Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly
Visit Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly
Nonprofit profile
For 37 years Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly has helped isolated and lonely elders in the Twin Cities. They are committed to reducing social and emotional isolation, addressing loneliness and mental health difficulties and promoting well-being and independence in people age 60+ facing an otherwise solitary lifestyle through social programs, transportation and mental health services.
Team profile
Team Ruby.MN formed from an existing from the Ruby.MN group that meets regularly to discuss their common interest in developing web applications in Ruby. Little Brothers gave them yet another reason to hang out together after the Overnight Website Challenge. “They invited our team to their yearly ‘volunteer appreciation’ event and called us out,” said volunteer web developer Justin Grammens.
Objectives
“I saw an article about Sierra Bravo and the Overnight Website Challenge in the Mpls/St. Paul Business Journal, and then when I received an email passed on from another nonprofit that told about the Challenge I took a harder look at it,” said Kathleen O’Brien, Director of Communications at Little Brothers — Friends of the Elderly. “My first reaction was, ‘We need this!’ Then I met with the staff, told them about it, and said I wanted to ‘go for it.’ They gave their full support and helped dream with me about what a new site could have.
“Our website lacked most of the things that make a website something people want to visit,” said O’Brien. “We did have basic information on it and the ability to make online donations, but it was cumbersome to navigate and maintain, and it presented a negative image rather than a positive one. It also was missing a very important component in that it had no information for our clients, only for our donors and volunteers.”
Volunteer programmer Justin Grammens thought the Challenge sounded like “a good chance to meet new developers who are as passionate about software as myself to give up their weekend to work on the site. Plus, it was a challenge and I like taking on challenges.”
New website wish list: an inspirational site to motivate visitors to get involved and learn about the challenges facing the growing elderly population; welcome elders who need company; encourage volunteers; motivate online donors; serve as a resource on elder issues; reflect the stories of elders and educate people about aging and isolation; enhance brand and cultivate image; online registration for training and orientation sessions; easily maintained by limited internal staff; allow for cause-related e-commerce; media section; blog.
Solutions
“The team was great — very friendly and open and seemed genuinely interested and connected to my nonprofit,” said O’Brien. “We spent the first hour looking at our current website and going over my wish list for the new one. Then the captain grabbed a flip chart and began doling out assignments to team members.”
Grammens thought Little Brothers’ former website did not convey the message of the organization, and was also a bit dull. He said the greatest challenge was creating a full CMS and credit card processing component to the site. “We used a Ruby on Rails plug-in to help us and luckily the existing API that was used by the credit card donations module was a web service API, and we were able to call it from Ruby, just like they called it from C# on their existing site,” said Grammens. “They now have better tracking of the online donations, as well as a richer content management system, a Googlemaps application and easy management of events listings.”
O’Brien did not get any sleep at the Overnight Website Challenge. “None whatsoever,” she said, which both amazed and amused her friends and colleagues. “I got a whole lot of: ‘A whole weekend without any sleep?’ ‘In a room with that many nerds?’ and ‘How could they possibly design a whole website in one weekend?’”
“Seven out of eight of us I think went the distance and didn’t get any sleep,” said Grammens of the collective shut-eye logged by his Ruby.MN team. “I lived off of soda pop, Red Bull and candy.”
O’Brien’s advice to future nonprofits: “Stockpile your sleep before the event if you can, dress in super comfy clothes, and take at least two days off afterward.
“Seriously, though,” she continued, “my advice would be to develop an outline of what you what on your website and fill your flash drive with every bit of information you have about your organization (marketing materials, photos you want to use, forms you want on your site, etc.) And be sure to have composed the copy you want for each page so it can be entered in as the site is being built. Also, review other websites (both nonprofit and for profit) and bring examples of what you like and don’t like to your team.”
Little Brothers got an extra, unexpected freebie from one of the eight volunteers on her team. “One surprise was receiving GovDelivery email updates — for life. One of our team members works there and he asked if they would provide it for us free for as long as we want it.”
O’Brien offered a grim assessment of what Little Brothers could have done to improve their website had they not been selected for the F1 Challenge: “Nothing. We had used up the small amount of website budget we had for the year in adding the ability to accept online donations, so we wouldn’t have been able to even consider doing anything else.”
One built-in solution available to all participants was the opportunity to walk away from their computer for a few precious moments and blow off some steam by playing Guitar Hero. “Of course, my team exceeded my expectations in their rock star abilities — and their support of me (a neophyte) joining them,” said O’Brien, a first-time Guitar Hero player. “What a blast!”
Results
“Everything is better — the overall design, navigation for the user, and maintenance,” said O’Brien. “It now presents a more positive picture of aging rather than a negative one. The team worked together well, and they made me feel a part of it immediately. They spent time asking for the organization’s needs and for what we wanted to portray on the new site. I even got to help with testing when they finished components. One of the judges told me she thought at first I was one of the members of the design team because I was working so closely with them.”
“I was very impressed by the commitment of the Little Brothers organization in staying overnight and bringing in an additional person from their tech team,” said volunteer programmer Lars Klevlin. “After the project was over, there was still a fair amount of follow-up to do. I’m very thankful that my team spent a lot of time to get the site fully launched.”
“Our website has become one of our primary communication tools,” said O’Brien. “Before the makeover, we didn’t even want to send people to our website. It was embarrassing. Now, we’re anxious to push people to the site — through our quarterly newsletter, the volunteer e-newsletter, our appeals, etc. It’s also easy to maintain internally.”
Grammens cited good friendships and learning from everyone on the team as the most gratifying part of his experience. “I was glad to get a chance to work with people in a real world setting who I might not have worked with.”
“What Sierra Bravo provided is such a wonderful gift to the nonprofit community,” said O’Brien. “A website is a necessity for nonprofits today, and I don’t know of any foundations that will grant funding for websites. I’m thankful for this opportunity, and for Sierra Bravo and my team for providing not only a new website, but such a great overall experience as well.”
“All the feedback from everyone is terrific. The site is so much more person-centered and usable. Of course, they all say what a great job I did, but I keep reminding them that without Sierra Bravo and the team, we’d be back to square one.”
