So you’ve decided to start a nonprofit organization. Good for you. People like you, with passion and dedication to a cause, are exactly why this blog exists. There are a thousand decisions ahead of you, and, luckily, at least as many resources out there on the internet. We’ll be covering a number of different aspects of starting an online nonprofit here at CharityGeek, but for today’s post, I’d like to concentrate on something that should be one of your first steps – establishing a name and a brand for your organization. All that starts with your domain name.
Just so we’re clear for the rest of this post, I will refer to a full name as the title of the organization, like The National Organization for Women, and use the term domain name to mean the web address of the organization, like now.org.
The Kiva Route: Short, Sweet, and Foreign
If you haven’t heard of Kiva, stop reading this post and go there now. They are a fantastic microfinancing site that allows donors to make small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, and as a member myself, I can’t say enough positive about them. They are also a great example of one strategy in online branding. “Kiva” is Swahili for agreement or unity, and a good name for the site for a few reasons. First, it was short, and available. These days, it is nearly impossible to get a four-letter domain name, but the shorter, in general, the better. Second, and just as importantly, the use of a Swahili word was appropriate to their mission, since Africa is one of their main focus sites for loans. If your organization works internationally, or with an indigenous group, using a non-English word might be a great way to get your hands on a short domain name. Remember to keep it as easy to say and write as possible. If you ask five people to spell the word, and get five different spellings, that might not be the name for you.
Kiva vs. Keywords
Though Kiva has a great domain name, it didn’t do much to help them on one front: search engines. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s new-fangled competitor, Bing, are the most important way for people to find your site. All of these search engines use different processes to rank one site higher than another, but they share a few things in common, and one is the importance of link text. When another site links to yours, the link text (like the word “CharityGeek” in this link to our homepage: CharityGeek) is often the name of your site, and every time a link like that is created, your site ranks higher in the search engines for people searching by that text. What this means for your branding decision is that you should consider putting key search terms into your domain name. If you work with children, consider a name with “children”, “child”, or “youth”. If you work in a very specific region, that can be a very useful thing to add to your name. For example, I live in Portland, Oregon, and if I search Google for “Portland charity”, one of the first organizations to come up is The National Charity League, Portland Chapter (http://nclportland.org). The domain name is still fairly short, but the full name has both “Portland” and “Charity”, and the domain name has the word “Portland”, and that helps with search engines a lot.
Search for the name before you buy it
So, maybe you’ve found a great name. It rolls off the tongue and gets a great keyword in, too. The easiest thing to do would be to let those fingers do the running over to the first domain registrar you can find and grab it before someone else does. But before you do that, take the time to search for the full text of it. Maybe childrenofmoscow.org is available, but childrenofmoscow.com is the site of a death-metal band that doesn’t exactly share your community values. Although you might get some extra accidental traffic from sharing a name that’s similar to one taken by an established site, that traffic might not be full of the sort of visitors you want. Just another point to consider.
A brand is more than a domain
Before you buy your domain name, also consider what other branding you might do for your organization. One important one, and more so by the day, is Twitter. Check to see if your domain or full name is taken yet as a handle on Twitter, by going to http://www.twitter.com/yourname. For example, our fledgling Twitter account is @charitygeek, and I definitely checked Twitter before deciding for sure on the name. Also check around other social networks like Facebook, to see if anyone else has thought of that name already.
As an organization, your brand is the first thing you really own, and in a very real way, as the head of the organization, it becomes a part of your name. Every time you introduce yourself to a prospective donor, you’re no longer just “Bob Smith”. You’re “Bob Smith, Save the Otters”. It’s one of the biggest and first decisions you have to make, and like the name your parents gave you, your organization may have to live with it for a very long time. Hopefully, this article helped you a little in making that choice.
Other helpful posts
The Effective Strategy for Choosing the Right Domain Name (Smashing Magazine)
Checklist: Choosing a Domain Name (Reuters)