American Civil Liberties Union: Web Strategy
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) engaged Beaconfire Consulting and Donordigital to identify Internet opportunities, and to create an actionable strategy for leveraging the organization’s Web presence to further communications, fundraising, and advocacy goals.
The Challenge: The ACLU relies heavily on its Web site, www.aclu.org, to inform and engage individuals about its work defending civil liberties across a wide range of issues. With more than 10,000 pages, the ACLU’s content-rich site has become increasingly difficult for contributors to manage and visitors to navigate. At the same time, the organization recognized it could take better advantage of new strategies and techniques for online communications, fundraising, and advocacy. Before undertaking any systems changes, the ACLU wished to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for its online program.
The Solution: Over 10 weeks, a cross-departmental team at the ACLU worked with Beaconfire to:
- Establish clear and measurable objectives for the online program;
- Prioritize the most important audiences for reaching these goals;
- Evaluate the organization’s communications, advocacy, and fundraising activities in light of nonprofit best practices;
- Define Internet programs that the ACLU could adopt and measure the costs and benefits of those programs; and
- Conduct a gap analysis against existing systems and resources and make recommendations on how to close the gaps.
As an outcome to these workshops, Beaconfire and Donordigital developed an Internet Action Plan that:
- Provided the business case for making changes to how the ACLU approaches online fundraising, advocacy, and communications;
- Defined a new way of engaging constituents through integrated campaigns and improved online relationship building;
- Developed a content strategy for the organization’s vast information repository; and
- Outlined phases of work the organization should undertake — including specific projects, timetables, and budgets — for making changes to the ACLU infrastructure.
The Internet Action Plan served as a decision-making document for the organization. Following discussions of the plan with senior management, the ACLU immediately moved ahead with the first phase of recommendations. As part of this phase, Beaconfire has been retained to conduct an RFP process and software evaluation of Web-based content management systems (CMS) and constituent relationship management (CRM) solutions. With Beaconfire’s guidance, the ACLU has identified new opportunities for its Internet efforts and adopted the plan for putting in place the technology, processes, and staff resources needed to realize the ACLU’s online potential.