The NetRaising Experience

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