This is an archived article to see the current version visit http://www.timothyfish.net/Article.asp?ID=38.
It doesn’t matter how large and organization is, the one thing that every non-profit organization has in common is that there is never enough money to do everything the organization wants to do. This is true of an organization that has a budget of hundreds of dollars or an organization that has a budget of billions of dollars. There is always something that needs to be done. There are always people who think their project is more important than anyone else’s. Giving money to one project will take away from another, so it becomes a matter of priority and cutting costs where possible.
The organization’s website is one of the things that must take its place amid the fray. In some cases, the website is a high priority project. It is the lifeblood of the organization and without it little else would get done. In other case, the website is a low priority item. Many people realize that a website is a very important asset. The real question comes down to how much of a website the organization needs and how much it can afford.
Determining the cost of a website is not always easy. There are several costs that must be considered. One of the costs is the cost of site hosting. Most non-profit organizations and church will have a small site that has little traffic and few bandwidth requirements. These sites can be hosted for less than $7 a month. If the organization is using the site for storing email messages for members or large files, such as video and large image are being stored on the server then the cost of the hosting will increase. Very few organizations will need to exceed $22 a month in hosting fees.
Another cost is the cost of designing and developing the website. Depending on the complexity of the website, it can take anywhere from an hour to a thousands of hours to develop a website. For planning purposes, if all the organization needs is a few words on the page providing contact information and what the organization does then a hour is all that is required. If a nice looking site that will be used as a communication tool is intended then plan on about eighty hours worth of effort. If special, site specific, tools are needed then expect the effort to take even longer. Four hundred hours is a good starting point, but don’t be surprised if the person developing the site gives a higher estimate that goes into thousand of hours.
In terms of putting man-hours into dollar figures, if someone is hired to do the work it may cost between $50 and $100 per hour. Using these figures, a fairly average website may cost between $4,000 and $8,000 in labor alone. Using website templates or reusable code, such as the code in the book Church Website Design: A Step By Step Approach, can reduce costs by spreading the development time across several websites.
Using stock photos in the website can also increase the cost of development. Photos are a necessity, but some photos can be very expensive. It would be very easy to spend a couple thousand dollars on the photos that are used in a website.
Maintenance is also a major cost for a website. The hourly rate for maintenance can be as high as what it is for developing the site. In some cases, maintenance is a full time job. That means that a website may cost the organization between $100,000 and $200,000 to maintain the site. This figure is high enough that we can ignore the hosting fees. A website could cost between $100,000 and $200,000 annually and it might cost even more.
Very few non-profit organizations can afford to spend $100,000 on a website. Many of them don’t even have a total budget that is that high. Fortunately, a website doesn’t have to cost that much. There isn’t much that can be done about the hosting fees. Free web space is usually not a good option, so a non-profit organization will need to find at least $100 in its annual budget for the website.
Whatever else the organization does, a non-profit organization that is trying to save money on the website should not pay for full time maintenance. Only websites that are constantly adding new features need a full time developer on the payroll. You would expect websites like the better known shopping sites and search engines to be making enough changes that they have at least one and maybe several developers employed full time. Few non-profit websites need this level of support. If a site is well designed then a hands off approach to the software development side of maintenance. A somewhat higher initial investment can reduce maintenance to more of a clerical role. This can be especially good for a non-profit organization because the people maintaining the website can be unskilled volunteers rather than highly skilled and highly paid software engineers. The result is a cost savings of $200,000 annually.
A website that costs only $8,000 initially and $100 a year isn’t quite as bad. I know of one non-profit website that had a budget of over $50,000, so if the website serves a good purpose then $8,000 is doable, but some organizations can’t even afford that much. To further reduce the cost, volunteer labor must be used. As much as possible, maintenance of the website needs to be made a part of the things the organization is already doing. If the organization is maintaining a calendar, then the website calendar needs to read from this calendar or the website calendar should be used as the main calendar instead. If written communication is being sent to people then this information might be included on the website. Rather than spending time developing thing specifically for the website, only a few seconds are needed to add the preexisting data to the website.
If volunteer website developers are used the cost of developing the website could be brought to almost nothing. Using the approach presented in Church Website Design: A Step By Step Approach, the development cost could be as little as $18.99 plus the hosting fees. There is nothing in the book that requires software other than what is freely available , so the initial investment is only the cost of the book. So, I you have or are considering a website for your church or non-profit organization, consider purchasing a copy of Church Website Design: A Step By Step Approach. It can help you greatly reduce the cost of developing and maintaining a website.