The Website That Ate the Organization

Monday, November 21. 2005

What happens when a non-profit's website grows in reach and effectiveness to the point where it eclipses all other activities of that organization? This isn't a hypothetical question: many non-profits, if they took a dispassionate survey of their various activities (web, books, conferences, meetings), and truly weighed the effectiveness of the web (which routinely reaches tens of thousands) and other programs (which generally reach far fewer) would come to the conclusion that the web is possibly the only thing the organization should focus on.

So what does a dot-org look like that focuses only on the web? It looks like a dot-com: eBay, for example, has an entire organization built up to care for and feed a web site. Sure, eBay hosts conferences, and prints publications, and holds meetings, but the principal identity of eBay is the web. Similarly, the principal identity of most non-profits should be (and likely will be) the web. This will represent a dramatic psychological transition for organizations, but any review of web metrics and trends makes it clear -- most non-profits will be eaten by their websites, if they haven't been already.

Posted by Jim Cashel in Strategy at 23:52 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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I'm not sure I agree.

Ebay's primary mission isn't maintaining the ebay.com web site -- it's aggregating buyers and sellers and facilitating auctions. The web site just happens to be the most efficient way available to do that.

Similarly, the mission of most NPOs is to effect change from the status quo on some issue or other (or, for a few, to _preserve_ the status quo; abortion-rights groups, for example).

The problem there is that nobody has yet come up with a way to introduce radical efficiencies in this process by using online tools, the way Ebay did with auctions. There have been many attempts, but I don't know of any clear success stories yet.

Someone's gonna have to come up with that "big idea" before we see NPOs that live entirely on the web, IMHO.

#1 Jason Lefkowitz (Homepage) on 2005-11-22 10:02 (Reply)

Whoever figures out how to harness the web's efficiencies will be able to make a huge impact with very little resources. Unfortunately, I think most NPO's are focused on how they are donig things today to rethink how to make the web do a lot of that for them or to help them do it more efficiently.

#2 Oscar (Homepage) on 2005-11-22 17:17 (Reply)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.