Non-Profit Tech Blog

This tutorial is for the very tiny nonprofit. Imagine you’re the one-person staff of a nonprofit. Your org is young, you’re smart and organized but don’t have a lot of tech savvy (yet). This tutorial is for you to get up on the Web quickly. You’ve just figured out you wanted to start your nonprofit but you have no idea where to begin. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get your domain name through GoDaddy.

2. Get your e-mail infrastructure up and running from Google Apps for Domains.

3. Get your web site up and running over at Wordpress.com.

And the great thing? It’s going to cost you about $8 a year. I promise. Ok $9 a year if you want to keep your registration details off the Web.

This blog post and others following after it will be about those three steps. I’ll try to get these all up by the end of this week. I’m planning on taking these articles and dumping them into a Wiki so people can add their own comments in the future.

But first, let’s talk about domain names. You need one. It’s the stamp that shows that you’re a real organization. When your e-mail ends in an aol.com or a yahoo.com domain name, you’re not going to be seen as serious or web-savvy. If your name ends in a gmail.com account, you’re getting close. However, it’s best to have your e-mail address end in a yourorgnamehere.org.

So the first thing that has to happen is you getting a domain name. The old way to do this was to go through Network Solutions which for years was the only place you could get a .com or .org domain in the United States. You can now get domain names at a whole slew of other sites. GoDaddy is a good alternative.

There is one problem though. There’s a good chance that your organization’s name has already been taken. You’re going to have to find acceptable alternatives. For the purposes of this tutorial, do NOT use any site bybut GoDaddy or Network Solutions to look for a domain name. Less scrupulous web sites will take your domain name searches and register YOUR domain names thus forcing you to pay an additional fee in order to use it. That practice is called “domain name front running”. Yeah, the Internet sucks sometimes, this is one of those moments.

Before you get a domain name, you will need:

• A credit card or a PayPal account that has at $10 credit on it.
• Lots of imagination for coming up with a good domain name.
• A mailing address to get any notifications from GoDaddy.
• An e-mail address. But wait, Allan, I thought I was going to get a new e-mail domain name and everything? Unfortunately, you’ll still need your old e-mail address. You can change this info later once you’ve your e-mail infrastructure up and running.

Step 1. Finding your domain name

I went to godaddy.com and found a text box that expected me to enter a new domain name.

I decided to enter mynonprofits.org. And clicked on the orange search button.

Step 2. Get your domain name

Good. They found a match. And you could get the other domains if you wanted to just so you could redirect those domains to your site later. However, our budget is less than $10 so let’s not go crazy. Click the orange Continue button at the bottom of the page.

Step 3. Get a GoDaddy account

You have to fill out registration information. It’s pretty easy, once you’re done, click on the orange Continue button.

I’m going to show what GoDaddy does after you fill out the sheet. It asks you to verify the contact information. PLEASE make sure it’s correct. It’s the only way GoDaddy can contact you when your domain name is going to expire.

There’s a lot of extra junk on this page. It’s basically intended to make you register your own name as a domain name. Just disregard it. It’s just intended to get a little bit more money out of you. Once you’re done checking things, click on the orange Continue button.

Step 4. Decide how long it will before your domain name expires

What’s that? Domain names expire? Yes they do. Make sure that registration length is at 1 year. When you know your organization is going to be stronger next year, you can then move ahead. Some options explained. Why do you need private registration? Actually, you don’t need it. You may want it. Technically speaking, if you’re still running your org out of your house, you probably entered your home address into the contact info at Step 3. Unfortunately, this means that people searching for who owns your new domain name will find your home address in there. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to check for “Deluxe” registration but I’m not doing it here because we’re looking to do a bare-bones registration. However, a more private registration will only cost you about $2 a year.

Really, don’t bother with customizing your order. All you need to do is somehow make it to the checkout screen.

Step 5. Almost there!

GoDaddy LOVES to give you extra chances to buy stuff. Just bear with me. This is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get a domain name. Make sure you’re only buy for 1 year.

Make sure the Domain Registration Agreement and Universal Terms of Service checkboxes are checked before you hit the Continue button.

Step 6. Sign in and pay for it.

Nothing interesting here. However, just make sure your e-mail address is correct. If GoDaddy can’t contact you, then you won’t know that your domain name is expiring next year. This can cause a lot of grief (I know, I’ve been there). And you may end up having to sign in ANOTHER domain name because it can take weeks to get an expired domain name back in your hand especially as other sites are looking to take your domain name from you so that they can sell it back to you. Yes, I know this all sounds horrible. However, just make sure that you renew your domain name every year. And don’t take offers from anyone but GoDaddy after you’ve signed up. Please note that just having a domain name doesn’t mean that you automatically get your new domain name in your e-mail. There’s a bit of configuration that has to happen first. You need a mail server at the

Next post will be on how to use your new domain name with Google Apps.