The NetRaising Experience

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