NetRaising’s Advantage Program
Proudly serving the nonprofit and education communities since 2004
You represent the best and brightest in your vocation, and hold a highly demanding and critical role in the organization and community you serve.
You work within your strengths and areas of competence and surround yourself with experts for everything else.
At NetRaising, we understand this. We know that given enough time, with absolutely nothing else to do but study the inner-workings of the Internet, browsers, mobile devices, front-end coding, and analytics, you could likely figure out how to create and support a dynamic, responsive, interactive website on your own. But your time and skills are better invested in other things.
NetRaising brings that web-savvy person to your team in a strategic cost-effective way, so you and your team can stay focused on the things that matter most to your organization.
NetRaising’s Advantage Program Includes:
- 1. One-on-one software training and coaching for primary digital content managers
NetRaising trains, coaches, and is the go-to digital-publishing resource for over 100 content managers, and we train new people every month.Email or call your assigned NetRaising Consultant with your questions, curiosities, and concerns. We’re here to support and empower you, and we believe that you’ll be more successful on the web when you keep in touch with us.
- 2. Publishing coverage when your primary content manager is away or in transition
Digital content managers lead dynamic lives. They get promoted to other roles within your organization, they take time off to climb mountains, finish college, have a child, participate in rescue missions, and sometimes they even leave your organization. NetRaising understands this and we support your organization during these transitions.
- We provide content updates and publishing support during employee vacations and transitions
- We’ll train other staff/volunteers to become a temporary or permanent content manager
- We’ll provide security lock-out services when your content manager’s employment is terminated
- We’ll get you through the transition and then train your newly-appointed content manager in all web software systems supported by NetRaising
- 3. We provide a foundation of fully supported Free, Open Source, Open Architecture, and licensed Commercial software
Choosing the right software can save an organization hundreds of human hours and tens of thousands of dollars over the lifespan of a website. This is why we fully consider the long-term, total cost of ownership when selecting software and developing your website.
- 4. Regular and security-related time-sensitive software updates
The rules and methods of online security are constantly changing, and today’s best practices may become tomorrow’s vulnerabilities. That’s why NetRaising performs regular and time-sensitive software and configuration updates to your supported website software, helping you to prevent most potential security-related issues before they cause disruptions to your site and your organization.We also update our clients’ software once or twice a year in order to prevent workarounds some clients may end up using due to the occasional software bug. In addition, these updates bring our clients access to new software features and functionality sooner.
- 5. Telephone, video-call and email support with your assigned NetRaising Consultant, and backup support when that person is not available
The consultant who built your site will most likely be the same person who trains you, coaches you, and works with you on website improvements and is your primary point of contact for all things having to do with your website. When your primary consultant is not available, you have an assigned secondary contact who may also assist you and who will keep your consultant “in the loop” about any changes made to your site. All support is provided directly by members of the NetRaising team.
- 6. Post-launch website development
Change happens, and your website needs to keep up with your dynamic organization. We understand this, and our consultants are here to work with your team when a new need arises.
A big part of NetRaising’s regular work each week involves creating, adding, revising, and removing features and functionality to/from client websites. When your organization participates in our Advantage Program, there’s no additional cost for these types of updates.
Traditionally, nonprofit organizations didn’t always budget well for post-launch site changes, so we rolled the cost of providing them into our Advantage Program. Now when it’s time to add a new feature to your website, we can start work on it faster, rather than discuss the cost of it, write up a bid, wait for you to get approval… etc.
The Advantage Program is a much nicer, faster, and efficient way of doing things than a traditional hourly-based maintenance plan.
- 7. Reserved Client Hosting
Most of the time*, NetRaising will host your website. We do this for a few good reasons:
- We want to help lower the size of your website’s carbon footprint.
- We can resolve issues with your website much faster when we know firsthand about the health of the host server and what its settings are.
- We can help prevent security issues from festering on your neighbor’s websites.
- We can help keep your hosting costs down. In fact, we don’t charge for hosting if your organization is in our Advantage Program.
*Some clients have special hosting needs outside of NetRaising’s hosting, and we work alongside those organizations in choosing an appropriate host for their needs.
- 8. We're your advocate
That old saying about how there is strength in numbers: it often proves true. We’re in contact with our major software providers almost weekly, where we strongly advocate for our clients.
Sometimes a large software company will ignore a single user’s challenges, but when we can pitch an idea for a software improvement that would help dozens of nonprofits, these companies listen, and good changes can happen.
We maintain good relationships with all our major software vendors, and we have the time to work on software challenges along with them.
- 9. Organic SEO Consulting
NetRaising has been helping organizations with Organic Search Engine Optimization for over a dozen years. We’ve also helped countless organizations to avoid falling prey to manipulative SEO salespeople and fads.
We build a lot of automatic SEO tools into each website, and we coach our webmasters on proven techniques that can help with search engine placement. We do this because we think it’s important for all web publishers to understand how SEO actually works, vs. what often passes for SEO by some.
- 10. Online Forms Software Support and Integration
We provide and support Machform online forms software for all our clients.
Machform is a feature-rich, modern online form application that gives our clients direct access to drag-and-drop online form creation and editing with dozens of advanced features.
- 11. Bulk Mail Support
We fully support the use of Campaign Monitor’s bulk-email systems and services. We also provide basic level support for those clients using other popular bulk-email systems including MailChimp, Emma, Constant Contact, and others.
- 12. Proactive website maintenance and education
We’re not big fans of software or technology drama. So we regularly reach out to clients to discuss software they use that may have a potential for future issues. When we can, we try to take care of issues before they happen.
Prevention may include fixing a technical issue or the need for a coding change—if so, our team simply takes care of it. But sometimes it means providing a bit of education for someone on your team whose creative solution to a computer- or online-related task exposes a person or your organization to potential disruption or harm.
We frequently publish educational articles in our blog focused on preventing potential issues regarding our clients’ own computers, software, and other tools they use when online.