I’m going to state my golden rule for web sites and internet-based features for organizations now, based on 30 years of experience:
If you are not going to commit to the human resources to intelligently manage specific web/internet features – YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE THOSE FEATURES.
I’m going to give an easy example. An organization that I have volunteered at for 25 years has an email list that allows all members to participate in both receiving from and emailing to the group. It has been a nice feature over the past 20 years or so, but I’m removing my volunteer footprint for this particular organization due to my personal interests, and somebody else needs to take over. Somebody that understands email, custom domain recipes, etc.
They do not have such a person as a volunteer as far as I can tell. They haven’t tried to hire such a person. Their previous provider has decided to quit offering the software service, so they need to move the list to a new provider. I gave them instructions on how to set up a new account with a different provider. I offered to transfer the list once they did that, but I was not going to pay for the list hosting any longer. They had months. They failed to get it in time and the list no longer works. Do people miss it? Hard to say – there is no list to communicate such.
They eventually did set up the account, which basically meant paying for it and creating a list name (which should be the same as the prior list name). They have a typo in the email used to log into the new account. They have a typo in the list name – which is 4 letters. C’mon. Hire someone to do this right, not somebody who cares so little they can not get 4 letters correct in sequence.
I know they will want me to fix this. As a volunteer. It is all due to sloppiness on their part, and a failure on my part to tell them THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS FEATURE. They don’t have the available human resources to take proper care of this list. When an email list like this works well, it’s because somebody behind the scenes knows their stuff and is on top of stuff. That is not this organization.
This advice should have massive cognitive resonance for all strictly-volunteer organizations – and their volunteers. Volunteers come and go. So does funding. If the organization should pay for something that will be an ongoing concern and is likely not to, they shouldn’t do it. Commit or refuse. Simple as that.
But this is really key for every web site and feature on the Internet, not just volunteer organizations. If you do not have enough expertise in hand, either employed or contracted, you shouldn’t be offering something that really needs that expertise in support. And if you don’t know if you have enough expertise – find out now. Later is going to be more painful.