Internet Help for NBO's

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The opinions expressed in these articles and features are those of their author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of McANA or the opinion of its Directors or Officers.

Email and the internet have become routine communications tools for even the most reluctant among us. For a neighborhood organization, they can be a powerful way to get your message out and to keep the communication with your membership going. But, establishing an website or setting up email options may appear to be outside the expertise or budget available to your organization.

Free (yes free) or low cost web space and email options are out there and the level of expertise required may be as little as having something to say and being able to hunt and peck on a keyboard.

Free email options are abundant, and you may already be taking advantage of it. Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Juno are some of the free services. Usually there are ads that show while you are accessing your mail and usually there is limited space available with the free accounts. But, the space requirements are quite large, as long as you do not need to save copies of your messages on-line. If you want a comprehensive list of free email sources, log onto www.google.com and type “free email” (without the quotation marks).

In any event, you can set up a free email account for your organization. This allows one central email address that you can publish and which is transferable as the leadership in your neighborhood association changes. For example, the Decatur Township Civic Council has an address at Yahoo!: civiccouncil@yahoo.com.

As for web space, the best free alternative we know of is www.neighborhoodlink.com. They have already made space available for all the registered neighborhood associations in Indianapolis. Yours may be just sitting there waiting for you. They have a pre-set design, so all you have to do is choose which types of pages you want to include and the text and pictures you want to display. You can publish the agenda of an upcoming meeting or minutes of past ones. There are alternative pages you can use to describe the boundaries of your neighborhood, calendar of events, or publish your newsletter. It even provides for message board and ‘chat’ capabilities. To enter information into the pages you choose, you just type the text into text boxes and upload the pictures following easy instructions. For about $20 per year, you can reserve your own internet address that send the viewer directly to your website at neighborhoodlink.com. The new Southwest Perry Civic Association has done just that and secured the address: www.swperry.org.

If you have more funds and the expertise within your association, you can opt for an original website on a low-cost internet hosting service. Most people have free web space as part of their internet provider contract. This may work out for you and your association, but it is not the best long-term situation for most groups.

For most groups wanting to establish their own design and layout, an independent hosting service will be required. McANA, for instance, uses Datarealm, a service that has a lower price for 501(c)3 organizations. By paying for an entire year up front, we get a price of $90, plus $20 per year for the rights to our internet address, www.mcanaindy.org. With our web space we get 16 email accounts that can be assigned to our directors and officers. Your best bet is to ask around and see what other people are using and would recommend to your group. Most everyone will be happy to speak with you about the amount of time it takes to establish and maintain a website and how happy they are with the service provided by their web hosting company.

Bottom line is that there is a great deal of free or low cost alternatives available to fit both your budget and your volunteer’s talents. With the ease of email and the communication power of a website, your neighborhood association can benefit and thrive from the internet revolution.