Jayne Blog (Volunteerism, Nonprofit Tech, Civil Society, etc.)

Mar. 19, 2008 - When you merge, keep all URLs!

It's taken many days for me to finally find out whatever happened to Volunteers in Technical Assistance, a nonprofit organization with a more-than-45-year history of helping in the developing world (I've been wanting to link it from my page regarding international volunteering). The old VITA web site was VERY popular, and is still linked from hundreds (thousands?) of web sites, something that so many nonprofit organizations would love to have. But either someone forgot to renew that URL or decided, per VITA's merger with another organization, that the old VITA URL was no longer needed, and this oh-so-popular web address now goes to a site promoting dubious health products.

It doesn't matter if your campaign ends or your organization merges with another or you get rid of a program that has its own web address: keep those URLs! To not do so means that you not only throw away precious web links and miss out on potential supporters, clients and others, but even worse, the URL could be taken over by someone who will use the site to engage in activities with which your organization does NOT want to be associated.

You can always redirect old URLs to an expired campaign or program redirect to your new URL.

About Jayne

This blog (web log) is by Jayne Cravens, and is primarily focused on resources and news regarding mission-based organizations: nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, and public sector agencies, as well as development issues and humanitarian efforts. It promotes resources and opinions relating to volunteer management/community involvement, tech use by nonprofits, and outreach strategies for nonprofits. There are also some personal postings (such is the nature of blogs), regarding travel, causes I personally support (like women's empowerment, urban biking, etc.). To comment on this blog, you must register on forumer.com.

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