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Who would have guessed that Bill Gates was in charge of a non-profit organization? Actually, it should make us worry if someone like him were not doing something to give back. After all, he's long past the point of a little spending money, and the farther away one gets from that, the more they need to spend on their friends. And who's our best friend? Our computers. No one knows how to party better than the internet!

It is the computer's ethical obligation to give a little of the party Back. And this is quite an honorable give-back. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to GLOBALLY better health care and end poverty. (!) That's often everyone's one wish isn't it? (But is it really?) We have to give kudos to someone that has this ability - and responsibility - and actually does it. Someone else might be sitting on a stack of Zebra cakes the size of Mount Kilimanjaro while people are starving over in, everywhere else around Mount Kilimanjaro. We see now that even someone, someone often labeled as variances of a title such as, "warlord of the machines," even he can give back some of the Zebra cakes to the surrounding, starving, sick, destitute people that probably don't even know what a blackberry is.

So before you buy your Bill Gates voodoo doll after some microsoft software or hardware doesn't work right and you have to give more and more money, remember, it's going to a good cause, at least. But that, technically, isn't how his not-for-profit organization makes money. It's from people who donate; for nothing in return! How does this guy get more money from the public for nothing!

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This site will be about how non-profit organizations recruit volunteers, raise funds, and give information about their cause through their websites.

What does that have to do with technical editing?

Well, if it wasn't for technology, then there wouldn't be an internet, and if it wasn't for editing, every time one would go to the website for the Red Cross, there would be a big picture of an arm with a needle going into it, with "HELP" in giant letters at the top, pop-ups and graphic, pornographic images everywhere, because the idiot in charge of making the website forgot what was behind the concept of a non-profit organization, which in no way includes great deals on cell phones or the best sites for Asian hardcore.

It takes some kind of filter, or standard, to know what is appropriate for a website for a non-profit organization. So the person in charge of making the website should edit it to meet the standard or way in which the organization wishes to present themselves, for the website.

Technical editing skills come in to make decisions on content, organization, navigation, visual design, and style. The website should be clear, concise, organized, welcoming, pretty, navigational, and in a way that easily conveys the organization's purpose in an honest but attractive way.

This is really about the aesthetics of a website for how they present themselves according to their purpose and needs. We (or rather I) are going to play the role of critic for the website for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I've chosen to study websites for non-profit organization because unlike Dairy Queen and Horizon Wireless, these are not-for-profit organizations. They ostensibly have a purer cause than calories and lots of talking for money. So, in the corrupt world of marketing and the internet, where does purity have a place? We aim to find out. First, let's go ahead and lay out what a non-profit organization is and what it's trying to do exactly.

non-

Thank the conveniently entitled website, Nonprofit at http://nonprofit.about.com, for this pithy little def: "Definition: An organization in which no owner, stockholder or trustee shares in profits and losses, and which exists not to earn revenue but to promote a mission that enhances the public welfare. These organizations are often eligible for tax-exempt status and some, but not all, can receive tax deductible contributions."

Here's a section from the Learning to Give website that goes into it more thoroughly, gives the history of non-profit organizations, and tells the different varieties or types of non-profit organizations: http://www.learningtogive.org/papers/index.asp?bpid=41

The site sets out all the different types of non-profit organization. They are:

Charities - e.g. American Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA

Foundations - e.g., W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Ford Foundation, community foundations

Social Welfare or Advocacy Organizations - e.g., National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Rifle Association (NRA)

Professional/Trade Associations - e.g., Chamber of Commerce, American Medical Association (AMA)

Religious Organizations - e.g., churches

We will evaluate the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation's website. All the websites for different non-profit organizations are of course different, but this is the biggest non-profit organization in the world. It has the most volunteers and donations. So lets make an example out of the most common and assume because it is the most common, the most regular, all other sites will be relatively similar because they probably want to gravitate towards regularity and commonness.

As a reader of a website, I'm looking for information. As someone who wants information from a website of a non-profit organization, I'm going to most likely want to know about the organization and maybe, maybe, I'll give money or even, just maybe, volunteer. Now you can argue on what is the generalized want for people going to websites of non-profit organizations for information. But let's assume that the mission of putting your non-profit organization on the internet is to give information on your organization and ask for money and recruit volunteers because all this helps the cause.

A website for a non-profit organization would be a way of giving the public news and information. Their cause is to promote a mission that enhances the public welfare. They promote the mission with help from the public by donations or volunteer work. So we're going there looking for information, and as fast as possible, because we're the usual website readers and usually people that read websites don't want to read them so much as get what information or whatever else that they want and leave. My classes' technical editing textbook, Technical Editing by Carolyn D. Rude, gives us the criteria for what the website should accomplish when I go there:

The content must be available. The writer, editor, and subject matter must anticipate what readers need to know and what questions they are likely to ask.

The means of searching must be obvious and reliable. Uses may search index terms from a menu of topics or by comprehending the methods of using the site, not just the content needed.
The text should usually be short enough to fit on a screen. Readers in a hurry do not want to read long paragraphs and scroll through screens. Writers and editors cut unnecessary words. If the text requires substantial development, a version suitable for printing should be available.
Empowering users to set preferences or to locate the information that suits their interest and expertise can make the document useful to a variety of readers.

So we're set to go. We're going to go to the Bill and Melinda gates and we're going to see how they hold up to these criteria.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gunfighters

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm.

Template

The template of a website has to do with visual design and structure. First, visual design. Let's start simple. The colors are soothing. This is the first thing my eyes adjust to when I pull up the website. It's effortless. I don't want to go to a website that is bright yellow with neon green words where the letters are different sizes so that with all this together, when I squint my eyes, I see the devil on the screen.

Hues are more important than one might think. It's quite simple really. Look around and think about what you feel when you look at various colors. That indescribable anxious and scared feeling means you don't like the color. Itoffends you.

There are colors that universally do not offend. These are what everyone generally agrees upon as being easy going and non-irascible.

Go to the website for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and look at the visual design. The colors are quiet but pronounced because there is a variety of them with a continuity in that they are all of the same tone. There's an auburn color for the headings on the table on the right side. There's an earthy, mossy color at the top. I feel relaxed and happy when I look at it.

Style

Let's continue with the visual design. Style is the way in which the various textual parts are laid out. Not counting the more graphically enhanced words on the menu on the left side, the heading at the top, and the menu tabs on the right, there is one font used for paragraphs and announcements, Ariel, and Times New Roman is used for the titles of the paragraphs in the center of the page.

That was the style they chose. That sense of continuity makes it seem organized and together. This website isn't going to get out of control. It feels safe. The titles for the paragraphs that are in Times New Roman are bold but they are also of a hue that goes along with the color tone of the website and as already stated, the tone is soothing and welcoming. The lines are at a good distance apart. Not too much not too little and easy to ingest. And oh look, the date is at the top. How nice of this website.

Screen Layout

let's notice the screen layout. The menu is on the left and stands out from the rest of the page but not too severely. This menu bar is the navigational hub for finding information about this organization. It's got anything that the people that made the website thought was a feasible want of readers for information about the organization.

Under this menu, in big letters, bigger than the letters above it, in a box that is framed in red, inside the box where there is a different color than the rest of the menu, in white, it says, HELP US REDESIGN OUR WEBSITE in caps. This doesn't have anything to do with anything except how apparently incompetent the web designers for this website are to the point that they need assistance from readers coming to the website wanting information and it's under the menu bar where our attention is usually drawn. In little letters under it, it says, "take our survey."

All I saw was something that had nothing to do with what I wanted out of the website that was almost like the focal point, the Jesus at the last supper, of the menu bar and it's something that makes me think the website is underdeveloped. Actually, it's the first thing I look at when the website loads and anywhere else I look on the screen, it's always in the corner of my eye.

On the left there is a list of announcements and highlights. The words are in the tiniest font on the page so I'm not going to notice it at all except, under announcements, the dates in bold, and under the highlights, the highlights are in bold.

My eyes, though, are always going to gravitate towards the search bar at the top of this menu because it looks different than anything else. I'll stare blankly into the whiteness, the absence of all color, and be reminded that I have nothing to search for.

Images

Finally, lets talk about the images. I like them. Instead of gaunt, bone-thin children, covered in flies, drooling, with bellies full of worms like dogs and vultures surrounding them, there's an attractive picture of, presumably, a mother and son in Africa. There are more African children at the top. I find this much more likable than soul and physically tortured children dying horrible deaths or pictures of dogs, dogs like the dogs I have and love, being skinned alive. These pictures make me not feel afraid to navigate on this website some more.

Organization

To explore the organization and content of the site, I'm going to role play. I'm going to pretend I'm the type of person that could possibly go to this website for a reason. I am someone that wants to be involved in this organization but I don't know anything about it. I have a vague idea of what I could possibly do for the organization and I want to know more about it. To see if I'll accomplish this, I'll see if it follows Rude's criteria mentioned earlier.

The Content Must be Available

First, is the content available? I'm going to try to figure out what the point of the organization is. After staring at the page a while at a bunch of shit I don't know anything about, I see an "About Us" at the very bottom of the menu right above the plea for help in making the website.

So I click on it. There is now a language bar at the top, a picture of Bill Gates helping Africans with some other white person, presumably his wife, both solving the worlds problems like the paragons of virtue that they are and at one key stroke at a time from my calloused and bitter finger tips, then there is finally a very small, one sentence summary of what the organization is. It says, "Bill and Melinda Gates believe every life has equal value [:)]. In 2000, they created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce inequities in the United States and around the world." So that's what it is. It is Bill and Melinda Gates giving new salvation to the entire world. I'm guessing from all those surrounding Misah Kurtz that the focus is on Africa. I'm going to try and figure out more by using the menu on the left.

Now then, for whatever reason, I want to become a part of this. Earlier, when talking about the visual design, I forgot to mention the small, light colored menu options at the very bottom with a white background. I can't find anything on the page so I keep scrolling until I get here and at the second to last option in the menu under the "Working with Us" tab is "Getting involved." So I click on it. There is now a picture of some more Africans, a summary of how I can help, and a list with the different options for helping that I can click on to find more information.

So I found the content available with relatively easy effort.

The Means of Searching Must be Obvious and Reliable

Now, are the means of searching obvious and reliable? I've already found what I was searching for when I was trying to find the content I was searching for. There looks like whatever else another person would want to search for might happen something like my experience.

All the menu topics are clear and easy to find. All the menu topics in the easy to find menus are easy to find. I can recognize a form, an organization here, and I'm going to use the knowledge of that organization to figure out where to find what I want. If I want to find information about the actual organization, I know to look to the menu on the left where all the other immediate and common information about the organization is listed. I saw that when I first went to the website because I am accustomed to reading from left to right because everyone else in the world but me is right handed and I have to think like them.

The Text Should Usually be Short Eough to Fit on the Screen

This first page that we see, the home page, is short. That's good because I want to find what I want and leave. I don't want to scroll for an eternity. I don't want to read because I'm suddenly semi-illiterate when I get on the internet because I've almost gone blind in my lust for knowledge. The site holds up to this standard nicely. There's not a lot of words on the screen so I'm not afraid of reading them. I don't have to commit. I can get what information I want as fast as possible so that I can then go to you-tube and watch videos of dogs being chased by roosters.

Empowering Users to Set Preferences or to Locate the Information that Suits their Interest and Expertise can Make the Document Usful to a Variety of Readers

This is really the conclusion. Did the website for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation empower me to set my own preferences or locate the information that suited my interest and expertise? This process has shown us that it was relatively easy to find what I was looking for and it is assumable that it would also be for a variety of readers. It was clear, attractive, easy to navigate, and concise. I liked the website and felt good about my choice in choosing this non-profit organization. I'm going to donate 100,000,000,000 dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation because the God of Microsoft managed to get out a descent webpage. That's the point. That should be the point all non-profit websites veer to.

Works Cited

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Home Page. 1999. 5 May. 2008 <http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm>.

Fritz, Joanne. "Nonprofit Charitable Orgs." About.com. 2008. 5 May 2008 <http://nonprofit.about.com/>.

Luckert, Kate. "Nonprofit Organizations (Definitions and Examples)." Learning to Give.org. 2008. 5 May. 2008 <http://www.learningtogive.org/papers/index.asp?bpid=41>.

Rude, Carolyn D. Technical Editing 4th ed. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2006.

Volume 5, Issue 1-2

Spring, 2008

How Does a Not-for-profit Organization Sell Itself?