The NetRaising Experience

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