Sample Website Brief

The following is a fictional example of a website brief for a non-profit organisation. It shows the depth of information that helps a web developer put together an accurate proposal and quotation.

1. Introduction
Please outline the bid timeline and contact details.

The Green Foundation invites bids to design and build its public website. Bids should be submitted to Samantha Green via email (samantha.green@greenfoundation.org) by January 15th 2011.

We will choose a supplier within one week of receiving the bids. The project will commence on the 26th of January 2011. Our target launch date is 01 May 2011.
Please address any questions to Samantha Green via telephone on 020 8556 1212. In her absence, please contact Christina Henley (christina.henley@greenfoundation.org; 020 8556 7814).

2. About the organisation
Please describe the organisation’s background, its vision, mission and main message to its target audience.

The Green Foundation was founded in August 2005 and is a non-profit organisation that aims to assist and uplift rural communities with the support of environmental projects. We have raised more than £4 million to date and have won the Hope Award in 2007 and 2010. To date, we have assisted 45 rural communities in South Africa, Botswana and Zambia and planted more than 30,000 trees. For a full outline of our projects per area, please see our project booklet, attached.

Our staff currently includes two full time project coordinators, a marketing coordinator and five administrative staff members. We also have four part time volunteers during various stages of the year.

Our main message is that poverty and environmental degradation are intrinsically linked. By educating communities to respect the environment, opportunities for income generation are created.

3. Target audience

Please describe the target market segments.

a. The general public. 75% of our funding comes from individuals who hear about our message through our marketing channels. The remainder comes from corporate sponsorship and internal profit generation (such as fundraising activities and sale of our branded merchandise).

b. Businesses. Businesses contribute 15% to our funding. We would like to strengthen our focus on corporate sponsorship during 2011 and use the website to support co-branded sponsorship projects like the SASA green campaign.

c. Volunteering students. Once a year we run a volunteer program in conjunction with Rand University. Social studies students donate 100 hours of their time to an NGO of their choice as part of their year-end thesis. We typically receive 500 hours donated each year. The website should act as a recruitment drive for these volunteers, as well as other non-student volunteers.

d. Accreditation agencies. We are in the process of securing accreditation from Charity Navigator and ECFA. A professional web presence will assist in this evaluation.

e. Partners. We are continually expanding our partnership network to environmental organisations and lateral NGOs. The website should act as a vehicle to strengthen our network.

f. Employees. The strength of our efforts relies on the quality of our people. We would like the website to attract job applications from qualified individuals in the fields of marketing,
accounting and project management. The website should advertise the uniqueness of our offering.

g. Photographers. Photographers typically spend 40 hours a year to profile our projects. They are selected on a competitive basis but often donate free hours to capture specific projects and events. We would like the ‘photo blog’ (see below) to inspire professional photographers to get involved.

h. Design students. We sell branded merchandise (t-shirts, caps and bags) in our online shop as part of our fundraising. The designs and illustrations are donated by designers and design students. We would like the site to attract further contributions in this area. An online competition platform would be ideal.

i. Media. We have been featured in a variety of local magazines and radio stations. We would like the website to attract further positive media attention and enable interested parties to download our press kits.

4. Website activities and objectives
Please describe the major objectives for the site, as well as the activities you would like users to perform.

We would like the general user to engage in the following activities on our website. Items are listed in order of importance:

· Donate online
· Subscribe to our newsletter
· Subscribe to our blog RSS feed
· Follow us on social media channels like twitter and Facebook
· Purchase our merchandise
· Contribute blog comments
· Download resources on “going green”
This ties in with our major website objectives:
· Create awareness about our organisation
· Generate donations and merchandise sales
· Build an online community
· Build a repository for resources and materials on “going green”
· Advertise uniqueness of organisation to partners, volunteers and the media

5. Navigation structure
Please outline the website menu structure, divided into main menu and sub menu items. Where projects, albums, videos, people profiles and products are involved, please outline the number of items to be populated for launch.

The website will contain the following navigation structure. Alternate suggestions on page structure are welcome:
· Home
· About
o Mission and vision
o History
o FAQ
o Board (6 members)
o Staff (12 members)
o Fact sheet
o Annual reports (6 reports for launch)
o Partners
· Projects
o Outline per project with image galleries and videos (24 projects for launch)
· Get involved
o Donate
o Online shop (45 products for launch)
o Volunteer
o Share
o Photographers
o Designers
o Partnerships
o Going green (resources centre with 21 articles for launch)
· News
o News articles
o Events calendar
o Newsletters
o Image galleries (12 albums for launch, approx 10 images per album)
o General blog (12 articles for launch)
o Photo blog (33 images for launch)
o Press kit
o Careers (4 vacancies currently)
· Contact us
The website will have approximately 124 pages for launch, which includes articles and product detail pages.

6. Website features
Please outline the special features required for the site. Please include reference links where possible.

The website should contain the following special features. Additional feature suggestions are welcome:
· Newsletter subscription and HTML mailer
· Blog with comments and RSS (please see http://msf.ca/blogs/ as a reference)
· Flash animation on the home page
· Interactive map of projects in Southern African with ability to zoom in one countries and click markers to access project pages (for launch we will feature 24 projects across 3 countries)
· Online donation form with ability to pay via EFT, paypal or credit card. We would like users to choose between recurring and once-off donations (please see
https://www.plantwithpurpose.org/donate as a reference)
· Interactive image galleries (we like the functionality on http://www.atsheli.co.za/galleries/image-gallery/)
· Photo blog (please see http://msf.ca/blogs/photos/ as a reference); the photo blog
will update every two weeks and showcase the best photos of the month
· Online shop selling our branded merchandise (also ability to pay via EFT, paypal or credit card); delivery is included in the purchase price and we post orders internationally; we currently have 45 products in our shop ranging from branded t-shirts to bags
· Resource centre for “going green” articles and tips
· Visual events calendar (we would like a full page calendar that highlights specific dates and allows users to toggle between months)
· Website keyword search

7. Competitor websites
Please outline reference websites and what you like / dislike about their sites.

Competitor website worth referencing are:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
We like the home page banner animation, the breadth of information as well as the extensive
use of multimedia throughout the site. The world map on the home page is a good reference for the interactive project map.
Plant with Purpose - http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/
We like the design of the website as well as the interactive village feature.
Doctors Beyond Borders - http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/
We don’t like the design of this site particularly, but the blogs and photo blogs are extensive and are good targets to set for ourselves.

8. Design
Please provide a short brief on the design direction of the site. This will help us estimate photography and illustration needs for the site. 

In terms of the design, we like the following visual references:
The design should be clean and ‘organic-looking’. We are leaning towards green as the dominant hue together with neutral colours like beige and grey. We would like to feature a mixture of object and people-based photography. A disk with project photos will be supplied but stock photography may need to be sourced where there are gaps.

The home page design should tie in with our main message, which is: Uplifting communities through environmental projects

Where people photography is concerned, a mixture of races and ages should be represented.

9. Compatibility
Describe the range of devices and browsers for which the site must be tested for compatibility 
The site must be fully responsive and compatible with all popular devices and browsers including touch-screen mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop

9. Other requirements
Please outline hosting requirements, as well as any security and accessibility standards that need to be met.
We are looking for an affordable and reliable hosting solution. We require 500 MB of disk space
and up to 10 GB monthly traffic. This excludes email hosting. We already have a domain secured.