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Creating a No-budget Website

© Ella Marin

Having your own website increases your organization's visibility. It can provide added services to your clients, and it can be a very clever way of fund-raising. Non-profits remember that they are also businesses, and take advantage of the current trends in technology. Creating a Web presence could easily cost thousands of dollars or more, but it doesn't have to. Here's a guide to creating a website that won't dent your organization's budget.

E-mail
Before setting up the website, you need to get e-mail. Some of you may have e-mail that is dependent on your ISP (Internet Service Provider, the people who charge you $19.95 a month to use the Web). I strongly urge you to consider getting an e-mail that's not dependent on your ISP. Here are a few reasons why:

• You might decide to switch ISPs. Then you won't be able to access your old e-mail anymore and you'll have to let everyone know about the change.
• The ISP might go out of business and then you'll have the same problem as above.
• You can't check your e-mail on a computer that doesn't use your same ISP. This is very limiting when you go to conferences, vacations, or even when you're at home.

You can check Internet-based e-mail on any computer that has Internet access. You can change ISPs as many times as you want without worrying about changing e-mail addresses. Best of all, these e-mail addresses are free! Why? Because they get their money from advertisers, not from you. The downside to this is that usually at the end of the e-mail they have a message saying something like Get your free Web based e-mail at XYZ company, which is a bit unprofessional, but is worth the inconvenience, particularly if you are on a tight budget. For a few dollars a month, many e-mail providers will upgrade your account to one that does not include their advertising.

There are many sites that offer free e-mail. These provide 3 to 5 MB of room to store your e-mail messages (that's several hundred e-mail's worth). Along with the more famous e-mail providers like Yahoo and Hotmail, there are some that give you a more "professional" address:

• Mail.com has addresses that look like name@mail.com, name@post.com, name@usa.com and more.
• www.com
• website.com
• Netaddress has name@usa.net addresses

Free.com has a very thorough list of free e-mail providers, while The Free Site has a shorter list with thorough reviews on each service.

Webspace
Now that you have e-mail, the next step is getting a website. Once again, this can be done for free. And once again, the companies get their money through advertisers, so realize that you will have an ad banner at the very top or bottom of your website or that there will be a pop-up ad window. That's not so obtrusive considering what you get for no money.