Several times this year, we have recommended smaller campaigns that are meant to last 3-6 months and are primarily done through digital channels. Overall, they are simple. We create a great campaign message and tagline, tell that story through video, microsite experiences, email, and create a social strategy that we can train staff and volunteers to help implement. With this strategy we have seen tremendos ROI. These campaigns are typically ranging from $10,000 - $20,000 and are helping produce $35,000 to $185,000.

Here are Some of Our Client Examples:

Challenge the Cycle | Celebrate Life

www.challengethecycle.org |  ROI: $175,500

Over the last two years, we at Root Radius, have been working on a little passion project.

Almost every week, a great start-up cause would call us up and inquire about the in-depth process we go through to put together a brand story for causes. Typically I would ask, "so what does your cause do?" And that's when it would happen. They would begin to go into a frenzy of sporadic explaination that included their ideas, fears, needs and marketing ideas all in one jumbled mess. They would put it all out on the table and the result was, what we began to call, Passion Vomit.

For us, this was a tough problem–keeping me up at night. We are constantly asking ourselves "What if everyone that set out to change the world was successful?" This question has driven this small project. The answer was to begin to put our strategic process into something that would give a brand new cause a head-start in communicating the solution to the need they are trying to solve.

We have executed this two ways:

1. The Passion Vomit eBook:
This book takes the reader through 6 steps to transform their scattered ideas into a compelling cause story.

2. The CauseStory WordPress Theme:
This theme has been carefully crafted to match the story that is told through Passion Vomit. 

Go to PASSIONVOMIT.COM to get these two resources free for a limited time.

New digital annual reports are beginning to pop up in more innovative non-profits. They give the organization to change a boring report into a brand experience that has more potential reach. These can be viewed on ipads, iphones, and computers. They can contain video and even interactive elements. You can integrate social media into them, allowing people to share them with their friends. Another important fact is that the digital meeting may even eliminate the need for these reports to be annual. With the right tracking tools and reporting in place, there is no reason for them to not to be real-time. 

I believe in the near future, this will be the primary way annual reports are created. Better get started now.

Here are some examples that we think are fantastic:

Contact us to help your non-profit achieve similar results.

Elevation Church

http://annualreport.elevationchurch.org/

American Cancer Society: 20 years of saving lives

http://makingstrides.acsevents.org/site/PageServer?pagename=MSABC_FY13_Interactive_Infographic#.UEZaf2jLxEI

Ah, it's the eternal question: how much should I expect to pay for a website? And how can I find out some answer other than "it depends" without actually building the sucker? It can be really difficult to define what communications approaches make sense for you when website costs appear to be all over the map.

Well, it does depend. If you want to hone in on a price, the best way is probably to get proposals from consultants or firms - not a fast process, but a pretty accurate one. But the general magnitude depends on factors that are knowable, so I thought I'd take a crack at defining what you could expect at each price level based on my experience. Note that this prices are approximate US market rate - so you might be able to find folks who will discount or volunteer for less, but these are what someone who's doing this full time might charge.

$1000
This is around the lowest market rate you're likely to find, and it won't buy you a lot. At this price, you might be able get an independent consultant, probably without a ton of experience, to whip out a 10-30 page static site, based on a templated graphic design and a very straightforward navigation scheme. You won't get something very branded to your organization, and you'll likely have to define precisely what you want up front, as this price wouldn't cover time to help you work through your needs to any substantial degree. You may well have trouble finding someone to work at this low end.

$5000
At this level, you could get a jack-of-all-website-trades independent consultant who makes a living building website to build a simple site tailored to your needs. It might cover a simple, custom graphic design, and potentially one or two simple features (like a simple event calendar). There still wouldn't be a lot of time for strategy or feature definition, but you could expect a bit more customer service from the consultant. Note that a jack-of-all-website-trades consultant is likely to be, as the aphorism says, a master of none. Top quality websites are typically designed and built by a team of people - perhaps a graphic designer, a navigation expert, a content specialist, a design implementer, and an serious programmer. A jack-of-all-trades isn't likely to be an expert in all of those things, so it will be important to see a portfolio to judge their skills in the areas important to you.

$15,000
We're now getting into the realm of solid, scalable, strategic websites. It would cover an independent consultant, a team of consultants working together, or a small firm, in building a site on a solid infrastructure (like a content management system) with some strategically chosen features beyond simple text and images. It also might cover a very simple, basic site from a top consultant or firm - something very small but expertly crafted and designed. The budget would now cover some up-front help from the consultant in figuring out your needs.

$50,000
A lot opens up in this price range. This could be a fairly sophisticated site from a small firm, or a straightforward site by one of the top firms in the country, with some substantial strategic guidance.

$100,000
This is a solid budget for most large websites. Very sophisticated web applications or huge sites could certainly cost more (potentially much more!), but for $100,000 you could hire a top nonprofit internet consulting firm to create a robust site. At this level, your consultants can also help guide you through decision making, and shepherd decisions through internal politics and disputes - you're getting a strategic partner in addition to just someone to implement a site.

This is the most dead-on view of the web industry and setting real expectations of a website. Root Radius has had the opportunities to work at most of these levels and are able to help our clients figure out what they really need to achieve their goals.

This Memorial Day my 4-year-old son Ethan and I woke up early so I could teach him how to ride his Spiderman bike with training wheels. My wife and I had been trying for the past year to get him to ride it, but every time he said that pedaling was just too hard. It was usually less than 10 minutes before he was ready to give up and we both felt frustrated and defeated. This day, however, I knew would be the day. But furthermore,  I learned some real life lessons on leadership during the riding lesson.

Leaders can't get what they want if the followers don't get what they want.

Let’s be honest, I was the one that wanted Ethan to learn how to ride his bike. I was going down the street the other day and saw a kid his age riding a bike without training wheels. That made me think, "Ethan can do this!" But when I told Ethan, he said he would rather watch Toy Story instead. I started by telling him how big of a boy he would be if he rode a bike. He sort of perked up but not enough to move. So since we have also been teaching him about money, I told him that if he learned how to ride his bike, I would give him a whole dollar (the most he has ever had in one sum). He jumped up, put on his shoes and ran out of the door. I'm not saying money is always the best motivator, but the point is to find the incentive which makes them want to achieve it for themselves, not you.

You won't get what you want by crying

We went outside, put his Spiderman helmet on and put him on the bike. After trying to push down the pedals, nothing had changed. He stopped trying and said "I can't do it, its too hard." He then started crying. I pulled out the dollar and asked him “do you still want the dollar?” He stopped crying and nodded his head. I said "you'll never get what you want by crying about it." He got back on the bike.

Why do I need to pedal?

Ethan tried the pedals again with frustration. By taking the time to watch him try, I realized he didn't understand the way the pedals worked and so he kept pressing the brake. So I turned the bike up-side-down to show him how the pedals moved the wheel. I let him use his hands to push the pedals in the right direction. He thought this was fun and my 4-year-old explained to me that the crank (he called it) helped the wheel move. I then turned the bike right-side-up and explained that he just had to do the same thing with his feet. This actually seemed to work. He understood why he was doing what he was doing and how it affected the whole the motion of the bike.

Forward Forward Forward. Never Never Stop.

Now that he was pedaling, we were finally starting to move. But every time we would begin to pick up some momentum, he would press back on the pedals causing the bike to screech to a stop. He would then have a hard time starting again. I started singing a little song. Forward Forward Forward. Never Never Stop. I said it over and over again until he was singing at the top of his lungs and we actually started going pretty fast.

Look where you're going

Because we had been focusing so much on pedaling, he had been looking at his feet while I steered. I started letting him steer and noticed he was so focused that he almost ran into the house, so I lifted his head up while continuing to sing the song.

Slow Progress is still Progress

I would love to end this story by telling you that he is now the first 4-year-old in the Tour de France. Not so, we pedaled forward for an hour and as I began to back away, he still had a lot of trouble doing it on his own. He was really getting tired, but had come 10 times further than he was when we came out here. I didn't give him the dollar yet because that is his ultimate goal, but I told him how great he did and that he was really close to getting his dollar. We decided to try some more later that day. I may even give him 50 cents because he is half way there. He his a long way from where I want him to be, but progress is progress and worth recognizing as long as it doesn't take the place of the overall goal.

The Activity Feed

A few months back, Bryan was having a meeting with a pastor friend who said "every time I talk to you, Root Radius seems to be doing so much stuff. How come there appears to be so little activity?" Well, that is because we are usually working on client projects which take months to finalize and we don't usually post them on the website until they are completely done.

Enter the Activity Feed. Inspired by Facebook's timeline, Root Radius is now capturing our entire process as we are doing a client project. We all have a hard time blogging because we are working so hard everyday to launch projects. So we decided that we would take advantage of the micro blog. Every team member is given a mobile application that they can post a quote, video or photo from. Then it shows up in the feed and is immediately distributed to all of our social networks. Every post is tagged by team member, client, project and even our offerings. So when someone sees a post from us, they can relate to exactly what we are doing. What is amazing is that because we are permanently capturing the process, at any time a client will be able to navigate to a project we have done and see the events that took place to make that project. Not to mention, they can also see it on our Facebook timeline.

Offerings

Our last website did a great job of telling our main story, but we were spending the bulk of our time with potential clients explaining exactly what we actually offer. So we took the time to go into great detail of what we do as a company so that causes can get a good idea of how exactly we can help them before giving us a call. On the other side it also helps causes see what it takes to create great quality cause campaigns.

Project Case Studies

Our last website had tons of work to show, but it never told the overall story of what the client was facing, what we did to help and the results of the project. Now, by visiting the site, users can take a look at a client, see all of the different projects, understand the challenges, then see what the results we provided were. They can even see what the client says about their experience! 

I want one button

Lets say you are looking at a project and think "this would be great for our next annual campaign!"  We can only hope. There is now a button that allows you to say “I want something like this,” which will notify Root Radius of what you have looked at, allowing our team to come prepared with what it will take to pull it off for you.

The Culture

Root Radius has grown in number and maturity. Now users can get a great idea of why we do what we do and the values we live by. They also can visit each team member to get a glimpse into their personal lives and see what their activity feed includes. 
We hope this will better connect you to our passions and process as a company to help equip causes to tell their story.