I keep going back to look at the website, and spent some time clicking everything just now. It makes me happy….This is my new happy place. When I look at the disorderly state of my desk, the website transports me to the calm realm….imagine!
What a website!
It makes you happy. It magically cleans your desk. It does yoga in your head. I want one…or two. Don’t you?
My favorite part is . . . I built that website.
It is for a community-based nonprofit that does great work helping people learn to read and write, and a lot of other fundamentally essential things.
And we just made them a website they’ll be able to manage and update themselves. A website where folks who need support with essential life skills can find the right number to call for help. A website where volunteers can find all the necessary forms and other info in one handy place. A website with a “bloggy thing,” so this organization can toot their own horn a bit, and share the good word about other groups doing good work.
We’re in the final draft phase of this website makeover, and I did a little happy dance when I read the director’s email.
Her reaction is why I do what I do.
And why I (mostly) love doing it. It is such an incredible feeling to demystify techno-babble, unclutter an organization’s vision of itself, and put it back together online in a sleek contemporary package. Community-scale nonprofits are where I got my start as a volunteer, community organizer, public speaker, and all around care-about-people-and-planetness. So, I get a thrill out of it every time I get to help an organization like this one hike its trousers up and take things up a notch.
Bethann Garramon Merkle, MFA 