January 2007

Chapter Web site provides 'one-stop shop' for forms, ideas and recognition

Warren County OH Chapter earns Web Site of the Month honors

Congratulations to the leaders of the Warrens County OH Chapter, especially to Will Lapp, chapter advisor and Web site administrator, whose site has been named Chapter Web Site of the Month for January.

The site is very well laid out, up-to-date, informative, and easy to read and navigate. As you review the site, three main purposes are easily identified:

• Activity ideas:  "The most frequent question I've had as a chapter leader over the past four years is 'What do other service teams do?'" says Will. "I hope that the chapter Web site will provide the seed for future service teams to form and support their community needs."

  The site includes "Events" pages that list all of the activities the chapter has supported since 2003, split out by recipient or type of activity. In addition, a "Photo Gallery" page has photos and descriptions of activities by the type of program—Care Abounds in Communities® and Care in Congregations®.
  
  

• Forms and information:  The site has a very nice "Meet our Chapter Leaders" page that includes pictures, biographies and contact information for the chapter leaders. A "Download Forms" page includes links to the Request for Funding form as well as information about our chapter Care programs. The site also includes a very well done "Our Congregations" page.
  
  
• Recognition:  In addition to listing all of the activities, a unique feature Will incorporated is the Honor Roll page where the chapter honors those who have served in past years as chapter leaders and service team leaders.

"Our goal is to give chapter members a place to go to view their chapter leaders, find out what and when is going on with other service teams in the chapter, and get ideas for projects," says Will. "The template Thrivent Financial provides makes it very easy to maintain and update it."

And is it worth the time to keep the site updated? "I think it's worth my time. I've already received feedback from chapter members saying that they like a one-stop-shop place to go to get request forms and contacts, and get ideas for events."

Other features that help make this site a winner include:

• An "Events During the Next 100 Days" calendar is placed on the home page.
• A Daily Devotional page where Will uses the "Content Feed" feature to display devotionals from the three largest church bodies on a daily basis. Content feeds are predeveloped postings (by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans) that you can add to your site. These postings are updated automatically as the information changes. We have a variety of content feeds to choose from, including Thrivent Financial's Fraternal Highlights, Thrivent Financial news releases, a poll and mini-calendar. For more information about content feeds, see the chapter Web site section of CHIP, the online chapter reference guide on www.thrivent.com.

Visit this site at www.lutheransonline.com/warrencountyohchapter. Nice job, Will!