I recently created a quick website for a really sweet friend whose husband, Tony, disappeared in Brazil a few weeks ago. The site’s purpose was to create a space which the family could give to the media to raise funds for the search. There were two main issues that came up with this exercise:
- how to continue to build trust for random people (i.e. not friends and family) visiting the site so that they felt they could trust donating money through it
- whether or not to leave a link back to my business in the footer
Building Trust
The first version of the site just had very basic information and a single link to the only news story I’d found that day. I wasn’t fully satisfied with v1, but it was after midnight, and I thought I did a decent job for two hours worth of work (I love you, Drupal!). By morning, though, I couldn’t get the situation out of my head, so I took another look at the site and decided that it was pretty thin with its single media report. I’d asked for pics and any known media reports so that I could put them on the site and encouraged them to update the site through blogposts for all interested friends, family, and kind strangers. But I knew that my friend, Lori, and her loved ones were overwhelmed with things to do, so I decided to do a bit more on my own. A quick Google search turned up more links and even a video through KING 5 news, so I quickly populated the site with links to them to help give more credence to their cause. Not sure if that really helped or not, but ah well.
Donated By
The bigger issue I faced came in the form of a link in the footer of the site. I’ve seen “donated by” links on all sorts of non-profit sites where a company has “sponsored” the site either by development or hosting, and as such, puts a link somewhere back to the sponsor. I tortured myself over it and came very close to asking a bunch of people what to do. On one hand, Lori is a friend, and if I create a site to help her, it should be just that– something I do with no thought of getting anything in return other than Tony back safe and sound with his family. This is the Hawaiian way, the way I was raised to think, and this is largely how I live my life.
Lately, however, The HR Audit has occupied all of my non-existent free time (between two classes and a 40-hour workweek, it’s tough to find time to work on the business), and I’m always looking for ways to improve traffic to it. Thus, as a business owner, it’s logical to link from Tony’s site to mine since I 1) bought the domain name, 2) created the site, and 3) host it on my server for free. There was also opportunity cost involved because by creating the site, I was forgoing working on my business, resulting in possible lost revenue. This is the passion-less, objective, business point-of-view. Get return on my time investment, right? I didn’t put any ads on the site or anything else tacky like that. Just the link which simply says “donated by The HR Audit” at the bottom.
Update: Sad News
As some of you may know by now, Tony’s body has been positively identified. The Brazilian authorities and media are painting this as a suicide, but… it seems really too weird to be true.