Ning and Non-Profits: A Match Made in the Cloud

Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday, we announced that we were launching the website for a new non-profit, Propel Wisconsin Innovation.  I developed the site myself, but what really impressed me was the ease with which I was able to do it and the amazing value that Ning brings to the table, especially for a non-profit.

Features

Ning provides out-of-the-box social networks complete with member registration and profiles, blogs, RSS feeds, forums, events, groups, photos, videos, music, chat, and activity feeds.  As far as look and feel, different themes can be selected and customized fairly easily.  There is also an additional layer of customization in defining styles via CSS.  I did have to use this a bit more than I hoped, but with a bit of CSS knowledge it wasn't too bad.

HTML can be used to layout information in text boxes which can be dragged and dropped just like any other item.  Ning is also part of Open Social, letting you integrate third party widgets such as news feeds, sports scores, or just about anything.  If you require functionality that isn't available, it can almost certainly be implemented via an Open Social app or widget.

Cost

We use three premium services, for a total of $55 a month.  The services allow us to use our own domain name and remove the ads and promotional links to Ning.  To someone unfamiliar with Ning, we look very much like a home-grown site.  And had we been, there's a really good chance it would have cost us $5K-$10K to have all of this built and integrated, even with existing products such as phpBB.  With that kind of budget, we can host the site for well over 10 years at Ning's current price.

The only other costs associated with creating the site were the domain registration ($7.50 a year at GoDaddy) and the image for the header (~$15 at iStockPhoto).  I did already have copies of Photoshop and Illustrator so I'm not factoring that in.  Also, we're only using email forwarding for now.  GoDaddy provides email services at less that $2 a month so it's pretty minimal to run an entire website without having to host it yourself.

Benefits

The cost itself is an obvious benefit.  However, the fact that a non-profit can operate autonomously, sans web and email server, is a huge win.  You also get a lot of support with your products.  GoDaddy and Ning both have their own support but you have a large community of developers behind you as well.  In addition, the site itself will be fairly easy to maintain and because it's hosted with Ning your uptime is going to be fantastic.

What's Missing

It's pretty easy to add new pages in Ning but there is a lack of any sort of content management system.  The place where this really makes a difference is on the homepage where you have custom text boxes.  Removing them deletes the content permanently.  This could be achieved with some data export tools, which Ning should have anyway to pull data out of the forums.

Another feature that I'd like to see is the ability to create default user profiles.  The user profile is defined by the theme, but I'd like to be able to add widgets by default and rearrange things.  As far as I'm aware, this isn't possible.

The text boxes could also use some better visual formatting tools.  Having to write out HTML tables is a pain.  Lastly, Ning really needs to implement two-column themes (you can do it via CSS, but it's a hack).  All in all though, Ning did what I wanted it to.

Alternatives

There are a few options out there for doing some of this in different ways.  Change.org provides a lot of the same features listed above and is targetd at non-profits.  It doesn't seem that there's support for hosting it on your own domain though.  Wild Apricot has its own membership software and website creator.  It's prices are comparable to Ning and there seem to be more options for page layouts but I haven't used it

If you went the open source route, you could take a look at Drupal and Wordpress, but now you'll probably have to host it yourself, and you're losing a lot of the benefit that the white-label social networks give you.  More importantly, you need a developer, which might not be in the cards for a non-profit.

The Bottom Line

I've been doing website development off and on for about 10 years now.  I'm sure this means that I'm a bit more able to put a site like this together than most people but I can also tell you that I've been recommending Ning to everyone recently.  It took me two days to design and build a site that would have taken at least a month otherwise, probably wouldn't have looked as nice, and would have had a ton of bugs.  If you're thinking about creating a website for a non-profit, go check out http://www.propelwi.com and you can see the results yourself.

Comments

[Pete Prodoehl]

You assume that Ning will be around for 10 years, and will not raise it's price, and continue to provide what you need. Open source is also about freedom... if I chose to use Drupal, the open source license gives me certain guarantees and protections you don't get choosing a provider like Ning. I did notice with the Propel site, most of the content seems locked up behind a sign-up screen. Is that by choice, or how the platform works?

All that said, I can see how a platform like Ning would be attractive to a non-profit. But I also know many open source advocates who believe in helping out non-profits, and always hope those two groups can find a common ground between them.

[Dale Beermann]

It's true that Ning may not be around forever, but considering their growth I think it'll be for a while. Even if their prices increase, I thin it's still worth while considering how fast and easy it is to get something off the ground. As long as you aren't paying $500 a month, which I don't think will ever happen, there's a lot of value there.

Ning does give you the ability to restrict access to parts of the site as well. It's not as granular as I'd like (hence, lack of freedom), but it isn't too bad. I need to figure out how to open up things like the "Who We Are" page.

I'm in fact an open source advocate myself. But for a lot of non-profits without technical resources or contacts, it's not easy to implement. For most companies it really doesn't make sense to use Ning, and I'm all for going the open source route.

[Angus Parker]

If you are a non-profit you might want to check out WiserEarth Groups. It's free, easy to use, and puts your group and its content in a more appropriate context than Ning - social justice and environmental restoration NGOs. Plus the functionality is basically the same. Already more than 1,000 Groups are up and running.