Using the Right Tools for Non-Profit Websites with Andy Stitt

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that asks “How did you build that?” Today, my guest is Andy Stitt. Did I say that right? I never ask. I never ever asked.

Andy Stitt: Yes, you are one of the very few people I know who actually says it right on the first try.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. What do you usually get?

Andy Stitt: Oh, I’ve gotten every single variation of stick spit smut. And I’ve also got certain things that I probably can’t say on your PG-rated show.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. I, you know, well, my last name is Casabona, so I also get things I can’t say on the PG-rated show.

Andy Stitt: Nice.

Joe Casabona: Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Andy Stitt:Yep. Absolutely

Joe Casabona: Then we’re going to be talking about your resource, a WP for onprofits.org, WordPress for Non-Profits. So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and the kind of work you do, and then a little bit about your project?

Andy Stitt: Sure, absolutely. So I am a WordPress freelancer. I specialize in front-end development and also do some support work. I have worked for several different kinds of organizations. But, where my heart really is, is in the nonprofit world. And so I’m trying to build up as much of a nonprofit client base as possible. I worked in the nonprofit world for over a decade before I decided to go off on my own. And it’s something I’m very passionate about making the world a better place, activism, social justice. Basically, I’m a nice Jewish boy from the north of New York City. So I’m pretty sure that most of us nice Jewish boys from New York are kind of built that way. And so nonprofits are very near and dear to my heart. And so that’s why I decided to build WordPress for Non-Profits because I wanted a resource that nonprofits can go to really make the most of their WordPress website.

Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. So where are you originally from the north of New York City?

Andy Stitt: So, I’m originally from Northern Westchester county. Most people think that Northern Westchester is maybe a white Plains or Tarrytown, but you got to keep going and going and going up to the sawmill Parkway until you hit south Salem. It’s basically, I think a few miles south of the border with Dutchess County

Joe Casabona: Yes, yeah. So I’m originally from Orange County, New York so I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Andy Stitt: Oh, very nice.

Joe Casabona: It’s very important for our listeners to know that neither of us is from upstate New York.

Andy Stitt: Maybe Southern upstate New York, incredibly cellar.

Joe Casabona: So I know people from the city insist I’m from Upstate and I think north of Albany is like where it starts.

Andy Stitt: I agree.

Joe Casabona: So cool, very cool. So you’ve been doing a lot of work for nonprofits? I think this is a great area to be in because you can make a difference, right? And in one of the slack communities I’m a part of, we were having a conversation recently about how web developers or people in our field don’t necessarily make the difference, the same difference in the world that doctors or, you know, firefighters make. And, and I think that your passion and the work that you do with these organizations show that that’s not true, right? We can make a difference no matter what we do, right?

Andy Stitt: Yes, we absolutely can. And what I’ve noticed in my travels is that there are many nonprofits of all different sizes, all different budgets, all different causes. But most of them need some sort of technology help because most of them are either program administrators or fundraisers and so they’re not necessarily technology-type people. And so the type of help that they need is that we can build them something that helps them advance their mission and raise funds and recruit volunteers. But we can also help them just understand what they can do with their WordPress websites so that they can be more independent because a lot of them are dependent on either consultants or volunteers. And so if something happens, if somebody drops off the face of the earth, then they’re pretty much up a creek without a paddle. And so one of the things that we can do for them is to just teach them really simple things like, maintenance. Like they can do their own updates very easily so that they’re up to date with the latest and they don’t have to deal with the security vulnerabilities. And just, it there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that you can teach to nonprofits that will help them maintain their website over the long term and still collect their donations without anything negative happening to their website basically.

Joe Casabona: Awesome, yeah. And so, I think that we’re touching on something pretty important that we should kind of work out a little bit. And that’s the content that you have on your website is of course from the work that you’ve been doing from nonprofits for a while. But maybe we could talk a little bit about the content of the website and any research that you do to kind of stay current with making sure nonprofits get the information that they need to have a successful WordPress site.

Andy Stitt: Sure. Absolutely. So as far as the content that I have on the website, it’s basically everything, but teaching them how to try to be a developer. I’m not trying to teach them how to code or do anything like that because as someone who worked for a 501 C3 organization for nine years, and we expanded from two people to ten people, I understand that there isn’t a lot of time on their day and that there is a lot of work on their plate. And so I basically try to teach them as much of the basics as I possibly can, as far as how to create pages and posts, how to set up Google analytics, using a WordPress plugin, and why it’s important to set up Google analytics. And what I try to do with all of my work is trying to take a non-profit first approach. And what I mean by that is that I don’t use my WordPress experience to extol all of the virtues of WordPress and then try to shoehorn the non-profits’ needs into a WordPress website. What I try to do is try to take over a decade of experience in the nonprofit world and figure out how WordPress can help them.

So in one of the talks that I gave at WordCamp Baltimore on how to build a nonprofit WordPress website, I started off the conversation by telling them you are basically, you have to storytell, you have to tell really good stories about the people who benefit from your work. You can tell it for them, you can have them tell it themselves and then that will basically stir up enough emotions in your potential and current donors to give and then give again and then give again. And also to recruit volunteers because a lot of nonprofits need volunteers to help them execute their program work. And here’s how you do that in WordPress. You can do it using posts and pages, you can embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo, you can use pictures from your media library because visuals help to tell a really good story. And so I talked about that in my WordCamp Baltimore talk, and that stemmed from a blog post that I had on WordPress for nonprofits, which stemmed from a talk that I gave at the Lehigh Valley WordPress meetup, which I believe I saw you there.

So that’s the kind of thing that I try to do. And also a website maintenance 101 types of thing, because the last thing a nonprofit wants to have to do is to deal with a broken website or a hacked website. And in my experience with Philly GiveCamp last year, which is basically a volunteer hackathon that helps nonprofits get free WordPress work, it’s not always WordPress, but most of the websites are built on WordPress. So either a brand new website or we’re enhancing their existing website. And so I was working with one organization and they just needed a new section of their website. They already had a WordPress website that was built at that hackathon the year before. And so they just needed a new section. And so we built them a few new pages and just put the content up there. And what I noticed was that there were 15 updates that needed to happen. All of their plugins were out of date, their WordPress core was out of date, their theme was a custom build so that was fine, but everything else was out of date. And I just asked them, “When was the last time you updated this?” And they told me “Somebody updated it for us at the previous year’s Philly GiveCamp.” And so they went an entire year without updating anything. So before we did any work, I very carefully brought them up to date so that nothing broke. And so I’m sure that’s not just them. I’m sure it’s very common in nonprofit organizations because they don’t have a lot of tech people on staff a lot of the time. So some more of the content that I try to put out there is here are some simple ways that you can keep your website up to date. You can use a backup plugin to easily make backups. So when you see the update indicators, most of the time it’s okay to just make the update and therefore you’re up to date and all that good stuff. So that’s what I mean by the whole low-hanging fruit. Let’s just get them back to the basics so that they can maintain their website over the long term and that will allow them to ultimately do all the good in the world that they need to do.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. That’s great. And I want to ask a follow-up question, right? Because you touched on something that I preach maybe is probably not the right word, but I definitely talk about it a lot. And that’s empathizing with your client or your students when you’re teaching them something. It’s maybe a little bit easier for you to empathize because you have that non-profit experience. What if somebody wants to build a website for a nonprofit organization without 10 years of experience? How could they kind of put themselves in the shoes of the nonprofit organization?

Andy Stitt: Honestly, I think it’s as simple as just getting to know them. Whenever you’re, if you’re taking on like a brand new nonprofit, honestly, it’s just like a discovery phase when they’re, you know, they’re learning about you, but more so you’re learning about them. You’re learning about their needs and their organizational goals and where they’re trying to go. And while, you know, I think it’s probably more than just answering the nonprofit, answering the questions on whatever questionnaire you have. If you happen to talk with them, either in person or over Skype or whatever, if you can just pick up on things that they say on their behaviors, just be observant. Really do your absolute best to get to know them, to see what level they’re at. And also the answers that they give to your questions should be, get more questions from you using the Socratic method, I suppose, to keep asking more and more questions until you know them almost as well as they know themselves. And so then you can empathize with their situation, you can see what kind of tech resources they have, you can tell whether or not they’re nervous about this new website and if they’re going to break it and 99% of them are nervous. So you can probably just go in there with that assumption, but otherwise, yeah, just listen to them and really, really listen to them. Don’t wait your turn to speak. Really listen to them and get to know them. And that’s, as far as I’m concerned, the best way to empathize with them.

Joe Casabona: That’s excellent. So, you know, going beyond more than just what you might find in an RFP, you really want to get to know them as the organization, not just them as their website. So I really liked that. I liked that you mentioned the Socratic method. I went to a Jesuit university and so we talked all about Socrates there. I will have a link in the show notes to most of the stuff Andy just mentioned into this part of the show as well as something called the five why’s, which I think is kind of a marketing pitch on the Socratic method. Basically keep asking them why until you get to the real answer, you know? So, um, why didn’t you update your website? Well, I don’t go to the admin, right? Why don’t you go to the admin and I was worried about this and then you eventually get to the real answer, so.

Andy Stitt: Yes, precisely.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, so that’s excellent. So you had this resource WordPress for nonprofits, you have a podcast, a blog, a resource area. And that stuff stems from you doing work currently with nonprofits, right? So you’re a freelance developer and you work primarily on non-profit projects. Is that right?

Andy Stitt: Yes. Since I’m still pretty new in the space, I’m still building up the nonprofit client base. I have a couple of consulting clients that I work with on an ad hoc basis. And I am currently working on an actual website build and all of my other work is, I guess what I call the white, the off-brand work where I do. But basically, agencies hire me for overflow work and stuff like that but my heart is with nonprofits. And so that’s what I’m primarily trying to stick with.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. And I like to, you know, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the community. I met you through the Lehigh Valley Meetup and then we saw each other again at a WordCamp, Baltimore, or in the general same area where I’m part of a mastermind group. Do you, do you talk with anybody, either contemporary of yours, maybe people who are also in the WordPress, nonprofit space, or other nonprofit organizations to get ideas and things like that?

Andy Stitt: So I have talked with actually, when I started producing the WordPress for nonprofits podcast, for me, that was a good excuse, not to just build a resource for nonprofits, but also to get maybe some free consulting and brainstorming ideas for myself. There’s a particular organization called the Non-Profit Technology Network and I actually was a member back in the day when I was still working in the nonprofit world. And I thought, “Oh wow! This is a place where I can certainly find other people in the space.” Maybe even client leads, but, people who do, who use WordPress, who develop on WordPress. And so they managed to basically get me my first set of guests. And so I talked with several freelancers who worked primarily with non-profits, including my friend, Mark Wiley, who does a lot of work with nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest. And he also has a WordPress for nonprofits website. But since there are so few of them out there, there’s room for more than one, and we may have slightly different angles on things. But, yeah, I talk with as many people as I can in the space and I find that there aren’t a real whole lot of people in the space like it’s not something. It’s not like the entrepreneurial or content marketing blog space where it’s saturated and everyone is trying to do it. So there is an audience there, so it’s certainly worth pursuing, but there’s also plenty of room for growth in there too and plenty of room for a player like me to enter the space, if that makes sense.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, definitely. I mean it’s a good niche to be in. WordPress is continually growing in popularity and it’s becoming a household name and, you know, once something becomes, once your clients start asking for something, that’s how, you know, you’re in the right market, right? Responsive design was a thing for a lot longer than clients started asking for it. So I want to touch on something you mentioned about that It’s not a saturated space, right? And I think that perhaps for a lot of people, nonprofit work has the stigma that doing work for a nonprofit organization means it’s also not profitable for you. Can you speak a little bit about that? I know like I’m just like hitting you with that question, but can you speak to that a little bit? Like how do you go about charging a nonprofit organization and does it mean that you have to charge less, you know, to do the project?

Andy Stitt: Right, absolutely. I get hit with that question all the time whenever I tell people I specialize in WordPress consulting for nonprofits. They think that I’m chasing some sort of a race to the bottom and that I want an empty bank account. But honestly, there are thousands of nonprofit organizations nationally and internationally, and they are all different sizes, they are all different budgets. The American Cancer Society certainly isn’t a low-budget nonprofit. And so there are just lots of different organizations of various different sizes. So there is no trying to charge them less that really just isn’t necessary. You just have to find a good fit for your particular skill set. And right now, since I’m a solo freelancer, I have been pursuing leads that fit between, let’s say a $2,000 and $5,000 per site budget, because I am capable of delivering a 2K to 5k website. I’m not necessarily yet at the 10K or the 20K product but I am in that range in the 2-5k range where I can deliver something good. And I know that there are lots of nonprofits that have the budget for that.

And one of the resources that I like to use is I like to build websites on the Genesis framework. And so when you use the Genesis framework, a lot of the development work is already done for you. And so you’re basically just making a custom Genesis child theme for the client. And so you already have about 10,000 hours of work that’s already been done. So then you can just get down to the good stuff, because if I were building a $2,000 website completely from scratch, then I would be losing money on the project. And so I use resources that are appropriate for that size and audience so I can deliver it within a good amount of time. And so that it’s profitable for me and they like it, they can use it. So it’s just kind of a win-win for everyone. You just have to understand who you’re working with and that the word nonprofit doesn’t mean running at a loss. It simply means that it isn’t the owner’s equity, its net assets, whatever the assets minus the liabilities are our net assets, and they are not distributed to any kind of shareholders. That’s all that nonprofit means. It doesn’t mean that they’re broke.

Joe Casabona: Right. And that’s exactly right. You know, and that’s, it doesn’t mean that you have no money in the bank. It means that you do something very specific with the money that you have in the bank. And it’s just like any other business, right? Cause you can, you know, you can go to a pizza shop and they might not have a whole lot of money for a website. Or you can go to Domino’s, which apparently has tons of money for a website because you can text them a pizza emoji and get it delivered to your house. Like that’s, that’s not in the 2-5K range, you know? So it’s there just like any other business. So, anybody who’s thinking about or has shied away from doing work for a nonprofit organization because you think the nonprofit means you don’t get to profit either, that’s just simply not true.

So we are, so we’re over halfway in this interview and I want to talk about a specific project that you mentioned while we weren’t recording. And I want to talk about how you went about building that? So maybe I’ll let you introduce the project and some of the challenges and how you created this site for your clients?

Andy Stitt: Yes, absolutely. So this particular project is for the Neuroblastoma Children’s Cancer Society and they basically, they are an all-volunteer non-profit and, they raise money for cancer research for neuroblastoma, which, I really wasn’t aware of neuroblastoma specifically. But after looking at their website, it’s a really awful disease that takes the lives of a lot of children each year. And so the work that they’re doing is very important and they ran into the situation where their old website was built, just using nothing but flat files. So in HTML, CSS, and PHP, just nothing but flat files, and whoops the people who were maintaining it for them, can’t do it anymore. And it’s an all-volunteer board organization and none of them are technical. And so ultimately what I’m doing is I’m now building them a site on WordPress. We are making some design enhancements, but my main goal it is that they can have as much control of it as possible. And since they’re all volunteers, they’re not necessarily going to want to have someone on a retainer agreement to do their maintenance work. And so all of the tools that I’m using to build the website are basically trying to put as much power in their hands as humanly possible. So if they need to make any changes to anything on their site that they’ll be able to do so.

Joe Casabona: Nice. So I know that, well, you said that you’re a big fan of Genesis. Are you using Genesis for the framework here?

Andy Stitt: I’m actually not using Genesis. Genesis is very developer-friendly and since none of them are developers, I decided to go with the Divi theme. It’s not normally something that I decide to go with because I love Genesis and I can bend it to my will. But I’ve actually used the Divi theme on a previous client project because she bought the license for it and she wants to use it. And I found that as far as page builder themes go, it’s actually very good. It’s actually, it’s very solid, it gets the job done. So if they want to make any kind of changes to the designer, if they want to add a new layout, if they want to add a new section then the Divi theme being a page builder theme, it’ll allow them to do it via drag and drop. And they also have a, what they call a Wall of Fame that they want to pour over to their website. And basically the Wall of Fame, our people are survivors. They’re all children. They’re either survivors of the disease, or they are those who succumbed to the disease. And they basically just have information about them, their names, their favorite foods, their favorite color, where they went last on vacation, which by the way, when it comes to nonprofit marketing, showing the faces of the disease, that’s what makes people want to give money and volunteer their time, etc., etc. So it’s really, it’s brilliant and sincere marketing tool so that they can get people to help them continue to do their good work.

And so as far as the Wall of Fame is concerned, I am probably going to wind up developing a custom post type for the wall of fame members so they can easily enter the new wall of fame members in there. And I haven’t gotten this far into the project yet, but I’m going to see if there’s maybe a plugin, either like pods or a custom post type UI that I can install because I can just give them, I can write them a custom post type plugin. But they’re not developers so maybe if I give them a tool that they can use to adjust the custom post types as they need or to add new ones as they need, then that will serve them better.

Joe Casabona: Great. And so that is, you know, I’m a developer, you’re a developer, Divi is kind of a curse word among developers, right? Like you say, Divi to a developer and they’re like, how could you do that, right? But I think this is the perfect use case, right? This is an organization that’s all volunteers, they need anything to make it as easy as possible for them to update their website. It doesn’t matter that their content is married to the theme a little bit because they’re probably not going to be changing their theme all that often, if at all. So this is, you know, it just goes to show that everything has a use case, right? You can’t just write off something and say never ever use it, right. And I know people will come back to me and say, “Well, you can use the beaver builder theme and the beaver builder plugin, but Divi works here.” And it, it sounds like it works exceedingly well.

Andy Stitt: Yes. It definitely works very well. As far as the criticisms from other developers that Divi is a curse word until they start paying my bills. I am going to rush off those criticisms. In this case, I always think of the organization that I’m building the website for, what is the best solution for them even if it’s not something that I would personally use or would personally recommend. As long as it’s good, as long as it gets the job done. Because I’m not going to build their site using a page builder that I don’t think is good. And then I think it is going to be very problematic. I don’t, they may never need to change their theme again. And if they do need to change their theme down the road, if the content being in shortcodes, instead of being in the editor, if that turns out to be a real problem and they’ll cross that bridge when they get there. But I expect this particular iteration of the website for to last for several years. And so they need something right now that they can change. And right now all they have is a website that’s built on flat files that they can’t do anything with. And so there is no, don’t use Divi argument for me. They need something right now. And so I’m going to give them something that helps them right now and will serve them well over the long term.

Joe Casabona: Perfect. That’s great. And so where we’re banging up against time here, and I usually like to ask, like what transformations has your product gone through and what are your plans for the future? And if you have answers ready for that, you know, feel free to add them. But I want to add before I ask you what your trade secret is? I want to ask you, what would you say are the three, top three things that a nonprofit organization should have? I know that like you should talk to each one and you should get their input and each one has individual needs. But I imagine that a lot of nonprofit organizations have very similar needs. So I’d love to hear what, like, if you’re making a nonprofit website, these are three things you absolutely need to have.

Andy Stitt: Sure. Absolutely. So I would say that you need to have as much in the way of maintenance plugins installed as possible. Like that’s a really big thing that I preach to them. So, backup plugins, that could be a backup buddy, updraft plus whatever works best for them in their budgets, security, either a word fence or iTheme security, whatever, whatever works for them. So that’s definitely a big thing.

And I suppose, the second thing would be a theme that would allow them to put together something that is visually pleasing. Because with, I mean, any website you need to have it look good so that it doesn’t drive people away. And so that it attracts them to take the action that you want them to take. And in this case, It’s almost all visual with non-profits because it’s something that people can see and even something that people can hear if video content helps, but something that helps to tug on the heartstrings and elicit emotions from the donors. So a theme that helps them build a visually pleasing website.

And I guess, actually, yeah, probably the third thing would be good documentation as you can possibly get, whether it be a WP 101 videos or something that you create yourself, something that they can go to and really just be confident in using their website so that they know how to use it. And so that they take care of it, so that they’re motivated to take care of it and confident in their ability to do so that they don’t just let time slip away with their incredibly busy schedules and then suddenly their sites aren’t updated and then something bad happens. So I would say those are my top three.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. And I’m happy to say that that was not at all the answer I was expecting and I’m very happy to hear that. So that is, I just learned a ton, like right there, you know? And so that is fantastic. So do you have any trade secrets for us?

Andy Stitt: The only trade secret, I can think of is, it is something that you like to deliver in a lot of your talks, which is, be empathetic when it comes to nonprofit organizations because they are in the business of empathy. They are in the business of helping people because they feel their pain. And because they know that the work is important. And so you should, if you’re a developer that wants to work with nonprofits, you should feel the nonprofit’s pain. And by extension, the people that they help, you will be able to feel their pain too, so that you’re ultimately able to help them and give them exactly what they need.

Joe Casabona: That’s wonderful. I, well, there’s, I can’t, there’s nothing I can do to sum that up better.

Andy Stitt: So I will drop my mic.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Andy, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Andy Stitt: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me on.

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