March 2007
Chapter provides easy access to forms, guidelines, activities and more
Lancaster County Chapter receives Web Site of the Month honors
Congratulations to the leaders of the Lancaster County Chapter (Nebraska), especially to Bill Beck, chapter Internet advisor and Web site administrator, whose site has been named Chapter Web Site of the Month for March.
In addition to being informative, up-to-date and and easy to read, the site provides visitors with easy access to forms, chapter guidelines, current news and more for those who are thinking about volunteer opportunities through the chapter.
On its “How the Chapter Considers Requests” page, the chapter clearly documents its guidelines and criteria for considering funding requests. This helps eliminate potential confusion between service teams and the chapter.
The site also has an excellent “Service Team Information and Forms” page that has links to many forms and materials that service teams can print directly from the Web site to use before, during and after their activities. In addition to the required forms, the page contains links to a check notice, picture notice and chapter in action form. And, excellent brief descriptions are provided so service teams clearly understand the purpose of each form and notice.
”Our main purpose and benefit of the Web site is to provide Thrivent Financial members and the general public a means to keep abreast of what the Lancaster County Chapter is doing, what has been accomplished, and what is planned in the future in terms of service activities,” says Bill. “We hope to bring awareness to Lutherans and others what Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is doing through their Care programs.”
Other features that make this site a winner includes:
- An excellent home page that includes:
- A picture of the chapter leadership board followed by a friendly invitation to contact any of the board members with questions as well as directions on where to find information on the site about planning, conducting and reporting activities.
- A “special events” area that list the next chapter meeting and upcoming activities.
- Calendar of coming events.
- Devotionals from each of the three largest Lutheran church bodies.
- Up-to-date calendar.
- Contact information of each chapter leader.
- Photos of various chapter activities.
- List of Lutheran congregations in the chapter.
- Chapter meeting minutes.
You can visit the site at
www.lutheransonline.com/lancastercountychapter.com. Nice job, Bill!
More comments from Bill
Q. How did you get involved with working on the Web site?
A. I started on the Lancaster County Board as the financial director. I felt the chapter needed to develop it's Web site, and I had experience in Web site design. After serving as financial director for two years, I resigned that position and became the Internet advisor to devote more time to the Web site. I have always been interested in computers since the first desktop appeared on the market. When the appearance of Web pages first came to the Internet, I started developing Web sites for the school and for our church.
Q. How easy or challenging is it to work on the Web site?
A. I have found to have a simple Web site is somewhat easy, but to make it do what I wanted was a challenge and took a lot of experimenting with the templates provided. To have text appear the way I wanted also required a basic understanding of the html language.
Q. Is it difficult and time consuming to keep the Web site up-to-date?
A. Keeping the Web site current is not difficult and requires only a very few hours a week. For example, we had our monthly meeting last night and today I may spend 30 minutes updating the calendar and other areas. Adding photos of a completed activity will take about 30 to 60 minutes for each activity depending on the number of photos and if they are digital or I have to scan them.
Q. Is it worth your time to maintain the chapter Web site?
A. I feel maintaining a chapter Web site is worth my time. Currently I don't think it is being accessed as much as could be, but through promotion at service events and chapter training activities people will become more aware of its presence and will be accessing it more. The more we showcase activities through photos and publicize the events on our site the more people will view the site.