kurt does that. So that’s why I picked him and that’s why I continue to work with him, so when I moved agencies, I think he was one of the very few contractors I brought over with me.

Communication with the prior web consultant was just awful, he didn’t understand what we were doing, and he didn’t seem to care about it or our timelines. And I think the beauty about Kurt is that he cares so much, he responds at 9 o’clock at night if I am having a crisis, he writes me these long, beautiful emails, like, asking how I’m doing, I know about his life, and I think that’s… In this age, where we’re all Zoom meetings and you only know someone by their email address, Kurt really pushes past that, and that’s why I love working with him.

Kurt completely understands where we are as a multicultural organization, and for example, he led the transformation of a bilingual site for both Power Ground and RootedHomes, that’s something… So easy to spend on but no one does it, and because I think people are scared, it seems complicated, and Kurt just breaks it down and makes it not complicated.

Kurt’s never trying to sell anything but he’s always trying to solve for a need that you bring to him. And it’s pretty turn-key, like, “I need this, Kurt.” And he’s like, “Okay, well, I can just do this.” Versus me having to learn how to do it.

There are so many consultants who want to bring me into their world and then I work alongside them so they feel valued. I don’t have time for that. And so Kurt listens to what I want to do and then he just does it, and then he gives me the tools and the resources so that I can do it long term. And I think that is so valuable. I folder all of my emails, I have a special folder for Kurt, not because he sends me more emails than anyone else, but because his emails are so educational that I like to go back to them before I ask him a question because I’m like, “Oh, he probably already told me how to do this.

I’m one human being and I work 40 hours a week, so I can’t do everything, and neither do my staff. And so being able to have technology that works for us has really allowed us to continue that high level of customer service to our clients without actually investing in that from a staff capacity.

Any organization that has or wants a growth trajectory, looking at all the departments and saying, “How can I scale this?” And if you look at the communications department, the first thing you should be looking at is your website. And it’s not just about your website being pretty because, of communications, the narrative… Sorry, as communication staff, we always focus on the imagery and the narratives, but no one’s reading that if your website doesn’t open quickly or if there’s no search engine optimization, or if this picture won’t even load because it’s too big. What Kurt does is he breaks that down so that you can just focus on the narratives and the pretty pictures, and he focuses on all the backend.

I think a lot of staff, like when you’re starting out, you feel nervous asking a contractor for help because you’re worried about the cost, but what you’re not thinking about is the sunk cost of you struggling to do it for three hours and then not being good enough at the end. You could have asked Kurt and he would have it done in 20 minutes, and it’s actually less time. Because some staff time, and the frustration in the poor quality product, could all be relieved by having reliable contractors that you feel comfortable calling and are honest and know that Kurt’s going to try and do it in 20 minutes because he knows the value of that time for the organization in terms of expenses.

The website accessibility definitely did, it was something I had never heard of, and a couple of things, like Kurt was pushing your privacy policy, that kind of thing, and the web accessibility before anyone I knew was bringing that to our attention. He was like, “Your green is not accessible.” And here we are, thinking an accessible agency is that a wheelchair can roll into your offices because we’re all thinking the same mentality. When no one’s doing that, they’re all trying to look us up. And if you don’t have accessible coloring or you haven’t for your logo, our logo program didn’t have accessible coloring, what a huge detriment that you don’t even realize. So I love that, that he brought that up.

I didn’t bid any other contractors when I brought Kurt to RootedHomes because I knew I wanted to work with him. And sometimes that’s more valuable. We talk about that a lot, my staff, in terms of procurement. Like, “Yes, we want the cheapest bid but you also actually want to look at the most holistic bid because if the cheapest bid is going to hassle you and you’re going to spend way more time, your frustration, or even mental energy communicating with someone who isn’t a good communicator, you’re going to wish that you spent a couple of extra dollars.”

Annual reports and impact reports and strategic planning reports, everyone sends ‘em out on paper, no one’s even at their office opening their mail. Kurt and I had… I had this idea, I was like, “Kurt, I want to do annual reports and everything on this whole separate website, and this is the functionality.” And we to this day get so many compliments on those annual reports and those strategic plan websites. And they’re so easy. That was actually probably my favorite project working with Kurt.

Jackie Keogh
Executive Director
Rooted Homes

Jeanne Kojis

What’s your NetRaising experience?

I think that the opportunity to work with someone who is industry-specific and deeply understands both the needs and has the experience of a variety of possible solutions to the unique needs of nonprofits is what makes NetRaising stand out.

I would call up Kurt or send him an email and say, “Here’s what I think we need.” And he would send me back an email and say, “Well…” He usually had three or four really good questions that uncovered what you really want. Anybody who does consulting knows that clients say, “This is what I need.” And part of your job as a consultant is like, okay, let’s back up the train as to why you think you need that. And so then he was very good at determining the aim that you were trying to achieve with something on the website.

And then would present not just ideas, but frequently links to other sites that he had built that you could see demonstrated like, “Oh, it could look like this, or it could look like that.” And that’s fabulous expertise to bring to the table. And especially for… I mean, I don’t visually imagine things well. And so actually being able to go to some examples of sites that… And Kurt was always careful to kind of point out that our needs as a client were different than what he had done for somebody else. But that, for instance, we could adapt to this kind of approach, or this other group had a similar need and they approached it in another way. And that saved a lot of time and frustration because we were clear going in, before we kind of would build on something new, about what it was going to look like in the end. There were far fewer surprises than people otherwise may encounter.

Kurt not only asks a limited number of key questions, but he explains to you why he is asking the question. Like he’ll say, “Oh, okay, now I understand.” You know, then this would be probably closer to what you’re looking for. If you had answered it kind of in this other way, then I’d be thinking it was more… He just clearly analyzes his own thinking as he’s explaining things to you, which hardly anybody does.

For people who are hiring someone to help them with a website, there is, generally speaking, a significant upfront cost – both for the design and creating the infrastructure. But with NetRaising, you have a design cost, which is really, I would say, below market cost, but it is certainly terrific work. I mean, it’s very professional and good design work. But having the infrastructure kind of built into the cost over time and includes that and some maintenance of what it is that you’re doing is… Nonprofits really come out ahead financially.

I would send Kurt emails on Sunday afternoons when I’d be sitting at home working with a laptop open and putting things on the website. And just shoot him an email about this or that. And I was really not expecting at all him to respond. But nine times out of ten, it was like he was sitting [laughter] Sunday afternoon and would shoot back emails. All the NetRaising staff who I ever interacted with were exceptionally responsive. And in terms of their timeliness and their attention to detail and being just genuinely really pleasant people to work with.

If you value a high-quality website with excellent and responsive service, and it’s important for you to contain your costs, and you want to work with somebody who has a deep understanding of the unique needs of nonprofits, and just people who are authentically nice people who also care a lot about the community.

There are some businesses that may have some experience in working with large nonprofit organizations, where the scale of what they’re doing doesn’t adapt well to the needs of a smaller organization. The solutions may be more complex than what a small or middle size group actually needs. Unfortunately with a lot of our technology, we’re used to getting way more bells and whistles and paying for things that we know we’re not actually going to use or need. I mean, there were things on both my computer and my telephone and I mean any kind of actual equipment that I have that can do things way beyond what I need them to do.

NetRaising takes the time to scale things appropriately […], but looks at and is aware of how you might expand to need it in the future, then they just consistently come up with cost-effective solutions. And that makes a huge difference. That’s just a really unusual perspective to meet people where they’re at, have the experience to see ahead down the road where they’re probably going and get them something that works there for them now and in the future.

Kurt is really an excellent strategic thinking partner for nonprofits about their websites, which basically is kind of about your business operations. And so there’s some perspective on marketing. There’s some perspective on what we’re expecting the website to actually do. There’s some perspective on how easy it’s going to be to operate. There’s a lot of perspective around what the user experience is going to be. I think that the fact is that it is not just Kurt. I mean it’s the staff that has a depth of experience.

Jeanne Kojis
Former Executive Director
Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington

Jen Boxerman

What’s your NetRaising experience?

He’s so accessible. I really appreciated that as a vendor. In this day and age, people don’t pick up the phone, but he always picks up the phone. And if he can’t, I know that he’ll call me back right away. And that’s been so important for our vendor relationship.

I got in touch with the designer right away. So right away we were able to talk about look and feel and branding, and she sent mockups right away. There were no three-month lead times. It was really seamless, so pleasant and fun. Even if there was something that, where the answer was no, it was always given in a really professional way.

We literally put pages from the site map on post-its and created all new panels and used his advice about how to customize our calendar so that we could better use it for marketing, with graphics. And so that was an amazing process of being able to come together with design elements that we liked from other synagogue and nonprofit sites to build into ours. The accessibility to our site was also a big priority for our redesign. And so we appreciated the guidance that we were given about increasing contrast, san serif fonts, font sizes, all those things so that we could try to be as accessible as possible.

We love our site, that it’s responsive, and that there is a feed at the bottom that has all of our service times and there are just a lot of cool bells and whistles that he helped us make possible. It’s so straightforward, just the ability to edit subpages ourselves. I’m really surprised that we haven’t redesigned it since, but it’s because people still like the elements of it.

We stopped getting complaints. We were getting a lot of complaints about our [previous] site from our members.

Oh, they were so happy. We have a pretty active board of 40 members and they all have their own programs that they want promoted and that was the biggest complaint, was that there was just nowhere… Homepage. So now every program gets promoted on our homepage because we have a featured events feed that feeds from the calendar. It used to be a manual, super tedious thing to edit the homepage. And now if I put in a calendar entry, it’ll automatically appear on that feed.

Also, we’ve been growing, which is pretty unusual for synagogues right now. We hear a lot of that… (because of course, we ask when they call and are interested in becoming a member, “How did you hear about us”?). It’s all from our site and just from finding us through Google.

People get nervous about the ongoing retainer; synagogues don’t have a lot of resources. I think a lot of people, especially in this age of WordPress or whatever, think that they can just… It’s like a one-and-done and not an ongoing expense. I just say it’s so invaluable. You’re going to be beta-testing a site for the first year. And so you want to be able to have someone at your…on-call to make on-the-fly changes.

Nonprofits, especially religious organizations, see ourselves as communities, not businesses. The terms like branding and marketing can seem too formal. So I think already having a relationship where someone’s helping you create a deliverable, like a website, would make a lot of sense for them to then have those other conversations that wouldn’t seem so…foreign, I think is the word I’m looking for.

Cutting edge, accessible, comforting, when I feel like I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s fine. I’m not being judged for not knowing the technical jargon for what I’m trying to accomplish. I feel like if we worked with a larger firm, I’d be spending my time on phone menus instead of the mission. And the scope of knowledge they have from their client base. We’ve really benefited from him sharing examples from other clients, so we’re not reinventing the wheel. They’re so respectful and I just, I trust them completely.

Jen Boxerman
Communications & Philanthropy Director
Temple Isaiah

Kayla Thomet

What’s your NetRaising experience?

Oh. It was so easy. I had just come out of college and I had studied Public Relations. When I first came onto OBC, and I got introduced to Kurt and got to start asking him my questions, had him help me fix problems, it was just a game changer because he didn’t just take my problem and fix it. He first took the time to set up the meeting, meet me, get to know me and established that relationship. And then he explained to me what he was doing and how he was fixing it. And he said, “Oh. I get why this is hard. It was confusing to me at first too. Here are some tips of how I understood it. Here’s how I learned it. Here’s how I’m going to make it easier for you to work with it”. And he just took that and ran with it. And he was just so collaborative and welcoming and open to our ideas. And his personality is just really wonderful to work with too.

He helped us create exactly the vision that we wanted. We worked with the designer first to see how we wanted it to look and then we worked with Kurt to see how we wanted it to function.

It was really wonderful to work 100% with Kurt and with NetRaising as we worked with a designer that they recommended. And to have that be such a seamless, easy transition, it felt like working with one cohesive team and that was really wonderful. When you’re working with different contractors, with different agencies, it can sometimes feel very disconnected and it can fall on you to be the connector, but Kurt just really stepped up into that role and made it feel like we were working just within one company itself, which was great. And to be able to be as creative as we wanted and really take the time to thoughtfully design it. He stepped back and let us work with the designer and then he came in with the technical aspects. That was just a really wonderful experience and it really breathed life into our dreams.

With our other site, it’s a self-hosted WordPress, so it’s a nightmare. And especially with no necessary programming background, but Kurt has always been receptive to our questions about that. Even though it’s a site he doesn’t run. He’s not getting any money for it, any commission for it, but he’ll always be available for questions. And he also goes out of his way to send us updates about bugs or malware that he hears about, or he’ll go out of his way to send us articles that might affect our WordPress site. And he just remembers us, the small fry, and our website that he’s not even working on and make sure that he’s also taking care of that. So that’s just above and beyond.

He’s built the website to be so user-friendly for us versus, we have to build the WordPress site to make it user-friendly and there’re plug-ins and it’s just kind of a nightmare to navigate. And there’s no customer service. It doesn’t exist for it. So I would say… I’ll spend 12 hours trying to solve one thing on the WordPress site versus 12 minutes sending an email to Kurt and receiving a response back five minutes later, “Oh. Fixed it for you.” So it’s really a huge difference.

He is so quick and he responds to you, he’s also very attentive to our capacity. And so there have been multiple times where I’ve been way too busy to take the time to… ‘Cause what I like to do is learn from him ‘cause he’ll explain to you what he’s doing, he’ll walk you through how to do it on your own in the future. But there have been multiple times when I’ve just been overwhelmed and way too busy. So I’ve just shot him a, “Please help me.” And he helps me and doesn’t push it and it’s just, ‘Oh. Got it done for you. Let me know if you need anything else. I’m here.” So he’s always attentive too to your capacity, which is really nice.

Kurt is always updating us about the updates that he does and about the patches that he puts in and the security that he is ensuring we have, it really makes it nice for us not to have to worry about that. Especially in today’s day and age where everybody’s trying to hack you.

They’re ‘yes men.’ They say yes to your fun ideas first or they say, “Let’s see how we can make that work.” Or, “Let’s do something similar.” Instead of, “Oh. That’s going to be too hard.” ‘Cause I’ve worked with a lot of people like contractors, developers who they say it’s going to be hard and it’s not necessarily in their forte and so they don’t want to do it, and they don’t even want to entertain it and they want to bring you down to their level. But I feel like Kurt always meets us at our level. ‘Cause obviously he’s way more talented than us, and he matches our energy. And it holds a lot of weight too, ‘cause he’s… You really trust him and his recommendations and what he’s saying.

Kayla Thomet
Manager Digital Communication
Oregon Business Council