Creating a Website to Promote Online Community Tip Sheets

Citizens Committee for NYC, was increasingly concerned that the assistance being provided by the Citizens Committee to their neighborhood based block associations was being lost in piles of paper. The Citizens Committee produces numerous Tip Sheets that are relevant to neighborhood and block associations trying to organize into effective coalitions, or those that are working to solve a particular problem such as "How to fight lead poisoning" and "How to Take Back the Park". The Citizens Committee knew that technology could be deployed to streamline the process of communication and enhance the efficiency of getting new and updated Tip Sheets out to its constituency. They enlisted NPower NY to create a website that houses current and future Tip Sheets in order to make this information easily available and accessible.

The Citizens Committee engaged NPower NY to provide web development services that included consultation, planning, design, and implementation. NPower NY is designing a web-based searchable database for at least 100 Tip Sheets that have been developed, creating a dynamic web presence for those who are seeking accurate and reliable information regarding the resources the Citizens Committee provides to New York's community of neighborhoods. The website will be searchable by both title and topic and have hyperlinks (a highlighted word or graphic within a hypertext document or Web page. Clicking on a hyperlink will take you to another place within the same page, or to another page) to an HTML page (the technical language to create hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. HTML is a way to format text by placing marks "tags" around the text.) which will be printable by the user and will include graphic illustrations and photos. At the end of each Tip Sheet there will also be hyperlinks to other related Tip Sheets, websites, and other pages on the Citizens Committee website. NPower NY staff will train the in-house technology administrator to add new Tip Sheets and update existing information without NPower NY's assistance. In addition, a tracking feature will be added to monitor which search terms were used and which tip sheets were viewed. This information will be used to generate activity reports to better understand which information is most often being accessed. A future objective for this website is to translate Tip Sheets in 5 additional languages to reach a greater and more diverse audience.

Citizens Committee for New York City, is pleased with the progress thus far on the site, "The cost of accessing such information is lessened--not only in dollars, but in the time it takes to find useful information. By visiting one place online, grassroots volunteers save the time and effort it would take to make phone calls, learn what's available and then request publications." They felt that NPower NY was enormously helpful in designing a user-friendly website. "Their understanding of our needs as well as those of our associations allowed us to hit the ground running, get the site up faster and serve our audience more effectively."